PhD Michael Marco
email: av.michael.savi@gmail.com

Special Issue on: Spirituality for Social Innovation and Social Change: Reaching The Bottom of The Pyramid

Topic for Paper submission: How do spiritual influences and/or practices manifest themselves in venture operations?

Can volunteerism be the unexpressed demonstration of a powerful spiritual practice manifested in an

Introduction

Numerous studies are presented here and confirm that when people engage in volunteerism, the result is increased absorption, retention, attraction, morale, and other such positive benefits. The concept of volunteerism is exemplified in the city of Auroville and is a principal driving force in the running of the city; indeed Aurovilians are considered as volunteers and stewards of the township, and its inhabitants have dedicated their lives to this project since 1968. In this article we will present recent studies which show that even among visitors to the city, a considerable number of them dedicate their time to volunteer, for short or long periods, to contribute to the development of the township project. Where does volunteerism come originally from? Which values does it carry? What is its spiritual contribution? What are the benefits for the city, the entrepreneurs and the individuals? Does the world perceive the contribution of volunteerism at its real value? How has this alternative way of working shaped the development of an international city that is growing both economically and spiritually? How has volunteerism contributed to the growth of projects in Auroville which have achieved international dimensions? How can this concept be implemented in classical organizations in a way to benefit all, employers and employees? The purpose of this article is to present an actual picture of volunteerism and to answer to all these questions in order to understand better this phenomenon. This article can address the entrepreneurs willing to innovate by reconsidering the labor force. Professor Israel Kirzner (1973) describes the entrepreneur as a man who perceives and pursues economic opportunities in the face of uncertainty and for whom alertness is the fundamental quality. Through his alertness, the entrepreneur is able to foresee economic developments that other actors have overlooked. [START_REF] Kirzner | Perception, Opportunity and Profit: Studies in the Theory of Entrepreneurship[END_REF] In this paper, it will be argued that Volunteerism can be conceptualized as an economic opportunity for development. A closer look on the phenomenon of volunteerism and its contribution to both self development and economical growth is indispensably called for. There is no agreed methodology for measuring the extent of voluntary engagement and this makes the task difficult. However, the studies we present here and which are only a part of numerous studies, attest to the universality of volunteerism, its universal spread, massive scale and impact.

A more in-depth study of volunteerism is crucial for several reasons: to better understand human-resources management, how organizations can consider the interests of both employers and employees, and the impact of inspiration and spirituality as a driving force for self and economic development. These themes are encapsulated by the term "volunteerism" which can be defined as a form of work that finds its specificity in the fact that the people employed do not receive any financial remuneration in exchange for their work. This aspect is particularly important when considering a spiritual approach to economic activity. According to Helen Clark (2011), Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), "the terms which define volunteerism and the forms of its expression may vary in different languages and cultures, but the values which drive it are common and universal: a desire to contribute to the common good, out of free will and in a spirit of solidarity, without expectation of material reward." [START_REF]State of the World's Volunteerism Report[END_REF] Volunteerism indeed represents a platform of interaction where financial profit does not take place, but where business can still be successful. To the question "How do spiritual influences and/or practices manifest themselves in venture operations?" a spiritual enquiry is here facilitated by the concept of gratification, mostly intangible, that volunteers gain in exchange of work. More specifically, this could be the experience of being a "worker" in resonance with the "work" being done. In addition, the first United Nations State of the World's Volunteerism Report (2011, p7) emphasizes how volunteerism is a means by which people can take control of their lives and make a difference to themselves and to those around them. These ideas give rise to the essential question: Can volunteerism be the unexpressed demonstration of a powerful spiritual practice manifested in an effective social and economical activity? The study of this question justifies then the adoption of the following plan: On the first hand, we will show how present is volunteerism in the world, in various fields of work in order to express the powerful capacities of this activity. On the second hand, we will focus on the impact and mutual benefits brought about volunteerism, first on the individuals, on the companies and then on the society with numerous examples of achievements in various countries. We will show then why I can be effectively used for a socio-economical activity. We will finish the article with a study of one of the origins of volunteerism through the traditional Gurukul system of India in order to show its spiritual potential. And thus its application and manifestation in the International Township Project of Auroville will make the link between the spiritual concept and an effective socio-economical activity.

For a recognition of the importance of volunteerism in the world

The measurement system to evaluate volunteerism value suffers from a lack of consensus on economic data: voluntary organizations are developing tools and instruments to monitor the economic value of their volunteers" contributions. However, national statistical offices vary greatly in terms of data collected and their interest in measuring economic value of volunteering. Difficulties are arising from the inconsistency in approaches to quantifying volunteer numbers, time dedicated and activities undertaken. Where calculations have been made, there is usually no consensus on estimated economic value due to differing ways of valuing volunteer work. This article does not use figures on monetary value provided by Member States. Instead, it uses gross estimates of the economic value of volunteering based on the common replacement cost method for all countries. The term "replacement cost" or "replacement value" refers to the amount that would have to be paid if the work performed by a volunteer had to perform by a paid staff member.

Recent country-level studies, largely in developed countries, of the size and composition of volunteering have proven a solid basis for discussions of many aspects of volunteerism. For example, the 2007 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, conducted by Statistics Canada, recorded a total of 2.1 billion volunteer hours with both an increase in the number of volunteers (5.7%) and volunteer hours (4.2%) from 2004. [START_REF] Hall | Statistics Canada[END_REF] In 2004, in the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor indicated that 62.8 million people had volunteered for an organization at least once in the previous 12 months. The bureau of Statistics of Australia found that, in 2007, 5.2 million people volunteered for as sum of 713 million hours of work, the equivalent to 14.6 billion Australian dollars of paid work time. The study showed that 34% of the adult population volunteered (36% of women and 32% of men). To empower a community to recognize its own contributions, an action research study in Jansenville, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, based on community calendars mapped the amount of volunteer time, skills, goods in-kind, money that community-based, nongovernmental and faith-based organizations received from members in the community. The results translated in a total of 19 years and 8 months of unpaid labor a year. In a community where the local government estimates that 60% of families live in poverty, the total contribution of volunteering was estimated to have a value of 53,000 US dollars generated by 4343 people across 378 households. This valuing of community assets has been eye opening, motivating and inspiring to participants, encouraging them to build on their "investment". [START_REF] Wilkinson | [END_REF] The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP) [START_REF]The CNP project aimed to document the civil society sector through national studies[END_REF] provides a common survey form to participating countries with suggested questions and examples of the kinds of activity about which respondents would be asked. "Think about the past months. During that time period, did you help, work, or provide any service or assistance to anyone outside your family or household without receiving compensation?" Respondents who answered "no" were then prompted to think broadly about such activities even if they thought it "natural that everyone would do such a thing in a similar situation." While this also applies to formal types of volunteerism, it is especially relevant for the informal types often so embedded in cultures and traditions that they may not even be considered volunteering. This makes the task of measuring more challenging. The CNP estimates that, between 1995 and 2000, the number of volunteers contributing through voluntary organizations in 36 countries, taken together, would make the ninth largest country in the world in terms of population with about 140 million volunteers.

