노인 자원봉사활동의 활성화 방안

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Volunteer programs offer an excellent opportunity for senior citizens to actively involve in productive aging and integrated life in the later days of their lives. Lately, there are increasing interests in volunteer programs in Korea but shows little pariticipation among senior citizens. Older persons in Seoul are not exception. A total of 892 persons, 65 and older, were interviewed in Seoul in order to identify their interests in, satisfaction with, and problems of volunteering and volunteer programs. Only a small number of respondents(9.5%) identified themselves, as active(1.6%) or inactive/drop-out volunteers(7.5%), and the majority of them(91.5%) did not have any experience of volunteer activities. Sociodemographic characteristics of those who are experienced of volunteer activities were more females (58.0%) than males(42.0%), age group of 65∼69 (37.60 rather than 70∼74 (30.5%), more primary school graduates (31.9%) than college educated (6.1%), more widowed or single (56.0%) rather than married (44.0%), and more middle class (70.0%) rather than low income (27.4%) or upper class elders (2.6%). Male volunteers were more engaged in traffic control service (38.5%) and environmental protection activities (15.4%), while more female volunteers (27.5%) involved in friendly visiting service for the poor and sick. There were several reasons why the respondents did not participate in volunteer programs. First of all, a large number of respondents have poor health and are not financially secured which hinder them from volunteering. Lack of information and education on senior volunteer programs, together with poor supervision and incentives, are also discouraging factors. Many respondents understood the voluntary work, not as a productive and meaningful activitry, but as a sacrificial behavior of giving their time and money for free of charge. There is also a lack of organized system of program development and management, and insufficient support of government for older volunteer programs. In order to activate the older volunteer programs in Seoul Metropolitan City several suggestions are made as follows: 1) Income maintenance and medical services are needed for older persons to stablize and support their activities of daily living so that they can participate in volunteer programs. 2) Need to cultivate attractive volunteer programs appropriate for senior citizens` health, interests, knowledge, and experience. 3) Improve the information and referral services for older volunteer programs and attract senior citizens of Seoul in various voluntary activities and prevent them from drop-out. 4) Establish older volunteer center in each Gu-office of Seoul to organize volunteer programs and provide the systematic management with professionally trained staff. 5) Secure the financial support. both from government and non-government agencies, to expand the older volunteer programs with volunteer insurance, volunteer activitity credit system, and other volunteer incentive programs. 6) `Volunteer Promotion Act` is needed to activate older volunteer programs and build the welfare society for all ages in Seoul and Korea, now and for the new millenium years.