NEW SOCIAL PATHWAYS: VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY IN TUSCANY

The contribution carried out by the research group of the Department of Political ,Social and Cognitive sciences of the University of Siena and funded by Cesvot (Centro Servizi per il Volontariato in Toscana), aims at identifying the structural and organizational characteristics of Tuscan organizations working in the international arena; the values, culture and social missions of these organizations; the human, material and symbolic resources available to them; and the rules governing the actions of people both when they are working within the organizations and towards the outside world. In particular the research attempts to identify the pathways, the types of activities carried out, and the number and quality of the networks which have been set up, highlighting whether and how these activities fit into the complex system of decentralized regional cooperation.