In the same 36 countries, volunteers comprised 44% of the work force of civil society organizations representing the equivalent of 20.8 million full-time workers. Using a "replacement cost" approach, CNP calculated the economic contribution of volunteers in the 36 countries to be 400 billion US dollars annually. This represented, on average, 1.1% of GDP in these countries. However, in developing and transition countries, volunteer work represented a somewhat smaller 0.7% of GDP. In developed countries, volunteer work represented 2.7% of GDP. 6 These figures, among many others, have been contributing to the recognition of the value of volunteerism from the International Community. In fact, the United Nations proclaimed 2001 the International Year of Volunteers (IYV), and the European Union designated 2011 as the "European Year of Volunteering". The international community recognized then the essential contributions which volunteers make to the progress, cohesion, and resilience of communities and nations. Yet, the phenomenon is still misconstrued and undervalued; the contributions of volunteers are not always factored into development strategies and often remain at the margins of development debate. All too often, the strong links are overlooked between volunteer activity on the one hand and peace and human development on the other (UNV, 2011). [START_REF]State of the World's Volunteerism Report[END_REF] Isn"t it time for the contribution of volunteerism to the quality of life, and the wellbeing in a wider sense, to be understood as one of the missing components of a development paradigm that still has economic growth at its core? "People are the real wealth of a nation"; with these words the first Human Development Report (HDR) began in 1990 a forceful case for a new approach to thinking about development. Development is about expanding the choices available to people so that they may lead lives that they value. Economic growth is only one means of increasing people"s choices (HDR, 2011). [START_REF]The Human Development concept[END_REF] The United Nations General Assembly Since the International Year of Volunteerism considerable progress has been achieved, especially in the developing world, in responding to the four major themes identified for the year, namely greater recognition, facilitation, networking and promotion of volunteerism. Governments have developed an extensive list of recommendations for actions to support volunteerism. These are contained in the UNGA Resolution 56/38 adopted in 2001. Among the key consideration was "Neglecting to factor volunteering into design and implementation of policies could entail the risk of overlooking a valuable asset and undermine traditions of cooperation that bind communities together" [START_REF]Recommendations on support for volunteering[END_REF] These recommendations have been supplemented by subsequent resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly 10 , and also emphasized in successive reports of the United Nations Secretary-General. 11 In 2011, a decade after the IYV, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) wrote a report. It coincides with an intense debate about the type of societies that we wish to see, for ourselves and for the future generations. In 2003, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Evaluation Office (EO) stated in their report that globalization is rapidly transforming cultural and social norms, bringing benefits to some but exclusion and marginalization to others. Many people feel a loss of control over their lives. [START_REF] Undp | Volunteerism and development[END_REF] Marian Harkin, Member of the European Parliament, said in 2011 "People often feel powerless in the face of globalization; like flotsam and jetsam on the waves with no stable anchors. Volunteerism can be an anchor for people as they affect change in their own community of place". 13 About measuring the value of volunteerism, the international community has recognized the need for governments to "establish the economic value of volunteering to help to highlight one important aspect of its overall contribution to society and thereby assist in the development of informed policies" (UNGA, 2010, p5). 14 This chapter confirms that volunteer action is found the world over and is huge. Taking the measure of volunteerism, in all its diversity and rich expressions, is occurring in many places and in many different ways. However, it is still at a very early stage and presents considerable challenges. The range of studies mentioned here points to the diversity of issues covered as well as the absence of common approaches. Due to the highly variable definitions, methodologies and purposes among national, regional and global initiatives, it is not yet possible to provide a composite picture of the dimensions of volunteerism by country, region or any other categorization. However, the purpose here is not, in any way, to curtail current and new initiatives aimed at measuring volunteerism. These meet specific needs. They help to add to the knowledge base on volunteerism. As such, they should be encouraged and supported, especially in the developing world. So to the question "Can volunteerism be a powerful practice (or means) for venture operations?" the answer can be "Yes". Indeed, as the International Community recognized the importance of this kind of activity, all the governments are now encouraged to take this practice in consideration in their development plans. But this doesn"t explain the reason we decided to choose volunteerism as a great spiritual practice manifested in venture actions. The next chapter will then be dedicated to the effects and impact of volunteerism on economical actors which include individuals, but also companies, organizations and the society. We will demonstrate the potential of volunteerism to affect in a better way the actors involved in a venture operation.

Volunteerisma great impact for the development mutually of individuals, economical actors and the society

Beyond economic data, there is ever more research into the nature and motivations of volunteers. These include studies that look at student volunteering in 12 countries; [START_REF] Hustinx | Navigating Theories of Volunteering: A Hybrid Map for a Complex Phenomenon[END_REF] senior well-being in Europe; [START_REF] Haski-Leventha | Elderly Volunteering and Well-Being: A Cross-European Comparison Based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) Data, International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University[END_REF] people in Israel on welfare benefits who volunteer; [START_REF] Mizrahi | The new public management: Trust, participation and performance in welfare supply organizations[END_REF] the role of religious organizations in promoting volunteerism in Latin America; [START_REF] Calvo | The Role of Religious Organizations in Promoting Service and Volunteerism in Latin America, Service Enquiry, Civic Service and Volunteering in Latin America and the Caribbean 19[END_REF] and volunteerism policies and legislation globally. 19 In this chapter, we attempt to take the measure of volunteerism, looking also beyond the numbers. Calculating the dimensions and value of volunteerism, including economic value, is obviously important. Yet numbers are not the whole story. Some argue that putting a figure on volunteering detracts from its intrinsic values in terms of its impact on communities and causes on the volunteers themselves. Others would say that the main contribution of volunteerism, its true value, lies in creating harmonious societies marked by high levels of social cohesion and well-being, also factors which are very hard to quantify. "Putting people at the centre of development is much more than an intellectual exercise", notes the HDR 2010 (p. 2). "It means making progress equitable and broad-based, enabling people to be active participants in change". 20 Volunteerism can be a highly effective and practical means of building on people"s capabilities in all societies and at all levels. It also provides a channel through which these capabilities may enhance the well-being of individuals, communities and nations. "By volunteering people realize their assets which include knowledge, skills, and social networks, for the benefit of themselves, their families and their communities. The values of volunteerism are extremely relevant in strengthening the capacity of the most vulnerable to achieve secure livelihoods and to enhance their physical, economic, spiritual and social wellbeing. Moreover, volunteering can reduce the social exclusion that is often the result of poverty, marginalization, and other forms of inequality. Volunteerism is one path to inclusion among population groups that are often excluded such as women, young and older people, people with disabilities, migrants and people living with HIV/AIDS." (UNV 2011, p9) [START_REF]State of the World's Volunteerism Report[END_REF] In 2006 at the Fifth African development Forum, organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, a study entitled "Youth Volunteering for Development: Africa 21 st Century" [START_REF] Patel | Volunteer and Service Enquiry Southern Africa (VOSESA)'s five-country cross-national study[END_REF] was presented. The research, covering nine countries, showed how young people"s capacities develop when they volunteer. They become active developments agents in their communities. Moreover, it emphasized how volunteer programmes can be linked to policy frameworks on a sustainable basis. The outcome statement declared: "It is essential, therefore, that African governments, working with their developments partners, foster the spirit of volunteerism among young people" (UNDESA, 2007, p. 110). [START_REF][END_REF] In 2010 and 2011, both African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) launched regional youth volunteer corps to contribute to peace and development in their regions. The 2010 National Survey of Volunteering conducted by peak-body Volunteering Australia, found that 83% of volunteers say that volunteerism has increased their sense of belonging to their community. The survey highlights the important role that volunteering plays in providing opportunities for people to learn with 26% saying the training received as part of their volunteer work has helped them to acquire an accreditation/qualification. The survey also found that volunteerism plays an important role in social inclusion in Australian society. The survey found that volunteering can help reduce feelings of personal isolation, offer people skills and social contacts, support a greater sense of self-worth and challenge stereotypes about different groups. 24 On a more business oriented vision, numerous studies and research have been made in United States and United Kingdom looking at the impact of volunteerism on employees and their employers. AAA of Northern California has found a positive correlation between employee promotion and those who volunteer. The company attributes this relationship to increased visibility of employee skills to management. By offering their expertise, volunteers are able to refine and enhance their job skills while increasing networking opportunities; this is particularly important for recent college graduates. [START_REF]How Employees Volunteers Multiply Your Community Impact, On Philanthropy[END_REF] The top business benefits associated with supporting volunteer activities included 26 :

 providing personal development opportunities for employees (76%)  helping to motivate staff (72%)  bringing new skills/experience/ideas into the organization (69%)

 enhancing corporate reputation (69%) or increasing respect for the organization (60%) A survey carried out by Time Bank through Reed Executive showed that among 200 of the UK"s leading businesses:  73% of employers would recruit a candidate with volunteering experience over one without.  94% of employers believe that volunteering can add to existing skills.  94% of employees who volunteered to learn new skills had benefited either by getting their first job, improving their salary, or being promoted. Businesses that promote Family Volunteering also report significant results 27 :  70% report improved public and community relations.  57% report greater employee commitment.  15% report more productive employees.  12% report fewer hours lost for family responsibilities. The author Claire McCartney (Senior Researcher at Roffey Park Management College) said: "Volunteering is becoming increasingly important for employers -and not just for their corporate responsibility. It is clear that well managed policies to support staff wishing to take part in volunteer activities can deliver significant business benefits in areas such as staff development and retention." The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development 2005 Flexible Working survey of 585 UK organizations found that staff retention was the main reason for organizations introducing flexible working practices. In the same survey, 70% of HR professionals said that flexible working had a positive effect on employee motivation: "Volunteering led to a successful business." Beyond business profitability the Corporation for National and Community Service, with a series of studies and researches has shown the benefits of volunteerism on individuals [START_REF] Grimm | The Health Benefits of Volunteering 29[END_REF] :

