However, the first official Volunteer Bureau was established in Minneapolis, MN in 1919. Nowadays, Volunteer Centers feel themselves obliged to deliver resolutions to collective community problems. "The vision of the Volunteer Center National Network is to strengthen the nation by igniting volunteering and social action through Volunteer Centers in local communities. Reaching 170 million people in thousands of cities, this Network connects nearly 2.5 million people with over half a million opportunities to serve annually".
How volunteering began can be simply put this way: before 19th century few formal charitable centers were embodied to reach out to the poor. Back in the time the rich didn’t seem to have sympathy towards those in need. But this situation underwent an enormous alteration after The Great Awakening of the 1980's, which gave rise to the spirit of collective community work and voluntary works. This era is in fact a period of religious revival which led students "to community work through various religious groups".( Points of Light Organization, 2005). "As a part of The Great Awakening, people became more conscious of the disadvantaged." (Bennet, 2009)
Later in early 20th century America witnessed the foundation of several volunteer organizations including the Rotary Club, Kiwanis, and Lions Club among others. The next wave of volunteerism rose with The Great Depression when people gathered to mold the first coast to coast efforts for a specific need. "During World War II, thousands of volunteer offices supervised the volunteers who helped with the many needs of the military and the home front, including collecting supplies, entertaining soldiers on leave, and caring for the injured". (Bennet, 2009)
Volunteerism became more formalized after President Lyndon B. Johnson's declaration of "War On Poverty" when new organizations started shaping day in and day out. Over time, on the whole, post war voluntary works went through a transformation for Americans in the way it changed its focus to overseas.
Today voluntary works exist more than before while they have found their way to every aspect of human life such as religion, health, social services, arts, sports, politics and of course education.
This act surely is not allocated to only American society and communities. Iran has a proud history of volunteering as well, the most popular incidents of which happened during the Islamic Revolution when people from different age groups started the Islamic Mobilization. Or voluntary works of women behind the fronts during The Imposed War are worth mentioning too. There are still other voluntary institutions working and helping in Iran nowadays. Also, a lot of good-willing individuals have contributions to specific saving accounts that finally are spent on dowries addressed to the poor families; all these processes are supervised, conducted and accompanied by volunteer communities.
References:
http://archive.pointsoflight.org/downloads/doc/centers/resources/HistoryRevised22206.doc
http://www.ehow.com/about_5371469_history-volunteer-work.html
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