The phenomena of volunteering, volunteers, and volunteered services are popular among the younger generations, all of which have also become a way for many people to discuss public issues and to care the world in modern society. Generally speaking, in our imaginations and own definitions, we think of volunteers as some people who participate in public service activities or events by providing their time, money, labor, and expertise. The organizations that receive those services or volunteers, can largely use this kind of resource without cost. In addition, the volunteers, who participate in those activities, can also learn and concern themselves with more issues. They help others by providing their time and energy outside of their jobs and schoolwork.

In terms of logical relationships, the energy of volunteers or participants and the organization also have been limited due to their regarding volunteers as free human resources. This is not always bad for this kind of phenomenon; however, such a concept can be bigger and more influential. From the perspective of organizations, the volunteers who participate in these activities come from all walks of life, and they have different expertise, backgrounds, and resources. The organizations need to think of how to guide and apply these variations instead of filling their vacancies for routine labor. From the perspective of volunteers, they feel of the act of volunteering provides a happiness; however, it is more helpful for them to learn and grow during the process, which then allows them to have more viewpoints to change their lives and attitudes.

ELIV understands the needs of volunteers and local communities, so we combine community works and volunteers and put both benefits to good use as much as possible. In addition, we turn this kind of task into a workable business. In simple terms, community works used to depend on the donation or the allowance from the government, and professional workers were hired to serve and develop communities. However, regardless of the donation or the allowance from the government, both of their resources and funds are limited, so only a few professional workers can be hired to deal with the multitude of routine jobs. ELIV has separated community work with a lower threshold from others to provide this work to the public, who can participate, to further reduce the burden on professional workers. The public who participates in such activities not only can contribute their resources, but also learn different views to further change themselves to allow their life courses more positively.

ELIV has never received profit from the communities with few resources instead of searching for outer supplies for these communities to help them develop and transform. However, these communities also need to give something back and to provide ways for the exchange of resources to share their lifestyles or attitudes in regards to the lands and lives of the volunteers. Volunteers can receive the services of ELIV and the feedback of communities through daily expenses, such as eating and living, during their participated process.

Besides setting up schedules for professional workers, ELIV guides and leads volunteers, providing them with more opportunities of imagination and thinking. In addition, ELIV gives volunteers feedback of communities to allow them to learn the attitude of the local community.

For example, the staffs of ELIV lead volunteers to help vulnerable households in communities to build houses. ELIV conducts the exploration of communities and local communication, and this kind of personnel cost reflects on the volunteers’ charges. In the meantime, the staff matches this building work with the local culture or community knowledge to design a scheduled product and then sell it to volunteers. Though communities can get houses, they have to give something back and make commitments themselves. Volunteers can get into communities to have a better understanding and build them through local cultural guidance and introduction. By purchasing this product, volunteers can not only directly participate in building works but understand communities through ELIV’s guidance to finish tasks with communities to further learn communities’ perspectives. In the process, the staff of ELIV not only arrange to take care of the public’s daily lives but guide volunteers to have different thoughts through discussion and sharing sessions. In addition, ELIV has a better understanding of local communities through the intermediate role. Above all, ELIV passes a variety of knowledge and values to volunteers through the arrangement and designation of the schedule, such as the diet for volunteers. ELIV arranges restaurants for the public welfare, safe ingredients, or passes the concept of zero food waste to allow volunteers to learn how to treasure resources and to judge how to pick restaurants that provide meals that are friendly to both society and the earth.

It is necessary to separate partial contents from community projects or schedules in order to be designed as what volunteers can participate, such as laboring agricultural work, construction, daily home visiting, exploration, or caring, etc. In short, volunteers can practically put into their labor force, time, observation, companionship, and visiting to further help reach the goal of the project when they participate in schedules or projects of community affairs. In addition, volunteers can learn values out of projects, such as culture and life, through the schedule during several days.

Through such a pattern, ELIV has created a situation which volunteers, communities, and ELIV get profit. Communities get practical help and development resource, and ELIV get profit and revenue. Finally, volunteers get the opportunity of participating in community works and changing themselves. In addition, as consumers, volunteers’ needs are the hardest to be controlled and understood all the time in this circulation. Every volunteer has different motivations for participation, and ELIV needs to keep inspiring volunteers’ thoughts and observation in the schedule. In addition, ELIV has to reply to different motivations and expectations from every volunteer, and allows them to have a friendly attitude to face communities to fit local needs to accomplish their tasks through the explanation and education from ELIV’s leaders and staffs. On the other side, ELIV allows volunteers to be willing to contribute, share, even change life, and change the seeds of the world.

Therefore, it seems to be a simple kind of profit, but in fact, many concepts and professions are hidden, including communication between ELIV and communities. How to let communities be able to face external volunteers in a friendly way can be trusted to the leadership of ELIV. Then, they will be willing to collaborate with volunteers further, learn from each other, and share. At the same time, ELIV needs to design the projects and schedules that meet the needs of the public so that the entry threshold will be lowered. In the aspect of volunteers, ELIV has to have the diversified and flexible leading characteristics to communicate with a variety of volunteers with different characteristics, and can also convey good value and positive ideas to volunteers, finally encouraging and urging volunteers to put in more of their own time, resources, and profession in communities. The simplest concept is paying volunteers. After the completion of participation, volunteers feel that they are changed, moved, taught by a lot of new thoughts and discussions, and then they feel that it is worth spending money on this product.

In such mode of operation, ELIV has operated projects such in Cambodia, Myanmar, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, India, Thailand, Nepal, Taitung and Hualien (Taiwan). According to the considerations of the local communities, each project is scheduled and designed to meet the needs of local people to assist in the development of their communities, and attracts people who have different interests to register to participate in accordance with the particularity of the project and the culture in local communities (such as the country).

For example, the content of the Cambodia project is to help local villagers to build houses and toilets. The main axis is to carry out the poverty reduction to be self-sufficient, and to help lead the local students to understand the Angkor culture. The itinerary arrangement is also designed as a lot of international NGO visits and understanding. The Inner Mongolia project focused on afforestation to prevent desertification with environmental issues as the main concept. The Nepal project was based on friendly land, life experience through participation in the local Homestay accommodated to go with the introduction of permaculture ecological concept of life and organic farming learning.

In Taiwan, the Taitung project is to collaborate with the book houses that organize local children, adopting eco-building to assist in the construction, and accommodating locals to carry out agricultural work. The development itself allows the organization to have good space to properly take care of the underprivileged children in Taitung. The technology of the ecological building allows the young people to be looked after by book houses and to be able to learn marketable skills, and therefore have a stable job in the future. Agricultural work helps the book houses to be self-sufficient. Regardless of eco-building or organic agriculture, volunteers can learn different technologies, ideas, viewpoints, and bend in with their own lives to change their way of life so that living and life link with land more together.

ELIV links local communities with the volunteers together from overseas countries to local country by adopting such a business philosophy and method. Although each other's life differences, cultural differences, and concept differences are very huge, the role of ELIV allows both sides to take from each other, learn from each other and share with each other. However, the survival of an organization still tends to ultimately depend on the finance. ELIV still has to face the market competition and the game rules of the market. Revenue and enrollment allow ELIV to have a considerable degree of professionalism as well in the marketing, business collaboration, and financial planning with even more innovative, more novel businesses and operations.

However, most importantly, in response to the initial discussion, the idea of volunteers’ payment has not yet been generally accepted. The public tends to have unacceptable prejudices towards money that volunteers have to pay in addition to their labor and time. Therefore, how to more widely publicize and convey ELIV’s ideas and issues, and to let more people understand right values, has always been the biggest challenge for ELIV.