 A strong relationship between volunteering and health: those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.  Volunteering also leads to improved physical and mental health.  Recent studies on the relationship between health and volunteering demonstrate that the benefits of volunteering are not limited to the recipients of the volunteer services. A study found that in general, volunteers report greater life satisfaction and better physical health than non-volunteers, and their life satisfaction and physical health improves at a greater rate as a result of volunteering 29 . In conclusion, entrepreneurs should consider volunteerism as an important alternative human resource. Of course cost-related factors are the main motivation to increasing volunteerism in small businesses. The three volunteer-costs that must be addressed then are employee compensation, organizing the volunteer effort with a focus made on their motivation, and worker longevity loss. A central thesis running through this article is that the values inherent in volunteerism endow it with far-reaching potential for human development. This motion of development includes factors such as solidarity, social inclusion, empowerment, life-satisfaction and individual and societal well-being. The well-being of individuals is intrinsically linked to their contributions to the lives of others.

With this chapter we begin to touch the very point of volunteerism. We found here an activity world wide spread and with records of its benefits for everyone which has been involved directly or indirectly. And the benefits can be much beyond the simple production of goods or services, the individuals are affected, and then their collectivity represented by their company or community, and then it can be the whole society which can benefit from the influence of volunteerism. Now the last question remains unanswered, "can volunteerism be considered as a spiritual practice, and if so how can it be manifested in a venture operation?" In fact it is for this reason that the Auroville project shows a very interesting living experience by using mainly volunteer force. Based on a ancient Indian tradition of Ashram, and made to be an example, the demonstration of an advanced society supporting the progress of humanity, can Auroville represent the bridge between the past and the future, the tradition and the need of modernity, the immaterial spirit brought into a material word?

The traditional system of Gurukul as found working in the International Township Project of Auroville:

The country of India is of particular importance in regard to its fabulous spiritual traditions. The Gurukul System is an ancient Indian philosophy of education. The notion of a "guru" in Indian culture makes an important reference of how knowledge and guidance for self spiritual development is transmitted/exchanged through the dedication, commitment and energy that the student/devotee brings by volunteering in the household and participating in chores as part of the Guru (teacher) who can be thought of as a guide, father and role-model. In this way volunteerism has become a prevalent notion among Indian people. Life in a Gurukul meant keeping to strict discipline. Students lived in very simple surroundings, practiced celibacy and cultivated virtue and discipline under the custody of their guru"s confidence and attention. Amongst themselves, students lived together as equals, regardless of their social status, and acquired the same knowledge from their guru. They had to render services like cooking food and cleaning shared environs. At the end of the training, students come out as responsible individuals. This type of training was designed to increase personal responsibility. 30 In this system of education the gurus or teachers did not charge any fees and so in exchange for the teachings, the students were voluntarily serving their guru. In this way, the learning and living space was well maintained benefitting the community, while the students/volunteers received satisfaction from the teachings of the teacher/guru. The high interest in this system is thus the relation between the process of learning and the work. In this way spiritual practices can manifest in venture operations. In fact it is for a spiritual teaching that the student work and this work is also done applying the teaching for an activity responding to the need of a community. In some extent, regarding the basic conditions of being allowed to live in these communities, it can be compared to volunteerism. In fact, the student were not getting any material reward in exchange of their work, they were only receiving a spiritual teaching. That was the reason of their work. And actually even this teaching was based on self-giving, renouncing to the ego, surrender to life. It was taught that it is by serving unconditionally a community and never expecting anything in return that one can feel the beauty of life and its simplicity. This Gurukul system was tradition in India but during the colonial era it began to be replaced by the system established by the colonizers and became almost extinct, save in some remote areas. Nowadays in India, there exist throughout the land numerous spiritual centers known as Ashrams. Here, people live together, dedicated to the teachings and philosophy of a Guru or spiritual master. Thus in this centers, it is not hard to find someone while receiving spiritual upliftment and teachings "offering service" or "seva" at any point in time, or in other words, volunteering by contribute towards the maintenance and organization of the center. In the case of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (SAA) in Pondicherry, thousands of volunteers arrive every year from all over the world to offer their services to the Ashram maintenance, teaching, farming, music arts & crafts. It is noteworthy that the SAA is one of the richest ashrams in India, demonstrating well the impressive contribution of volunteer service framed within a strong cultural tradition based on self spiritual development. [START_REF]The Relevance of Integral Education in the 21st Century[END_REF] Here again the volunteer system is strongly integrated in the daily life of the Ashram, and because their motivation and interest in the teaching is so strong that their dedication is unconditional. This is one of the main reason of the success of this Ashram. The SAA is all the more interesting because its Founders also founded, in 1968, the Universal Township of Auroville 16 kilometers away from the Ashram, intended as a site for the manifestation of an actual human unity in diversity. People from all countries of the world including India have in the past forty five years of its existence come to Auroville to volunteer and contribute to its growth while endeavoring to live a life dedicated to the ideals of Auroville: human unity and international understanding. Having spent a large number of the formative years planting trees and eking out a living in an arid and barren land, Aurovilians have today created a fertile forest in what was once desert and are now growing a sustainable community of their own. The lifestyle here reflects a universal culture of healthy living, beautiful handicraft, world music and dance, various healing practices, educational research and alternative & ecological ways of living, forestation, organic agriculture, village development, earth construction, alternative technologies, renewable energies, water treatment etc… In this context though, the highly interesting facts on Auroville are the percentages regarding people who come here as volunteers. With a population of only 2000 adults, Auroville welcomes every year about 8 000 foreign visitors, among whom 28% arrive as volunteers [START_REF]A data study of the compulsory Indian immigration registration form filled by foreigners when[END_REF] . It is clear then that volunteerism is of importance in the development of the International Township Project. Volunteers to Auroville mostly come from Europe and North America, and are not necessarily only young people in need of adventure but also mature people leaving their daily lives and occupations to come to serve in Auroville. Actually every category of age is represented here. It is thus common in Auroville to be volunteering in a project in any one of its various fields of activity/research. The results of a survey of a large sample of entrepreneurs show that an important part of the units in Auroville owes their success to the input of volunteers. This resource permits them to start concretizing and improving innovative ideas, and to launch high quality projects. In this context what often happens is the combination of temporarily skilled workers (volunteers) and the permanent local people help to create a sustainable way of running projects. The economical aspect of volunteerism can then contribute to the growth of the business as well as the development of human unity. Units in Auroville work autonomously regarding their organization and the volunteers they engage. There are more than a thousand units working in dives fields which can be agriculture as well as education or construction. Almost every unit needs volunteers because the population of the city (2000 adults) is not enough to supply the human resources needs of all the units and their budget cannot permit them to engage local people as employees. Sometime it can also be a problem of skills which can only be found in westerners" profiles. Due to this freedom of organization, every unit is independently working at recruiting volunteers and running its business to make it successful. In Auroville the success doesn"t come from making or growing profits, but from making work an experiment which was based on either sustainable development, or social improvement, or ecological technique creation, or new education approach, or research evolution…

Conclusion:

Communities are suffering due to the growth of secular societies but at the same time it may be possible to bridge that expanding gap through volunteering.

