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HALOAH: making the value of volunteering visible
The impact of volunteer activities: turning perceived wellbeing into measurable evidence.
HALOAH was born from a desire to understand and quantify the benefits of volunteering, connecting lived experience with scientific knowledge. It is an initiative open to collaboration, aiming to recognise the work of volunteers and to involve society and the business world.
The idea for HALOAH grew out of conversations between three volunteers with Cycling Without Age (En Bici Sense Edat) in Sant Just Desvern, an initiative run by Sant Just Solidari. Rides and shared moments in a setting filled with help, wellbeing and kindness gave rise to a question: how can we explain, beyond our own impressions, the value this experience creates? Smiles, conversations and bonds are valuable in themselves. Studying what changes in people and in their surroundings will help us better understand the reach of these actions and share it more powerfully.
HALOAH sets out to bring volunteering closer to scientific research, drawing on published studies and on collaboration with professionals to define methods that are simple, rigorous and respectful of people. The aim: to translate qualitative experiences — such as feeling accompanied, regaining enthusiasm or sensing greater wellbeing — into indicators that make it possible to observe and quantify potential change. Listening to participants, gathering the perspectives of family members, carers and volunteers, and using measures suited to each activity can help identify which benefits occur, for whom and under what conditions.
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The HALOAH spirit. A meeting point open to social, scientific, medical and psychological initiatives, and to organisations, professionals and companies that want to contribute. Born from a local experience, it aspires to generate knowledge that is useful for every form of volunteering. Its purpose: to recognise the work of the people who give their time and commitment, to help organisations improve what they do, and to offer well-founded arguments that encourage civic participation and corporate involvement. Making this value visible will help bring efforts together and sustain the initiatives that care for people.