Drawing from data collected for the Australian Youth Barometer, this discussion paper examines the different ways young people understand volunteering, and how their understandings and activities differ from mainstream definitions of volunteering. By highlighting these distinctions, the paper offers valuable insights for volunteer organisations on how to best engage with them.

Download the report: Anxiety, wellbeing and engaging young people in volunteering.

Key findings showed that:

• Young people see volunteering as part of a broader understanding of social participation, which includes many forms of unpaid community, social, or political engagement across a variety of forms and mediums.
• Young people who experience higher political anxiety may be more motivated to volunteer. Constant exposure to political events can bring about negative emotional reactions associated with worsening wellbeing, but greater motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) to change the causes of these negative emotions.
• Political anxiety is associated negatively with mental health. Whereas volunteering is positively associated with mental health and higher life satisfaction.
• Young people understand volunteering as having many benefits, but face a range of potential barriers to their participation including: lack of support; lack of time or money; bureaucratic obstacles; and feeling that young people were not taken seriously.

Volunteering organisations have noted that it can be difficult to engage young people in volunteering. Our research suggests that young people want to give back to society and are seeking meaningful ways to make a difference. To connect young people who want to volunteer with the organisations that need them, we must recognise how young people understand and participate in volunteering, and the barriers that prevent them from participating as much as they would like.