Volunteering is ultimately about helping others and having an impact on people"s well-being. "What better way is there to connect with your community and give a little back? As a volunteer, you certainly return to society some of the benefits that society gives you." is the common speech among Aurovilians. All these different surveys, studies and research show clearly that the activity of volunteerism is already well-known in the world, but maybe not yet recognized seriously by governments in their development plans. For this the International community, through the United Nations and the European Union, are of good influence to press in this direction for the following years. We saw that most of the time this experience of volunteering is benefiting as well the individuals directly involved but also the receivers of this help and work done by them, then the organization using then cost free workers, and finally the company who decided to encourage their employees to volunteer. After all if all these different actors of the economy are positively affected by the concept of volunteerism, why the society wouldn"t? And to relate to the topic launched by the ISOL Journal, can volunteerism be a spiritual practice manifested in a venture operation? We demonstrated that for some extents volunteerism can find its root in the Indian tradition of Gurukul which is known to be a much respected way of spiritual teaching. Volunteerism presents the basics of a spiritual work done individually through voluntarily work without conditions and expectations, no material reward but the pleasure of working for a good cause, a purpose going much beyond our own individuality. The question now is to know if every organization running volunteers activity does have such results, if a special organization of work is needed to permit to the individual to realize that, if there is a need of a guru to achieve this, if the spiritual dimension can be ephasized… Besides that, on a more practical way, this inquiry on volunteerism addresses the entrepreneurs and even the Governments interested in reducing health problems and expenses, unemployment and civic spirit of the citizens for a more ecological and social approach of life.

among countries and to evaluate the impact of civil society organizations on the wider society. The project employs a comparative empirical approach that features a common framework, set of definitions and information-gathering strategies and a network of national and international advisory committees to oversee progress and help to disseminate results. The study was launched in 1992 in an initial set of 12 countries and has since expanded to 45 countries representing a wide range of social, economic and religious contexts. The CNP collects data on organization-based volunteering through specially commissioned standardized surveys administered by Local Associates, professional survey firms or government agencies. The surveys are typically population based using representative random samples of 1000 to 2000 people, although organization-based surveys were used in some places, often relying on sampling methods focused on representative regions, where suitable sampling frames were unavailable Variables covered included the number of volunteers, the hours volunteered and the distribution of these hours among activity fields defined by the International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations (ICNPO). This allowed the translation of volunteering into the equivalent number of full-time workers which was then related to the economically active population of the country to control for the variations in the size of different countries. 6 Lister M. Salamon and Stephanie Geller, Nonprofit Policy Priorities for the New Administration, Listening Post

  (UNGA) in 2002 attended to extend the notion of volunteerism as an additional valuable component of national development planning to development cooperation policy. The Resolution of the General Assembly contained what follows: "Recognizing and building strategically on rich, local traditions of voluntary self-help and mutual aid can open the way to building up a new constituency in support of development efforts. Forging a link in the mind of the general public in countries providing development assistance between domestic volunteering in those countries and volunteering in countries receiving assistance can also help enlist public support for development cooperation" (A/RES/56/38, p.2).


Riad Mazloum

Marc-Olivier Buob

Jordan Augé

Bruno Baynat

Dario Rossi

Timur Friedman

Violation of Interdomain Routing Assumptions

We challenge a set of assumptions that are frequently used to model interdomain routing in the Internet by confronting them with routing decisions that are actually taken by ASes, as revealed through publicly available BGP feeds. Our results quantify for the first time the extent to which such assumptions are too simple to model real-world Internet routing policies. This should introduce a note of caution into future work that makes these assumptions and should prompt attempts to find more accurate models.

Introduction

Figure 1a illustrates a case of what is called multi-exit routing in the Internet. From BGPmon's [START_REF] Yan | BGPmon: A real-time, scalable, extensible monitoring system[END_REF] publicly-available feed of the BGP interdomain route updates of numerous routers, we know that the autonomous system (AS) in the middle of the figure, AS6762, has two different routes by which to reach the address prefix 103.11.245.0/24, the advertisement for which is originated by AS5845, on the figure's far right. One route, on top, goes via AS10026 and AS45932, while the other, on the bottom, goes via AS1299. Which of these routes will AS6762 advertise to the ASes that neighbor it on the left, AS262589 and AS26615?

The AS in the middle is Telecom Italia's Sparkle, the world's 9th most important AS as reported by CAIDA's AS Rank service [START_REF]The CAIDA AS Ranking service[END_REF]. The top route goes via Pacnet, which is a customer of Sparkle according to CAIDA's AS Relationships database [START_REF]CAIDA: The CAIDA AS Relationships dataset[END_REF]. The bottom route is via TeliaNet, which the database tells us is Sparkle's peer. The standard assumption is that an AS will always route through a paying customer rather than a peer, from which it receives no revenue. And indeed Sparkle advertises the route via its paying customer Pacnet to the topleft neighbor, INTERNEXA. However, the BGP feeds also tell us that Sparkle advertises a different route, the one via its peer TeliaNet, to the bottom-left neighbor, Tim Cellular. It appears that the assumption does not hold.

What is wrong? Could there be an error in the AS Relationships database that we are relying upon? Suppose, for instance, that TeliaNet was in fact a (a) Routing example (b) General case Fig. 1: Multi-exit routing example and general case paying customer of Sparkle, rather than its peer. Then, Sparkle's routing through both Pacnet and TeliaNet would be perfectly coherent with the assumption that Sparkle will prefer to route through its customers.

However, this scenario would violate another common assumption: that an AS with two customers will route through the one that offers a shorter sequence of AS hops to the destination prefix. Since the route via TeliaNet is just two hops, it should be chosen instead of the route via Pacnet, which takes three hops, but this is not the case. If Sparkle were to override this choice, which BGP practices allow, it would be to select Pacnet in place of TeliaNet, and not advertise routes via both of them, as it does.

The scientific community already knows that network operators do not always implement interdomain routing policies in ways that are consistent with the simplifying assumptions that are made for modeling purposes. However, the degree to which reality defies the assumptions has not previously been quantified. This paper looks at 4 million routes that we collected from IPv4 BGP feeds, and in particular at 204 thousand instances of multi-exit routing that those feeds reveal. In 33% of the multi-exit cases, the assumption about routing preferentially to customers over peers and to peers over providers is not coherent with the relationships that are described by CAIDA. In fully 57% of the cases, the path length assumption does not hold.

This paper proceeds in Sect. 2 by providing some background for readers who are not familiar with the details of BGP. In this context, we formalize four commonly-held assumptions, and cite examples in the literature where they are made. (The assumptions described above are composites of these four assumptions.) Sect. 3 describes our methodology for confronting the assumptions with the data. Results appear in Sect. 4. The paper wraps up with related work (Sect. 5) and a conclusion pointing to future work (Sect. 6).

Our contributions are to formalize commonly-held assumptions about interdomain routing and AS relationships and propose two methods to identify violations of the models. Also, we provide the first quantification of such violations to be based upon publicly-available data.

2 Interdomain Routing and our Set of Assumptions

BGP Background

BGP is the interdomain routing protocol that allows an AS to learn how to route to destinations in other ASes. A BGP route describes the AS Path, or sequence of ASes, to be traversed on the way to a prefix, which is a set of contiguous IP addresses. The BGP next hop is the egress point to use at the IP level in order to follow the route. Routes are exchanged between routers in the same AS through iBGP sessions, and between routers in different ASes via eBGP.

In the general case, a BGP router learns several routes toward a given destination. It is free to accept just some of them and to modify these. The router then elects one route (the best route) by following the selection steps of the BGP decision process [START_REF] Rekhter | A border gateway protocol 4 (BGP-4). RFC 1771[END_REF], typically modeled as in Table 1. At each step, routes dominated by at least one other route are discarded. When, after one of these steps, there remains just one element in the set, this element is the best route. The router is free to modify a best route before forwarding it to its neighboring routers and it is free to select which of those routers will receive the route.

One modifiable parameter that affects the choice of best routes is the local preference. If a router receives two routes ̺ and ̺ ′ toward the same destination with a higher value of local_pref assigned to ̺, then ̺ is preferred to ̺ ′ .

AS Relationships

ASes use BGP to implement their contractual commercial agreements, which are typically modeled by three types of economic relationship.

