What do organisers get in return from youth in the aid process?
Cultures around the world share a similar proverb: “Even a king borrowed a needle”, that is to say that at some point, everyone needs help, although there are always those who need it more than others. In the helping system, there are two sides. Sugden (1986) defines ‘potential donors’ those who provide help and ‘potential recipients of aid’ those who receive a help. In our case study, the organisers at Burn and Quindo provide help to a wide range of young people including vulnerable immigrants and other people with more challenging needs. Burn and Quindo are potential donors institutions and the young people who make up the participants are therefore the potential recipients of aid. Both entities constitute an important pillar in the aid process. According to Trivers (1971), the aid process results to evolution of cooperative behaviour in human society. This cooperative behaviour according to Trivers (1971) is the reciprocal aid given in repeated interactions between two partners. The interaction in our case study is not between organisations and participants but between the latter and the organisers.
Reciprocity in the field
In our project, the organisers of these organisations either hired as full time employers or interns. These organisers provide leisure activities to young people who are regarded as recipients of ‘aid’. The aim of these activities is to help participants to be able to communicate, to connect, to discover life in Flanders and to feel at home there. However, the question stands, what do these organisers get in return?
During one interview with one of our side actors, Bruno articulated, “it is a sort of therapy”. When he and youth are in the summer camps and the youth are telling their stories, Bruno noted how he is always caught with sympathetic emotions and asks himself what he could to help these ‘kids’. Bruno feels that these young people are full of traumas. Subsequently, he takes them to play football so that they can enjoy and forget their problems for awhile. By playing football with them, he himself feels relieved from his own personal problems that he considers minor comparing to what these youth have endured. Similar ideas are reflected amongst our central organisers. For Tevin, looking at youth rapping, he feels that they have potential and that they are progressing. He gets the sense that he is helping them to develop their skills, which gives him satisfaction. Laura on her side, declares that she feels reciprocity from the pleasure she get out of teaching hip hop to young people. She goes on to say, “It is a goal for me that youngsters feel good about themselves and that they feel like they can express themselves in a protected way”.
Reciprocity as motivation
The above statements can be taken as a key motivation behind the organisers’ help and work with youth. That motivation is the feeling they get in return for helping, triggered by the results or reactions of the youngsters. Reciprocity according to these organisers is the pure response they get from the participants when they are helped. This is a kind of indirect reciprocity rather than direct. Trivers (1971) gave a simple illustration of this using the saying, ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’ to define direct reciprocity. This is to say that in direct reciprocity, the recipient of a helpful action is expected to help on another occasion the potential help donor. The same author adapted the saying to say, ‘You scratch my back, and someone will scratch yours’, to explain the idea of indirect reciprocity. In this reciprocal system, persons who help do not expect help in return from the recipients but rather, that the action done would be returned by someone else.
However, what is interesting in our case study amongst our central actors is the element of indirect reciprocity. What kind of return do the organisers expect from participants when they provide their help? Trivers (1971) would answer this question as follows, “What organisers get in return from youth is the social investment”. By social investment, we understand that the aid process in not only between two groups but spread into society. A recipient of aid will invest his/her time, knowledge in helping other youth or anyone in need in society.
Alexander (1979, 1987) defines indirect reciprocity as an important form of cooperation in complex human societies. If the potential recipients fail to invest socially by devoting their time, sharing their stories and showing their success, there wouldn’t be a cooperation and the whole system would collapse. Moreover, there exist two concepts that determine needs or expectations of potential donors from indirect reciprocity. These concepts are ‘image scoring’ and ‘good standing’ both named indirect reciprocal mechanisms by Alexander (1979, 1987). Both image scoring and good standing are forms of altruism, gaining reputation or self-feeling as important in the society in which ones belongs. According to Nowak and Sigmund (1998a), image scoring is increased when someone helps and decreased when this latter fails to provide help.
If we consider the academic backgrounds of different organisers we can conclude that the reciprocal feeling they get from helping is the result of their efforts. The majority of them studied social sciences and they have strived to help in some way since a younger age. They are happy when they make others happy and they believe that the recipients of their help, will in turn, help others.
Indirect reciprocity in the field
In the case of indirect reciprocity in our fieldwork, we also noticed the sense of reputation gaining on behalf of the organisers as mentioned above. Darwin (1872) contrasted in his work ‘In the Descent of Man’ the social man and social animals. He wrote that in contrast to other social animals such as bees or ants, man’s ‘motive to give aid no longer consists solely of a blind instinctive impulse, but is largely influenced by the praise and blame of his fellow men’. None of our organisers is working under shadow. Apart from the salary they touch, that we can assume is also a motivating factor to their work, their reputation and social standing in society is also improved through the work they do. Broos from Quindo recalls being called by a parent of one of their participants for a help. Her young boy had struggles from school and did not want to go back anymore, “(...) help me, I will pay you”, his parent implored. It is evident that the parent believes in Quindo’s organisers and their capacity to effectively help participants to overcome some of issues that cause them to feel discriminated or unable to achieve important things in their life.
In brief, organisers help without any palpable direct expectations from youth. They even have different understandings around the word reciprocity. What they have in common is the feeling of satisfaction when they notice the positive impact of their help to the youth. Taking into consideration different literature however, we have discovered that in the aid process, the potential donors, albeit expecting nothing in return from their help, indirectly gain something. That thing as proved by different scholars is an indirect reciprocity arised from the aid process.
By analysing interviews we had with organisers, as well as the multiple observations made at their workplaces, there are some clear elements of indirect reciprocity behind the motivations for working where they do.