Category: Research

Rising to the Challenge: Volunteering and the Sustainable Development Goals

Posted On By Camille Demers

NVW 2019 Blog Series: Part 2 On this second day of National Volunteer Week (NVW), let us celebrate volunteers and organisations that lift communities by contributing to reaching the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs)! That’s the volunteer factor! In 2015, the United Nations adopted the SDGs to mobilize global efforts to improve social, economic, and environmental conditions around the world by 2030. Volunteer Canada is committed to focusing on the strong link between Canadian society’s more pressing challenges and the efforts made by volunteers to reach the SDGs. How is each volunteer act built into the SDGs? Find out exclusively […]

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Category: Research

Valuing Volunteering – An Economist’s Perspective

Posted On By Pedro Antunes

The Conference Board of Canada is in the business of forecasting the economy. We produce detailed forecasts of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employment, income, consumption and more of Canada and its regions. These forecasts are used by businesses and governments for planning or comparison to their own forecasts. So as an economist, my work tends to be all about measurable economic activity—all in dollars and cents, or rather, in millions and billions of dollars. This focus on output, income and other measures sometimes gives economists a bad rap—we get criticized for excluding from our analysis what is not measured in […]

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Category: Research

Volunteering and Healthy Aging

Posted On By Volunteer Canada

Volunteering is a rewarding activity for older adults. It enhances wellbeing and contributes to an active lifestyle. Research shows that there are significant health benefits to be gained from volunteering. These benefits include enhanced physical, psychological and cognitive health. Physical Health Benefits Research has consistently found that physical health benefits are associated with volunteering. These findings indicate that volunteers report better physical health when compared to non-volunteers. This may or may not coincide with actual differences in reported health conditions. For example, Lum and Lightfoot (2005) found that while volunteering did not impact the number of health conditions diagnosed by physicians in the sample of individuals age 70 plus, it […]

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