Full Circle Associates

Jayne Cravens has posted a good piece on the Myths About Online Volunteering / Myths About Virtual Volunteering. There has been an equally interesting thread on the Online Facilitation list after Jayne asked for some feedback. First a bit on the article. Here is the intro to Jayne's piece:

Online volunteering means unpaid service that is given via the Internet. It's a method of volunteering I have been using, studying, documenting or promoting since 1995, first independently, then with the Virtual Volunteering Project, and then with the UN's Online Volunteering service. It's also known as virtual volunteering, online mentoring, ementoring, evolunteering, cyber volunteering, cyber service, telementoring, and on and on.

Now, 10 years on, I'm stunned at how many myths are still out there about the concept. Here is a list of 11 of the most common myths, and my attempt to counter them.

The myths include things like: Online volunteering is great for people who don't have time to volunteer, People who volunteer online don't volunteer face-to-face, and The Internet Is Dangerous and, therefore, online volunteering opens an organization and its clients up to many risks. Jayne makes some great points.

On the list, Christopher Lange asked about why these myths got started; what was the kernal in each of them. Jayne suggested it was fear. The conversation is evolving from there to explore why some of these myths have lived on so strongly, and related issues, like who is (or should be) paying attention to these issues.

For me, at a meta level, it has been great to see the blog post get air on the list and then here I am, blogging it. We, as a community interested in online interaction, are weaving across media, using each other as sounding boards and advancing our practice.

Pretty cool.

online_facilitation, online_volunteering, CoP, Jayne_Cravens