-Customer-to-provider (c2p): a customer pays a provider for transit service to the rest of the Internet for its traffic and its customers' traffic. -Peering (peer): a pair of ASes transit traffic between them or their customers to destinations belonging to them or their customers, free of charge.

-Sibling-to-sibling (s2s): a pair of ASes transit traffic for each other and for their respective clients to every destination in the Internet, free of charge. Gao [START_REF] Gao | On inferring autonomous system relationships in the Internet[END_REF] proposed a way to infer AS relationships based upon observed BGP routes, opening the way to much subsequent work.

A Set of Interdomain Routing Assumptions

This section describes four common assumptions about interdomain routing, citing selected papers that make each assumption.

(A1) iBGP valid The assumption is that any BGP route has the potential to be propagated within an AS to all routers of that AS. In other words, route propagation is only governed by routing decisions taken by the different routers in the AS and there are no parts of the AS to which a route cannot be forwarded.

This assumption seems justified since an AS should guarantee this property in order to assure that all of its routers are selecting the best routes [START_REF] Buob | Checking for optimal egress points in iBGP routing[END_REF][START_REF] Teixeira | Network sensitivity to hotpotato disruptions[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | In search for an appropriate granularity to model routing policies[END_REF][START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF].

(A2) Policy through eBGP only Routing policy is only applied by routers through their participation in interdomain (i.e., eBGP) sessions. This assumption implies that the local_pref value is not modified by routers through their iBGP sessions. If a router were to modify the local_pref value for some or all of the routes in an iBGP session, this could affect the choices of all routers in the AS to which this route is forwarded. 1This assumption is made to simplify the model of route propagation in an AS [START_REF] Buob | Checking for optimal egress points in iBGP routing[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | In search for an appropriate granularity to model routing policies[END_REF][START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF].

(A3) Customer over peer, peer over provider The assumption that an AS always prefers to send traffic through a customer over a peer and through a peer over a provider so as to maximize the presumed economic benefits. Sending traffic through a customer means that the customer will pay for it, while sending though a provider means that one has to pay the provider. [START_REF] Buob | Checking for optimal egress points in iBGP routing[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF][START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF].

An AS will implement this hierarchy by assigning a higher local_pref value to routes learned from a customer than to routes learned from a provider.

(A4) Only one relationship type In the literature, each AS interconnection is typically modeled as a single economic relationship [START_REF] Gao | On inferring autonomous system relationships in the Internet[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | In search for an appropriate granularity to model routing policies[END_REF][START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF][START_REF] Subramanian | Characterizing the Internet hierarchy from multiple vantage points[END_REF][START_REF] Di Battista | Computing the types of the relationships between autonomous systems[END_REF][START_REF] Xia | On the evaluation of AS relationship inferences[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | Inferring AS relationships: Dead end or lively beginning?[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | AS relationships: inference and validation[END_REF][START_REF] Shavitt | Near-deterministic inference of AS relationships[END_REF]. This assumption rules out, for instance, an AS being the peer of another AS in one part of the world, while being that AS's customer in another location. This is a convenient assumption to make because the main source of data consists of AS paths conveyed on BGP routes. These paths provide only AS-level information, and do not reveal, for instance, in cases where there are several possible egress points through which traffic can pass from one AS to another, which ones are used.

If we had detailed knowledge of the routing decisions made by BGP routers, it would be possible to challenge, and possibly invalidate, the individual assumptions described in the previous section. Unfortunately, this information is unavailable to us. However, the publicly-available BGP feeds do allow us to challenge combinations of assumptions.

The novelty of our approach lies in the way that we use observed instances of multi-exit routing as a means to identify assumption violations. An instance, which we call a multi-exit, arises when an AS uses multiple next-hop ASes to reach a given destination prefix. Briefly, we process the feeds to identify multiexits (Sect. 3.1), and then we examine each one for incoherencies in either the AS path length, the AS relationships, or both (Sect. 3.2). Each incoherency reveals a case in which one or more common assumptions have been violated.

Observing Multi-exits

Not all multi-exits can be observed through BGP feeds, but we can see them when an AS advertises two or more routes to a common destination prefix to its neighboring ASes. Fig. 1b illustrates the general case: an AS X announces to its neighbors W and W ′ different routes to a destination prefix p, each route having a different next-hop AS, Y or Y ′ .

We observe multi-exits as follows. A BGP snapshot at a given instant t is the set of all of the BGP routes being used by the vantage points at that time. The AS Path of a route is a sequence of AS numbers (AS 1 , . . ., AS i , . . ., AS k ). For each AS AS i of the AS Path and for each destination prefix p related to this path, we extract the next-hop AS AS i+1 used by AS i to reach the destination p. In this way we build the set of BGP triplets, T BGP = {(AS i , AS i+1 , p)}. Looking at these triplets, a multi-exit is observed whenever we detect two (or more) triplets of the form (AS i , AS i+1 , p) and (AS i , AS ′ i+1 , p).

Observing Incoherencies in Multi-exits

We now present simple criteria for detecting, in a multi-exit, two types of incoherency with a set of common assumptions. Each incoherency reveals an instance in which one or more assumptions have been violated. Note that while observed incoherencies allow us to reveal assumption violations, the inverse is not necessarily the case. If an assumption is violated by an AS for which there is no multi-exit in our database, our techniques will not reveal this violation. Furthermore, it is possible, even in a multi-exit, for a violation to not manifest itself as an observable incoherency. Hence, our results provide a lower bound on the number of actual violations present at the time of the BGP snapshot.

Incoherent AS Path Lengths. We observe incoherent AS Path lengths as follows. Assume that X, in Fig. 1b, through a router R (not shown), announces to its neighbor W a route ̺ that it has received from Y , and simultaneously, through another router R ′ (not shown), announces to its neighbor W ′ a route ̺ ′ that it has received from Y ′ . If any of the first four steps of the BGP decision process (see Table 1) had been decisive, assumptions (A1) and (A2) require that R and R ′ will have selected the same route. Since each has selected a different route, the decision process will have passed steps 1 and 2, meaning that routes ̺ and ̺ ′ had the same local_pref values and identical AS Path lengths.

Our first criterion is thus to check the AS path length of routes identified in a multi-exit. If an AS announces two routes ̺ and ̺ ′ toward the same destination, and the AS Path lengths of ̺ and ̺ ′ differ, we deduce that either (A1) or (A2), or both, have been violated. Since our observations do not allow us to distinguish violations of (A1) from violations of (A2), we state merely that a path length incoherency reveals a violation of the composite assumption (A1 ⊕ A2).

Incoherent AS Relationships. We observe incoherent AS relationships as follows. According to (A3), an AS assigns higher values of local_pref to its customers than to its peers, which in turn receive higher values than do the providers. Also, according to (A4), there is only one relationship between two ASes, which means that there is one value of local_pref per neighboring AS and that this value further corresponds to the type of the relationship. Further, according to (A1), if an AS X is observed to do multi-exit routing through two different ASes Y and Y ′ then routes learned from those ASes have the same value of local_pref. Finally, according to (A2), Y and Y ′ must have identical types of relationship with X (e.g., they are both customers of X).

As a consequence, our second criterion is to examine the relationships between an AS and its next-hop ASes in a multi-exit. This requires the availability of an AS relationship database. We consider c2p and peer relationships, leaving out the special case of s2s without affecting our conclusions. If the relationships differ, then we can infer that at least one of the assumptions in the composite set (A1 ⊕ A2 ⊕ A3 ⊕ A4) is violated.

Results

Data Sources

Our study is based on two types of data: BGP updates and AS relationships. We parsed IPv4 BGP updates from BGPmon, which gathers data provided by RouteViews2 and peers to some other BGP routers [START_REF] Yan | BGPmon: A real-time, scalable, extensible monitoring system[END_REF].

We ran our analysis on snapshots taken in August 2012, then January, March, and August 2013. Results presented here are based on a snapshot taken on 24 March 2013 at 10:00:00 GMT. Table 2 lists some snapshot statistics and results. The other snapshots were similar. 3To increase the likelihood that each route that has been introduced has indeed had a chance to propagate to all of the vantage points, we apply a route stability filter. We consider a route stable if it is the last one received by a BGP router concerning a prefix and it has been received at least 24 hours ago without being withdrawn. The filter causes us to slightly undercount multi-exits, and its effect on the overall results is negligible.

