In the master's thesis, we deal with the impact of voluntary organizations on the local community in The Gambia. Voluntary organizations play an important role in supporting the public school system in primary school education. The problem of poverty faced by the state poses a major problem in providing adequate infrastructure and facilities, so a few percent of children in The Gambia, despite the fact that schooling is compulsory, still do not go to school. The importance of research for the discipline of sociology and pedagogy is to shed light on the issue of volunteering in the field of education, as educational work with children requires appropriate training of volunteers, and lack of knowledge can also negatively affect the local community. The purpose of the research is to check how volunteers experience their volunteer work and whether, in their opinion, they have contributed to the benefit of the local community through their work. In the research, the first research question asks whether and how and in which areas volunteers are trained to volunteer. Before volunteering, due to the different prior knowledge of volunteers, it is necessary to carry out training, which must be carried out with quality. Despite the fact that the training is carried out, the learning of volunteers takes place most intensively in everyday situations, which we call situational learning. In the second research question, we ask what was the relationship between volunteering and leisure on a summer trip to The Gambia in 2018. We found that volunteering prevailed over leisure in time and purpose. In the third research question, we were interested in what are the general motives for volunteering and what are the motives in the field of education. We found that the motivation of volunteers is primarily related to the desire to volunteer, followed by a good opportunity to volunteer and a desire to learn about a new culture. In the foreground are motifs related to volunteering, and in the background we also find voluntaristic motifs. In the fourth research question, we find out to whom, in the opinion of volunteers, volunteering contributed the most, to the volunteers, the organization or the local community. According to the participants in the research, the local community has benefited the most, both in terms of education and financially, as volunteers bring new ways of teaching, new knowledge and technologies, while also helping the local population financially. In the fifth research question, we were interested in which, according to the volunteers, were the positive and negative impacts of volunteering for the local community in The Gambia. As positive impacts, the participants of the research pointed out the bringing of new knowledge and awareness of the problems, helping themselves and others, financial assistance and learning about new culture. However, the negative impacts associated with volunteering are: changing the way of life of local communities and the difficulty of building trust in volunteers.
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