RAYA is launching a new long-term project to systematically evaluate the impact of humanitarian volunteer work in Ukraine. 

Although this pilot project will focus on Ukraine, analytical results of the study may be used to guide volunteer utilization channels and increase the impact of volunteer efforts when other humanitarian crises occur in similar contexts in the future.  In addition, the analytical framework developed in this study may eventually be replicated (with appropriate adaptations) to understand the dynamics of volunteer activities in other contexts worldwide. 

The first step in this pilot project will be to curate a database of humanitarian volunteers. Basic demographic and contact information will be collected from as many volunteers as possible. Ideally the database will include every non-Ukrainian who has done any voluntary humanitarian aid work for the well-being of Ukrainian civilians, either in Ukraine or abroad.

RAYA will begin compiling the database by reaching out to potential volunteers through various social media channels, based on profile information obtained by “scraping” through public social media posts.  RAYA will also advertise and promote the project to the public and encourage members of the public to register into the database themselves and/or refer people they know, as appropriate. Each person identified, either through the social media “scraping” process or through conventional “push” advertising or “word-of-mouth”, will be invited to self-register into the database.  As a gratuity for self-registering, each registrant will be given access to the database and various dashboards that RAYA may create based on the database content. 

In addition to gathering basic demographic information, detailed information about how each member was introduced into the database will also be recorded.  This information may be very important for conducting statistical analysis of potential biasing factors at later stages in the project. 

The second step in the project will be to conduct various polling studies of the database population, or subgroups of the population, to obtain more detailed and interesting information for further study, with a view to ultimately understanding the fundamental questions of what motivates various demographic groups to engage in voluntary service, what external factors tend to facilitate or retard participation and what factors affect the degree of commitment. Answering these three questions should be understood as the objective of the second step. Specific polling questions will generally be designed to contribute to indirectly elucidating answers to these three underlying motivating questions.  For example, level of commitment may be evaluated by inquiring how many  hours per week a volunteer works, and for how many weeks, as well as how much money and other resources they have personally contributed and so forth.  Members may also be invited to submit free-text responses to open-ended questions, or even opinion letters or creative prose responsive to various loosely framed topics. Psychometric analysis techniques will also be used as applicable.

The third step will be to analyze the socio-economic costs and benefits of voluntary humanitarian work. The ultimate objective here will be to figure out the most effective modes and channels of volunteer activity.

The fourth and final step will be to use the insights gained in steps two and three to formulate strategies, programs and policy recommendations that will efficiently and effectively optimize voluntary humanitarian aid activity in similar contexts in the future.