Analysis of Volunteers’ Life Strategies in the Field of Animal Protection on the Example of Individual and Institutionalized Zoo-volunteering in Saint-Petersburg

Keywords: volunteering, charity, life strategies, values, animal protection movement, animal volunteering, environmental volunteering, pet charities, homeless animals, animal shelters. Annotation: The research objective is to study animal volunteer life strategies and to analyze the way these life strategies are built based on the example of individual and institutionalized volunteering. The research categorizes volunteering by subject: individual volunteering, group volunteering, and institutionalized volunteering. In the research, the participation in the animal volunteering programs is considered from the point of perceiving volunteering as a form of an active social position manifestation. Volunteering in the field of animal protection is considered environmental volunteering. Life strategy is considered to be an individual system of ideas concerning behavior patterns that appear based on personal and social values. The research is conducted as a part of a qualitative methodology. The analysis is conducted with the usage of the open coding method. For the study, a method of semi-structured in-depth interview is chosen. In total, during the research work, 20 interviews are collected: 10 interviews with volunteers working in animal shelters in St. Petersburg and 10 interviews with animal protection activists conducting their activities on their own. The research results are the following: the life strategies of individual and institutionalized volunteering are formed similarly even though volunteer activities based on shelters differ from individual volunteer activities by various limitations of organization processes, as well as practices, some difficulties in their work, etc. During the research of the life strategies construction, it was necessary to analyze the past and present experience of the volunteers, their values, and plans for the future. The analysis reveals that these aspects do not have strong distinctive features when volunteering programs are conducted in and beyond animal shelters.