Spend Time, not Money: Social Effects of Non-Commercial Projects (on the Example HandMade Charity Activity)

Abstract This graduated thesis addresses the paradoxical phenomenon in a modern society - the articulation of society's request for community - the issues of citizens enhancing to mobilize their collective opportunities in the context of social disunion and current dynamic processes of social transformations. The activities of non-profit social projects, thus, considered as a collective request to citizens that lay in it its significant preferences and expectations that shape volunteering activity to draw down the changes in the life of the project participants, as well as in society as a whole. The study attempts to examine the phenomenon of self-organization of citizens, based on the practical experience of Muscovites involved in volunteering non-profit project Handmade Charity, and analyze how such an activity creates an infrastructure that satisfies the needs of society in the сommunity. As an empirical basis of this study are the 15 semi-structured in-depth interviews with participants of the project and people involved in other social and volunteering activity and the data obtained during the participant observation. Thus, summing all results of the study, it can be affirmed that participation in the project is mediated by a complex motivational structure of volunteers. Moreover, the project's activity transforms understanding of volunteering as a work in volunteering as a leisure; it also produces a variety of social effects and contributes to solving a concrete social problem - the stigmatization of people with disabilities. The analysis of the data has found that the activity of the project contributes to the development of horizontal ties and citizens self-organization, engages in socially responsible activities different social actors and creates local social inclusive environment, all that can be considered as integrating and consolidating the potential of the project.