Where have all the Generation X volunteers gone?

VSO (it was known as Voluntary Services Overseas) has a problem, or so it thinks it has. The average age of VSO volunteers is now 40, rising from 38 last year, and 33 in 1990.

The agency has reported a dramatic decrease in the number of professionals under 50 volunteering.

In the past five years the number of over 50s volunteering with VSO has more than doubled, from 21% in 2000, to 52% today. Yet the number of professionals volunteering overseas in their late 20s, 30s and 40s is steadily declining.

What the article doesn’t make clear is if the ‘problem’ is because more over-50s are volunteering or less of their children have the volunteering spirit. VSO was one of those things that most students in the 1960s considered, did nothing about, and now (having paid the mortgage and ditched the kids) fancy doing.

It should be no surprise to VSO that this is happening. It is worth noting that the over-50s are the fastest growing sector of the volunteering holiday market. Dick Stroud