We also remove from AS paths any ASNs reported by CAIDA [START_REF]CAIDA: The CAIDA AS Relationships dataset[END_REF] to belong to Internet exchange points (IXPs). In principle, these do not play a role in the routing policy of the ASes they interconnect. There is limited publicly available ground truth for AS relationships. From the projects that aim to infer them, we chose CAIDA's relationship dataset [START_REF]CAIDA: The CAIDA AS Relationships dataset[END_REF] since it is the only one we know to have a fully public methodology. For the 34.6% of their inferences that they were able to validate against either public or privately-obtained ground truth, they report accuracy of 99.6% for c2p relationships and 98.7% for peer relationships [START_REF] Luckie | AS relationships, customer cones, and validation[END_REF].

Quantifying Multi-exits

We observed 204,423 multi-exits, each having usually 2, but in some cases as many as 5, next-hop ASes. These constitute 2.7% of the (AS, destination prefix) pairs in our database (the remainder having just one next-hop AS), so by this metric multi-exits might seem to be rare. However, of the 6,762 transit ASes in our dataset, we observed 21% to be performing multi-exit routing. We found multi-exits in the ASes ranked 1 through 38 in CAIDA's AS ranking [START_REF]The CAIDA AS Ranking service[END_REF], including in all of the dozen or so ASes that are generally considered to be tier 1. So, multi-exit observations reveal information about ASes that play a central role in Internet routing.

Quantifying Incoherences

Fully 63% of the multi-exits in our dataset show incoherencies. AS Path length incoherencies, implying a violation of composite assumption (A1 ⊕ A2), showed up in 57% of multi-exits. AS relationship incoherencies, implying a violation of (A1 ⊕ A2 ⊕ A3 ⊕ A4), appeared in 33% of the multi-exits. There is overlap, with 27% of multi-exits revealing both kinds of incoherency.

Possible Causes for Violations

We speculate on reasons for these assumptions to be violated. Traffic engineering. From our conversations with people familiar with large operators, we believe that the assumptions don't fully capture contemporary traffic engineering practices. An AS might prefer, for example, to send some traffic through a peer rather than a customer, or through a provider rather than a peer, intentionally violating (A3). This could happen when the customer has insufficient bandwidth. It could also arise when a router in a large AS is geographically closer to a peer than to a customer, and the revenue that would be generated by routing via the customer is outweighed by the cost of carrying the traffic internally to the egress point for that customer. Complex or hybrid AS relationships. Previous work [START_REF] Dimitropoulos | AS relationships: inference and validation[END_REF][START_REF] Luckie | AS relationships, customer cones, and validation[END_REF] has highlighted the existence of complex or hybrid relationships, in which, for example, one large AS might be another's peer on one continent and its customer elsewhere. Such relationships violate (A4), and to be implemented (A2) must be violated. The CAIDA AS relationship database [START_REF] Luckie | AS relationships, customer cones, and validation[END_REF] is built using an understanding of this sort of relationship, but it provides as output only one relationship per AS pair. Misconfigurations. A router misconfiguration might cause any one of the assumptions to be violated. For example, an incorrect value of local_pref could result in an AS inadvertently favoring a provider over a customer, violating (A3). Erroneous AS relationships. An alternative is that assumptions are not violated as often as our results indicate, but rather that CAIDA's database is not indicating the correct AS relationships, despite its high accuracy in cases where it has been validated. However, it would need to be incorrect in a large portion of cases in order to change our overall conclusions.

Related Work

As we have described in previous sections, many papers in the literature [START_REF] Gao | On inferring autonomous system relationships in the Internet[END_REF][START_REF] Buob | Checking for optimal egress points in iBGP routing[END_REF][START_REF] Teixeira | Network sensitivity to hotpotato disruptions[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF][START_REF] Mühlbauer | In search for an appropriate granularity to model routing policies[END_REF][START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF][START_REF] Subramanian | Characterizing the Internet hierarchy from multiple vantage points[END_REF][START_REF] Di Battista | Computing the types of the relationships between autonomous systems[END_REF][START_REF] Xia | On the evaluation of AS relationship inferences[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | Inferring AS relationships: Dead end or lively beginning?[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | AS relationships: inference and validation[END_REF][START_REF] Shavitt | Near-deterministic inference of AS relationships[END_REF][START_REF] Luckie | AS relationships, customer cones, and validation[END_REF] have employed various assumptions about interdomain routing. Some of these papers, as well as others, have looked at violations of these assumptions.

Feamster et al. [START_REF] Feamster | Detecting BGP configuration faults with static analysis[END_REF] give some examples of violations of (A1) that can appear. Gill et al. [START_REF] Gill | A survey of interdomain routing policies[END_REF] queried 100 network operators for their private data, finding that 77% of ASes do not modify the value of local preference, i.e., they are coherent with (A2). The same survey reports that 87% of the concerned ASes are also coherent with (A3). Mühlbauer et al. [START_REF] Mühlbauer | In search for an appropriate granularity to model routing policies[END_REF] compared the routes that actually propagate to vantage points with the routes that ought to propagate, revealing violations of (A3). Giotsas et al. [START_REF] Giotsas | Detecting and assessing the hybrid IPv4/IPv6 As relationships[END_REF] show that relationships between pairs of ASes for IPv4 routes differ in 13% of the cases from those for IPv6 routes. Roughan et al. [START_REF] Roughan | 10 lessons from 10 years of measuring and modeling the Internet's Autonomous Systems[END_REF] summarize lessons about modeling ASes based on an extensive study of common assumptions. They observe, notably, that modeling an AS interconnection by a single connection is insufficient. Mühlbauer et al. [START_REF] Mühlbauer | Building an AS-topology model that captures route diversity[END_REF] similarly show the weaknesses in modeling an AS as an atomic entity.

Our work goes further by providing a method for detecting violations of commonly employed assumptions using publicly available data. We supply the first quantification of the extent of observable violations.

Our finding that violations can be observed in a large portion of transit ASes, including all of the biggest ones, does not mean, however, that previous work that made simplifying assumptions should be considered invalid. Most work on AS relationship inference [START_REF] Gao | On inferring autonomous system relationships in the Internet[END_REF][START_REF] Subramanian | Characterizing the Internet hierarchy from multiple vantage points[END_REF][START_REF] Di Battista | Computing the types of the relationships between autonomous systems[END_REF][START_REF] Xia | On the evaluation of AS relationship inferences[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | Inferring AS relationships: Dead end or lively beginning?[END_REF][START_REF] Dimitropoulos | AS relationships: inference and validation[END_REF][START_REF] Shavitt | Near-deterministic inference of AS relationships[END_REF][START_REF] Luckie | AS relationships, customer cones, and validation[END_REF] makes only assumption (A4). As we have noted, our method does not allow us to specify precisely which of a set of assumptions have been violated, and so we cannot say how often (A4) in particular does not hold. Furthermore, if (A4) is indeed violated, it might not be to a degree that would change previous results.

Our results might pose more serious questions for other work. Javed et al. [START_REF] Javed | PoiRoot: Investigating the root cause of interdomain path changes[END_REF] use the four assumptions to reduce the set of ASes that may be the root cause for an routing event in the network. If the assumptions are violated, the final set might not contain the root cause AS. Buob et al. [START_REF] Buob | Checking for optimal egress points in iBGP routing[END_REF] aim to solve a problem in which the assumptions are respected.

Conclusion and Future Work

This paper formalized four assumptions about interdomain routing in the Internet that are commonly used in the literature. We employed a data-driven method to challenge these assumptions, making novel use of so-called "multiexit" scenarios to reveal incoherencies between sets of these assumptions and actual interdomain routing decisions. We observe multi-exits in 21% of transit ASes in a BGP snapshot from March 2013, and find that that in 63% of these multi-exits at least one assumption is violated. Other snapshots showed similar results. Given this, we believe that future work should use these assumptions with caution.

