The history of the creation and implementation of volunteer projects for preserving the cultural and historical heritage abroad

The article discusses the international experience of the volunteer movement in the field of preservation of cultural monuments as a kind of educational activity, of a person’s inclusion in an active public life. It was volunteer work that predetermined the formation of a special social niche for proactive citizens united by common interests, needs, and values. The leading approach used in the study is structural and functional, which allows identifying the features of the development of volunteering and its goals. This approach, combined with theoretical (analysis, comparison, generalization) and applied methods (empirical data collection, analysis of the results of volunteer practices), substantiates the aim of the study: a system-historical analysis of the development of the volunteer movement to preserve the cultural and historical heritage abroad. In the course of the study, a review analysis of the sources on the stated problem was carried out: annual reports of non-profit charitable organizations, guidelines for working with volunteers, educational programs for training volunteers, laws and regulations governing the scope of volunteer work. The leading foreign volunteer practices implemented on the basis of models of intersectoral social interaction were studied; the main directions for the development and popularization of restoration volunteering abroad were identified; the activities of international organizations for the protection of cultural monuments in the context of assistance in organizing volunteer projects for voluntary assistance to activists in restoration and emergency operations were analyzed. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the sources helped to form a general idea of the features of volunteering, voluntary practices in the field of cultural heritage protection in each of the studied countries. The thesis is substantiated that from the moment of its formation to the present, restoration volunteering has gone from local initiatives to a social phenomenon supported at the government level. The volunteer environment in European countries is a strongly institutionalized social phenomenon that has legitimacy and reliability, both in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of public authorities. Based on the analysis of the characteristics of the volunteer movement, as well as the attraction of empirical data, it is established that modern volunteering abroad, playing a significant role in preserving the cultural and historical heritage, developing progress, democratizing society, includes global and national-regional components, in which a special role is given to the effective system of interaction between state structures and civil society, shows optimally effective forms and technologies of preserving historical heritage based on economic, social, historical, and cultural features of the country’s development in general and a specific region in particular.