Why volunteers in a welfare state?
Denmark is a so-called welfare state. We live in the economically privileged part of the world. We are known for taking care of people “from cradle to grave”. We expect paid professionals to take care of our health and social problems. This means that we have a large staff of public servants. With this in mind it is unusual for Denmark that it was a political decision to financially support a private organisation to establish and run an AIDS hot-line with volunteers as counsellors. LBL (The National Gay Organisation) was granted money to give information about AIDS to the general public by means of an AIDS hot-line. This project has been very successful and so far we have had about 60.000 calls. We have a budget that has made it possible to hire 5 1/2 staff members to support the 45 volunteers, administrate, educate and make publicity about safe sex etc.. The paid staff could actually almost cover the 14 hours of counselling we are doing every day. Yet we have chosen to use volunteers