We expect that our technique of using multi-exits to reveal characteristics of interdomain routing behavior can be further developed. Studying how they change over time could, for instance, tell us more about how ASes perform traffic engineering. We also believe that much more can be revealed by combining the BGP data with IP level measurements, which is part of our future work.

Table 1 :

 1 Selection steps of the BGP decision process

	1. Highest local preference	5. eBGP over iBGP
	2. Shortest AS Path length	6. Lowest IGP cost
	3. Lowest origin type	7. Tie break rules
	4. Lowest multi-exit discriminator

Table 2 :

 2 Snapshot statistics and results

	routes

There is a way to influence a routing decision before the local preference step, which is to use a vendor-specific weight attribute. It allows a router to prefer routes based upon which router it received them from. For the purposes of (A2), modifying weights through iBGP sessions has the same violation impact as modifying local preferences.

http://www.routeviews.org/

All of our data is publicly available at http://top-hat.info/routing-assumptions/.

Acknowledgments. We thank Martin Levy of Hurricane Electric for taking the time to impress upon us the weaknesses in assumptions (A2) and (A3). We also thank the anonymous reviewers and Matthew Luckie for their feedback. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements no. 287581 -OpenLab, and no. 318627 -mPlane.


PhD Michaël Marco

Florence Rodhain
email: florence.rodhain@univ-montp2.fr

Angélique Rodhain
email: angelique.rodhain@univ-montp2.fr

Volunteerism as a tool for Entrepreneurship and Education through a socio-economical activity in the context of the International Township Project of Auroville

Volunteerism as a tool for Entrepreneurship and Education through a socio-economical activity in the context of the International Township Project of Auroville

Michael Marco, Florence Rodhain, Angélique

Introduction

Numerous studies confirm that when people engage in volunteerism, the result is increased absorption, retention, attraction, morale, and other such positive benefits. In the city of Auroville, it is the concept of volunteerism itself which runs the city; indeed Aurovilians are considered as volunteers and stewards of the township, and it has been thus since 1968 that its inhabitants have dedicated their lives to this project. Recent studies in Auroville show that even among visitors to the city, a considerable number of them are dedicating their time to volunteer, for short or long periods, to contribute to the development of the township project. What is driving them then? What are the benefits for the city, the entrepreneurs and the individuals? How has this alternative way of working shaped the development of an international city that is growing as well on the economical aspect as the spiritual? How has volunteerism contributed to the growth of projects in Auroville which have achieved international dimensions? How can this concept be implemented in classical organizations in a way to benefit all, employers and employees? As we are here studying entrepreneurship, it is interesting to read Professor Israel Kirzner when he describes the entrepreneur as the man who perceives and pursues economic opportunities in the face of uncertainty and for whom alertness is the fundamental quality. Alertness is the entrepreneur's ability to perceive new economic opportunities that no prior economic actor has yet recognized. The entrepreneurial function is possible due to the presence of sheer ignorance on the part of some economic actors. Sheer ignorance, in Kirzner's definition, consists of not only not knowing a given piece of information but also of not knowing that one does not know it: no consideration of the informationpositive or negative -even enters the economic actor's mind. The entrepreneur constantly remedies sheer ignorance and corrects sheer error. Through his alertness, the entrepreneur foresees economic developments that other actors have overlooked. Volunteerism can then be seen as an economic opportunity of development not recognized yet by the other economic actors. This is the reason why a keener eye on the phenomena of volunteerism and its contribution to self development and economical growth, is indispensably called for. This subject calls for a look at the relation between volunteerism and organization; the concept of ‗work' itself can then be reviewed in order to find out what benefits volunteerism can bring into the frame of classical organization. An inquiry into a study of volunteerism shows clearly the importance for better understanding of human-resources management, the organization of work that considers the interest of employers and employees, and the inspiration of spirituality as a driving force for self and economical development. These themes are presented by the term ‗volunteerism' which can be defined as a form of work which finds its specificity in the fact that the people employed are not receiving any financial remuneration in exchange for working. It is especially on this aspect of the work that a spiritual approach to an economical activity is revealed.

Volunteerism indeed represents a platform of interaction where financial profit does not take place, but where business can still be successful. A spiritual enquiry is here facilitated by the gratification, mostly intangible, received in exchange of work. The experience of being a ‗worker' in resonance with the ‗work' being done is just what the volunteer personally expects. This gives rise to the essential question: Can volunteerism be a real opportunity for entrepreneurs to get motivated and dedicated people driven solely by intangible energy to work on the development of tangible projects? The study of this question justifies then the adoption of the following plan: On the first hand, the study of volunteerism will be a study of the mutual benefits brought about through collaboration between employers and employees in the context of employees offering their resources and employers hiring volunteer workers. On the second hand, the study of volunteerism in India will be in the context of its traditional Gurukul system and thus its application and manifestation in the International Township Project of Auroville which was established on the philosophy and principles of two wellknown Gurus namely Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Volunteerism -a mutually beneficial collaboration between employers and employees:

Numerous beneficial rewards have been proven in businesses, big or small, where employees are volunteers offering their resources and energy for no monetary remuneration. In fact through volunteerism a virtuous circle can mutually benefit employees and then employers. By offering their expertise, volunteers are able to refine and enhance their job skills while increasing networking opportunities; this is particularly poignant for recent college graduates. AAA of Northern California has found a positive correlation between employee promotions and those who volunteer. The company attributes this relationship to increased visibility of employee skills to management. [START_REF]How Employees Volunteers Multiply Your Community Impact, On Philanthropy‖[END_REF] In order to have an idea of the extent of this phenomena in USA, the Corporation for National and Community Service in a survey made in 2003 shows that 63.8 million Americans did voluntary service via their companies. The energy and sense of fulfillment can carry over to a work situation and sometimes helps to relieve tensions and foster new perspectives for old situations. Sometimes a volunteer experience can lead you to something you never even thought about or help you discover a hobby or interest you were unaware of. Volunteering is a brilliant way to get life experience. Volunteering brings together a diverse range of people from all backgrounds and walks of life. Both the recipients of your volunteer efforts and your co-workers can be a rich source of inspiration and an excellent way to develop your interpersonal skills. [START_REF]Ten Professional Developmental Benefits of Volunteering[END_REF] The Corporation for National and Community Service, with series of studies and researches shows the benefits of volunteerism 3 :

 A strong relationship between volunteering and health: those who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.  Volunteering also leads to improved physical and mental health.  Recent studies on the relationship between health and volunteering demonstrate that the benefits of volunteering are not limited to the recipients of the volunteer services. Research also suggests that volunteer activities offer those who serve more than just a social network to provide support and alleviate stress; volunteering also provides individuals with a sense of purpose and life satisfaction. 4 A study of adults aged 65 and older found that the positive effect of volunteering on physical and mental health is due to the personal sense of accomplishment that an individual gains from his or her volunteer activities 5 A study found that, in general, volunteers report greater life satisfaction and better physical health than do non-volunteers, and their life satisfaction and physical health improves at a greater rate as a result of volunteering [START_REF] Van Willigen | [END_REF] . Similarly a study of data from the Americans' Changing Lives survey found that those who volunteered in 1986, reported higher levels of happiness, life-satisfaction, self-esteem, a sense of control over life, and physical health, as well as lower levels of depression in 1989 and were more likely to volunteer again 7 .

The top business benefits associated with supporting volunteer activities included [START_REF] Back | Giving Time‖ HR Magazine[END_REF] :  providing personal development opportunities for employees (76%)  helping to motivate staff (72%)  bringing new skills/experience/ideas into the organization (69%)  enhancing corporate reputation (69%) or making it more respected (60%) A survey carried out by Time Bank through Reed Executive showed that among 200 of the UK's leading businesses:  73% of employers would recruit a candidate with volunteering experience over one without.  94% of employers believe that volunteering can add to skills.  94% of employees who volunteered to learn new skills had benefited either by getting their first job, improving their salary, or being promoted.

