Equal Opportunities and Social Inclusion through Volunteering in sport events

Considering the well-researched and significant personal benefits of participation in volunteering activities, the important point is to make sure that full and equal access to volunteering experiences and the support that each person needs to make volunteering a good and valuable experience is provided for everyone. Meanwhile, researches indicate volunteers from minority groups experience considerable personal, organizational, environmental, and structural barriers in their volunteering activities. The research aims to investigate the volunteer managers perspective on recruiting and task assignment to volunteers from minority groups in sport events.In order to achieve the research goals, semi-structured interviews conducted with ۱۹ event organizers, volunteer managers and experts with experience of being volunteer and also working with volunteers in sport events and they were asked how they will inclusively recruit volunteers and assign tasks to volunteers considering their diversity.The results showed that all volunteer managers claim to welcome a wide variety of volunteers with open arms and select event’s volunteers according to their abilities and interests. Although, their priorities in assigning task seems to be influenced by unconscious biases, stereotypes and assumptions; they tend to recruit volunteers who are known to them well enough and the manager is confident in their ability to do their tasks; which leads to less critical roles for volunteers from minority groups.Sport volunteering needs to be inclusive, equitable and accessible and reflect the diversity in society. To support the aim of being an inclusive sport event, volunteer managers should encourage and enable participation of all people willing to volunteer is the event and keep them motivated during their experience, and organizations need to provide a supportive and psychologically safe environment with properly educated managers, staff and volunteers to promote a culture of inclusion in the event. The very important result of the research is that volunteer managers mostly believed volunteers backgrounds has not been a factor in their volunteer management and seems they are not aware of their potential preferences and biases; this fact emphasizes on the importance of self-awareness and overcoming intellectual prejudices in working with volunteers in sport events.

کلیدواژه ها:

Inclusion ، Minority groups ، Sport volunteering ، Task assignment ، Unconscious biases