Collaborative Research: Health volunteers in rural Ethiopia: Discourses and experiences of status, motivation, and wellbeing

俄勒冈州立大学的Kenneth Maes博士将与明德学院的Svea Closser博士合作进行一项研究，以进一步了解志愿活动对个人心理社会健康的影响。许多贫穷国家在国际资助的卫生发展项目中严重依赖无酬和低薪劳动力。低水平、低报酬的工作通常被认为是剥削性的和令人泄气的，但卫生发展项目规划者经常声称，这一部门的低水平就业和志愿服务有助于工人的心理健康和社会地位。尽管在西方背景下进行的研究为利他行为（包括志愿服务）、社会地位和心理健康之间的联系提供了支持，但这些联系尚未在非西方低收入背景下得到严格检验。这项研究将在一个这样的背景下测试这些联系：埃塞俄比亚。采用访谈、文献分析、参与观察和调查等社会科学方法，本研究将解决三个主要问题：(1)埃塞俄比亚低层次工人通过为健康发展项目提供劳动力寻求哪些物质和非物质利益？(2)贫穷、地位低下的工人获得社会尊重和精神或精神满足的程度和方式是什么？(3)从国际捐助组织、项目执行者、地方政府官员和工人自己的不同角度来看，低水平工人获得这些利益的假设如何证明无薪和低薪就业的形式是合理的？为了回答这些问题，该项目将把重点放在埃塞俄比亚的一个农村卫生发展项目上，该项目旨在改善孕产妇和新生儿的存活率，并将世界上最富有的捐赠组织之一与埃塞俄比亚卫生部和埃塞俄比亚社区卫生工作者联系起来。因此，该项目将在连接国际、国家和地方行动者的全球健康发展经济中审查劳工政策以及工人的经验和福祉。这项研究潜在的更广泛的影响是相当大的，包括加强与埃塞俄比亚学者的合作，为陪同pi到实地的美国本科生提供研究经验，并为利用志愿劳动的组织的政策制定者和官员提供信息。该项目得到了文化人类学项目和国际科学与工程办公室全球创业基金的支持。

Dr. Kenneth Maes of Oregon State University, in collaboration with Dr. Svea Closser of Middlebury College, will undertake research to advance understanding of the effects of volunteering on individuals' psycho-social well-being. Many poor countries rely heavily on unpaid and low-paid labor for internationally funded health-development projects. Low-level, underpaid work is often thought to be exploitative and demoralizing, but health-development project planners often claim that low-level employment and volunteerism in this sector bolster workers' psychological well-being and social status. Although studies conducted in western contexts provide support for links among altruistic behavior (including volunteering), social status, and mental well-being, these links have not been rigorously examined in non-western, low-income contexts. This research will test these links in one such context: Ethiopia.Using social science methods such as interviews, document analysis, participant observation, and survey methods, this study will address three main questions: (1) What material and immaterial benefits do low-level workers in Ethiopia seek through providing their labor to health-development projects? (2) To what extent and in what ways do social respect and mental or spiritual satisfaction accrue to poor, low-status workers? (3) How do assumptions that low-level workers gain such benefits function to justify forms of unpaid and low-paid employment, from the varied perspectives of international donor organizations and project implementers, local government officials, and workers themselves? To answer these questions, the project will focus on a rural health-development project in Ethiopia that aims to improve maternal and newborn survival, and that connects one of the wealthiest donor organizations in the world with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and Ethiopian community health workers. The project will thus examine labor policies and the experiences and well-being of workers within a global health-development economy that links international, national, and local actors.The potential broader impacts of this research are quite substantial and include strengthening collaborations with Ethiopian scholars, providing research experiences to U.S. undergraduates, who will accompany the PIs to the field, and providing information to policymakers and officials in organizations that utilize volunteer labor. This project was supported by the Cultural Anthropology Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering's Global Venture Fund.