In many countries of the world people do what is called house-sitting. It means that if the owners of a house are going away, they want someone to come into their home and look after the house and maybe pets while they are away.

In Australia, a great many people travel. After people retire, they might buy a van (面包车) and travel all over the country. 【小题1】 So if someone wants to travel or go away for some reason, they might want someone in their home to care for it and keep the gardens tidy.

Housesitters might have to care for pets. Also, quite a few people have swimming pools in their back yard and they need cleaning.【小题2】 I feel it is a great way of seeing the country, because you go and stay in a new city, get to meet new people, and have time to go sightseeing in a new area.

There are plenty of websites where you can find a lot of advertisements post by people who want to travel, and by replying to these advertisement, you can make arrangements to go and look after their houses.【小题3】 You must be a trusted person, so that the house owner knows you will not steal anything. You must be able to go when the house owner wants you to go, so you need lots of free time. You must have a good car, so you can travel to different parts of the country. You need to be good with pets, able to care for cats and dogs, or other pets they may have.

A number of house-sitting jobs are just for a few days or a couple of weeks while the house owners have a short holiday. 【小题4】 We have had a house-sitting job for six months, while the home owner travelled to Europe.

【小题5】 Then you can travel to many different countries and stay there. One of the important things to get are references from the house owners for whom you have done house-sitting. A reference is a written letter to say that you are trustworthy and have looked after their houses well.

You can show these letters to possible house owners and they know you will do a good job.

Let’s begin with the question of why people volunteer. Researchers have identified several factors that motivate people to get involved. For example, people volunteer to express personal values related to unselfishness, to expand their range of experiences, and to strengthen social relationships. If volunteer positions do not meet these needs, people may not wish to participate. To select volunteers, you may need to understand the motivations of the people you wish to attract.

People also volunteer because they are required to do so. To increase levels of community service, some schools have launched compulsory volunteer programmes. Unfortunately, these programmes can shift people’s wish of participation from an internal factor(e. g., ”I volunteer because it’s important to me“)to an external factor(e. g., ”I volunteer because I’m required to do so“). When that happens, people become less likely to volunteer in the future. People must be sensitive to this possibility when they make volunteer activities a must.

Once people begin to volunteer, what leads them to remain in their positions over time? To answer this question, researchers have conducted follow-up studies in which they track volunteers over time. For instance, one study followed 238 volunteers in Florida over a year. One of the most important factors that influenced their satisfaction as volunteers was the amount of suffering they experienced in their volunteer positions. Although this result may not surprise you, it leads to important practical advice. The researchers note that attention should be given to “training methods that would prepare volunteers for troublesome situations or provide them with strategies for coping with the problems they do experience”.

Another study of 302 volunteers at hospitals in Chicago focused on individual differences in the degree to which people view “volunteer“ as an important social role. It was assumed that those people for whom the role of volunteer was most part of their personal identity would also be most likely to continue volunteer work. Participants indicated the degree to which the social role mattered by responding to statements such as “volunteering in hospital is an important part of who I am”. Consistent with the researchers’ expectations, they found a positive correlation(正相关)between the strength of role identity and the length of time people continued to volunteer. These results, once again, lead to concrete advice: “Once an individual begins volunteering, continued efforts might focus on developing a volunteer role identity...Items like T-shirts that allow volunteers to be recognized publicly for their contributions can help strengthen role identity.”