Volunteering and Active Aging in Italy

My work explores the opportunities that ageing actively offers at the individual and collective levels, focusing my analysis on older adults (aged 65– 74) engaged in voluntary activities in third-sector organizations. To outline the social role played by elder volunteers in Italy, I performed synthetic indexes and a cluster analysis (with SPAD software) on a stratified randomized sample, representative of the Italian active older adults aged 65–74 years (N=146) engaged in pro-social activities in third-sector organizations. The analyses show that in providing aid to others these active elders establish a strong support network for themselves. I have also found that Italian third-sector organizations are intergenerational in terms of co-existence of young, adult, and elderly volunteers, which contributes to the well-being of all the stakeholders involved. Coming together on a regular basis stimulates the activation of behavioral, material, interpersonal, and communicative resources. Volunteering in later life is associated with reinforcement of self-fulfillment and formation of one’s social identity. Furthermore, thick networks of social relations at the micro and meso (i.e .,community) levels facilitate older people’s inclusion in voluntary work.