Functional Motive Involvement Of Community Service Volunteers: Unishams Case Study

Abstract

Why are a lot of people involved in volunteer activities without any specified payment or reward? The motivation behind this human behaviour which involve themselves in volunteer activities is the six personal and social functions which are stated by the Functional Theory (Snyder, M., 2000). The Community Service Module which makes undergraduates to perform compulsory community activities is considered challenging, whether they perform the activity voluntarily or only to complete the required compulsory course of the university. An overview study was conducted to 85 students enrolled in several field of education which registered for the Community Service course in order to identify the students’ involvement motive in volunteerism activity. This study also observes the volunteerism motive based on gender, soft skills after participated in a volunteerism programme as well as identifies the relationship between volunteerism motive with soft skills. Both descriptive and inference methods (t-test and Pearson correlation) were used to analyse the obtained data. The results of the study found that Value is the dominant involvement motive in volunteerism activity and there is no difference in motive based on gender. This study also found that after students participated in volunteerism activity, the students gain soft skills application through good relationship and interaction, besides learning to work effectively. Next, the Pearson correlation analysis show that there is a high relationship (r = .727) between volunteerism involvement motive with the soft skills gained among the students. In reality, the Community Service course is required as one of the compulsory modules of the University and placing the graduates produced by UniSHAMS to be on a different level when they have added value as well as having the opportunity to assist and contribute on a larger scale at the national and international level.