National Regulation Needed to Facilitate China's Volunteer Efforts

China is set to better regulate and provide services to its rising number of volunteers as it prepares to establish a national volunteers' association.
While applauding the move, some insiders say there is still a lot to do both to improve volunteers' service quality and protect their personal rights.

Wu Jia has the details.

Various kinds of volunteer groups have sprung up in China along with the overall advancement of the society. It's estimated that the country has more than 400,000 volunteer organizations serving at the community level.

However, the country seems not well prepared to regulate the increasing volunteer activities.

Xu Meng is in charge of the "Sunshine Volunteers", a group delivering educational assistance on weekends. She says it's difficult to protect the volunteers' personal rights as no national regulation is available.

"If something unexpected, such as a traffic accident, happens to our volunteers, they don't know which organization or individual they should turn to for compensation. As a result, they themselves take all the responsibilities."

Liang Feng, a lawyer providing legal consultation to volunteers' groups, says it's time for China to draft a national law to address the emerging problems.

"There is not a state law regulating and facilitating volunteers and their services. For example, should volunteers get some subsidy for their services? How to differentiate the subsidy from payment? What kind of organizations can enroll volunteers and provide volunteer services? All these questions should be answered by a national law."

China is preparing to set up a national volunteers' association as a first step to better regulate volunteer activities. Set to be launched in March, the national association will unite the existent volunteering groups and help promote coordination among them. It also aims to establish a database of the country's volunteers and push for a national law to guide the volunteer efforts.

Liang Feng, the lawyer, applauds the move.

"The national association of volunteers should first protect the rights of volunteers. Then it should standardize and improve the quality of various volunteer services."

The lawyer stresses that volunteer organizations should provide adequate and professional training for their members before delivering specific services.

About 50 million Chinese people take part in some form of voluntary work each year. Among them, about 30 million registered are young volunteers, forming the backbone of the country's volunteer services.

For CRI, I'm Wu Jia.