Paper details

Paper authors	Léonard Heyerdahl
In panel on	Aid workers at the frontlines: studying effects of epidemics on volunteering
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Red Cross is a major actor of the response to the Covid-19 epidemic in France.
From June 2020 to June 2021, we carried out a mixed methods study - using online social listening, online surveys and In-Depth Interviews- to assess drivers of motivation and coping strategies among volunteers and workers of the French Red Cross in the Paris Region.
From the onset of the epidemic, volunteers shared a heightened perceived need to intervene in a historical crisis. They, however, also faced constraints to their involvement, predominantly linked to uncertain viral risk, familial and social obligations, gender expectations and financial pressures. Most volunteers produced coping strategies that allowed them to continue their involvement through family negotiations, reinvention of their practice through distance involvement, shutting down to the information ecosystem.
For volunteers, the specify of the Covid-19 epidemic eventually lied in its socio-temporal scope: unlike most natural disasters, terrorists’ attacks or other man-made crises they had been prepared to address, the Covid-19 epidemic unrolled for years and snapped them into the crisis itself. As a result, the nature of volunteering is evolving within the French Red Cross as volunteers are increasingly included in the institutional care efforts traditionally targeting beneficiaries.

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