28.12.2010
Charity in Ukrainian / Issue №1: Help in the New Year holidays!
- Rating Group is launching a new project titled “Charity in the Ukrainian Way”, which will include a series of editions devoted to the topic of charity in Ukraine, public attitudes toward it, and the possibilities for engagement in this field both by professional organizations and by ordinary people. The project is funded by the company’s own resources. Today we present Issue No. 1, “Helping during the New Year holidays”, and we sincerely hope that the information presented will inspire readers to take action.
- According to a survey conducted by Rating Group in December 2010, more than one quarter of respondents (27%) said they would like to engage in charitable activity during the New Year holidays, while another 20% had not yet thought about it. At the same time, almost half of respondents (47%) said they did not have such a desire, and 6% were undecided. The highest share of those willing to be charitable during the holidays was recorded in Western Ukraine (41%), the Center (35%), and the South (29%), while the lowest was in the North (20%) and in Donbas (15%).
- Women expressed slightly more willingness to engage in charity than men, as did rural residents compared to urban residents. Married and unmarried respondents were more willing than divorced or widowed people. More educated respondents were more inclined toward charity than those with lower levels of education. A clear relationship with financial status was also observed: the better the financial situation of respondents, the more likely they were to express a willingness to be charitable during the New Year holidays.
- By occupational and social status, the strongest willingness to engage in charity was found among managers, professionals, entrepreneurs, and clerical workers. The lowest willingness was recorded among manual workers, pensioners, homemakers, and the unemployed. Students most often said they had not yet thought about the issue.
- Respondents who were willing to engage in charity during the New Year holidays, or who had not yet decided, were asked to indicate the obstacles that might prevent them from doing so. Only 16% of them said they saw no obstacles. The remaining nearly 80% named various barriers: 59% cited their own financial limitations, 10% a lack of information about who needs help, 5% a lack of information on how to provide help, and 3% said they might not have enough time.
- As a result, it can be assumed that of the 27% of respondents who expressed a willingness to engage in charity during the holidays, only about one in five will actually do so. This means that in practice only about 5–6% of Ukrainian citizens are likely to take part in charitable activities during the New Year period. Among the 41% of Western residents and 35% of Central residents who expressed a willingness to help, only 16% and 11% respectively see no obstacles to doing so. In the Center, the main obstacle is a lack of information about who needs help and how to provide it, while in the West the main barrier is financial capacity, since people there generally know how and where to provide assistance.
- When recalculated for the entire population, real charitable activity during the New Year holidays is expected from only 7% of residents in the South, 7% in the West, 4% in the Center, 4% in the North, 3% in the East, and 2% in Donbas. Lack of information about who needs help is the greatest barrier for respondents whose financial situation allows them to save a lot, while less affluent respondents mentioned this factor much less often.
- Only 16% of respondents believe that responsibility for ensuring that those in need receive charitable assistance during the New Year holidays lies with “every citizen, including myself”. At the same time, 28% placed this responsibility on domestic charitable organizations and foundations, another 28% on government institutions, 17% on wealthy individuals, 4% on international organizations and foundations, and 3% on political parties. Notably, those who had no desire to engage in charity during the New Year holidays were the most likely to place responsibility on the wealthy and on the state. By contrast, the highest sense of personal responsibility was expressed by respondents who wanted to be charitable and saw no obstacles to doing so. The highest level of awareness of personal responsibility for charity was found in the South, primarily among middle-aged people with vocational education and average incomes.
- Responsibility for ensuring that people in need receive charitable assistance during the holidays is most often assigned to state institutions in the West and the North, to charitable foundations in Donbas and the Center, and to wealthy individuals in the East. This leads to a series of difficult questions: why do things that seem sociologically logical become so illogical when viewed from the standpoint of everyday human empathy? Why does a significant willingness to engage in charity (27%) become entangled in the most convenient and common obstacles when it comes to implementation? And why, in the end, does the desire to help others survive in only 5–6% of citizens?
Methodology
- Survey population: adult population of Ukraine aged 18 and over.
- Sample size: 2,000 respondents.
- Method: face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire.
- Sampling error: no more than 3% for values close to 50%, 2.6% for values close to 30%, and 1.8% for values close to 10%.
- Fieldwork dates: 11–18 December 2010.
- Regions:
- West – Volyn, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil, Chernivtsi.
- Center – Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy.
- North – Kyiv city, Kyiv region, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Chernihiv.
- South – Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Sevastopol.
- East – Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv.
- Donbas – Donetsk, Luhansk.
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