A business also benefits from promoting volunteerism. According to a survey of 248 volunteer-managers realized in 2000 9 , 97% felt employing volunteers provided a way to improve teamwork, 58% use the volunteer program for recruitment and employee retention, and 100% thought volunteering improved the company's image. Most importantly, companies that engaged in corporate social responsibility show a 10 year return on equity that was 10 percent higher than their competitors [START_REF] Graves | Increasing Small Business Volunteerism: Overcoming the Cost Factor‖ Dr Kelly[END_REF] .

-By paying more attention to community needs and pledging valuable skilled services to nonprofit organizations, companies are, consequently, strengthening employee retention, recruiting, teamwork and morale‖. 11 The author Claire McCartney (Senior Researcher at Roffey Park Management College) said: "Volunteering is becoming increasingly important for employers -and not just for their corporate responsibility. It is clear that well managed policies to support staff wishing to take part in volunteer activities can deliver significant business benefits in areas such as staff development and retention."

The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development 2005 Flexible Working survey of 585 UK organizations, found that staff retention is the main reason for organizations introducing flexible working practices. In the same survey, of HR professionals, 70% said that flexible working had a positive effect on employee motivation: Volunteering for a successful business.

Half of the respondents reported a direct correlation between volunteerism and profitability. These efforts are paying off in the way of recruiting and retention. Entrepreneurs find more and more that people are joining the company not just for the job and the money, but for a sense of shared culture. 12 Businesses that promote Family Volunteering report significant results 13 :  70% report improved public and community relations.  57% report greater employee commitment.

 15% report more productive employees.  12% report fewer hours lost for family responsibilities.

To conclude with this first part, it is important to note that entrepreneurs can also consider volunteerism as an alternative human resource. Of course cost-related factors are the main deterrent to increasing volunteerism in small businesses. The three volunteer-costs that must be addressed then are worker productivity loss, employee compensation, and organizing the volunteer effort.

Corporate volunteers are integral to the success of non-profit organizations as they increase the quantity and quality of services rendered. Studies demonstrate that business volunteers provide expertise superior to general-population contributors, thereby maximizing community benefits [START_REF] Filipowski | Benefits of Participation in Corporate Volunteer Programs: Employee Perceptions, Personnel Review[END_REF] . Corporate volunteerism clearly impacts the success of non-profit services. Volunteers have helped in creating ways to measure the impact non-profits have had on individuals so that they can substantiate their work to funding sources. Volunteers have also helped non-profits translate their mission into specific action plans towards the community. Other areas of volunteer influence include the creation of strategic plans for fundraising, financial analysis, market research, and web site development.

The work done by volunteers and their contribution to professional project should then not be under-estimated. In fact it is for this reason that the project of Auroville finds its interest by using mainly volunteer force.

The traditional system of Gurukul as found working in the International Township Project of Auroville:

The country of India is of particular importance in regard to its fabulous spiritual tradition.

The aspect or notion of -guru‖ in its culture makes an important reference of how knowledge and guidance for self spiritual development is transmitted/exchanged through the dedication, commitment and energy that the student/devotee brings to the teacher or guide. In this way volunteerism became then a quite common notion among Indian people. The Gurukul System is an ancient Indian concept of education, wherein the students received knowledge in several disciplines while residing with the teacher, also volunteering in household chores as part of his family. The Guru (teacher) was a guide, father and rolemodel. Life in a Gurukul meant keeping strict discipline. Students lived in very simple surroundings, practiced celibacy and cultivated virtue and discipline under the custody of their guru's confidence and attention. Students lived together as equals, regardless of their social status, and acquired the same knowledge from their guru. There were regular physical volunteer services that the pupils had to render to the teachers. They cooked their food, cleaned their shared environs, took care of the domestic animals and acquired knowledge of the texts. At the end of the training, students come out as responsible individuals. 1516 In this system of education the gurus or teachers did not charge any fees and so in exchange for the teachings, the students were voluntarily serving their guru. In this way, the learning and living space was well maintained benefitting the community, while the students/volunteers received satisfaction from the teachings of the teacher/guru. The high interest in this system is thus the relation between the exchange of learning and work. This Gurukul system was the tradition in India but during the colonial era it began to be replaced by the system established by the colonizers and became almost extinct, save in some remote areas.

But even in this day and age, in India, there exists throughout the land numerous spiritual centers known as Ashrams. Here, people live together, dedicated to the teachings and philosophies of a Guru or spiritual master. While receiving spiritual upliftment and teachings, ashramites, as also devotees who visit daily contribute towards the maintenance and organization of the center. Thus in this country, it is not hard to find someone here ‗offering service' or ‗seva' at any point in time, in other words, volunteering.

In the case of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram (SAA) in Pondicherry thousands of volunteers arrive here every year from all over the world to offer their services to Ashram maintenance, teaching, farming, music arts & crafts. It is noteworthy that the SAA is one of the richest ashrams in India, demonstrating well the impressive contribution of volunteer service framed within a strong cultural tradition based on self spiritual development. 1718 The SAA is all the more interesting for its Founders also founded, in 1968, the Universal Township of Auroville, 16 kilometers away from the Ashram, intended as a site for the manifestation of an actual human unity in diversity.

People from all countries of the world including India have in the past forty four years of its existence come to Auroville to contribute to its growth while endeavoring to live a life dedicated to human unity and international understanding.

Having spent a large number of the formative years planting trees and eking out a living in an arid and barren land, Aurovilians have today created a fertile forest in what was once desert and are now growing a sustainable community of their own. The lifestyle here reflects a universal culture of healthy living, beautiful handicraft, world music and dance, various healing practices, educational research and alternative & ecological ways of living, forestation, organic agriculture, village development, earth construction, alternative technologies, renewable energies, water treatment etc… In this context though, the highly interesting facts on Auroville are the percentages regarding people who come here as volunteers. With a population of only 2000 people, Auroville welcomes every year about 8 000 foreign visitors, among whom 28% arrive as volunteers 19 . It is clear then that volunteerism is of importance in the development of the International Township Project of Auroville. Volunteers to Auroville mostly come from Europe and North America, and are not necessarily only young people in need of adventure but also mature people leaving their daily lives and occupations to come to serve in Auroville. Actually every category of age is represented here. It is thus common in Auroville to be volunteering in a project in any one of its various fields of activity/research. Auroville also provides numerous projects/units held by entrepreneurs who are in need of human resources. With such a small population in the city, entrepreneurs here have the choice between local employees and volunteers and it is very often that we can see both working together, creating then a synergy which profits the project.

The results of a survey of a large sample of entrepreneurs show that the majority of the units in Auroville owe their success to the input of volunteers. This resource permits them to start concretizing innovative ideas, to improve them and to launch projects on another level. In this context what is often happening is the combination of temporarily skilled workers (volunteers) and the permanent local people help to create a sustainable way of running projects. The economical aspect of volunteerism can then be contributing to the growth of the business but also to the development of human unity.

In regard to the organization of work of Aurovilians, it is important to mention the fact that for most of the activities in the town, there is no strict qualification required. Anyone can come and do what they would like to do. It is here where the important point of volunteerism takes place: the volunteer will only give his energy if he believes in the project for which s/he will work. The motivation of being part a project which matches with her/his conviction is the main driving force of this alternative human resource. And it is the same for visitors who come to spend their spare time, vacation, holiday in Auroville; they can only be working if they know that their work is serving a greater cause than their own interest or the interest of someone else. The organization then must take in consideration the implication of the volunteer in the purpose it serves by giving the means to the volunteer to understand it and give her/him the feeling to take part of it.

Conclusion:

Communities are suffering due to the growth of secular societies but at the same time we can really bridge that expanding gap through volunteering. Volunteering is ultimately about helping others and having an impact on people's wellbeing. -What better way is there to connect with your community and give a little back? As a volunteer, you certainly return to society some of the benefits that society gives you.‖ is the common speech among Aurovilians. All these different surveys, studies and researches show clearly that the activity of volunteerism can really be a way of healing the soul. In fact, considering the physical body related to the spirit, it is by lightening the spirit with selfless actions, self-giving, and dedication that the body can receive the benefits of it. Relations of one to others can also change thanks to growth in self confidence and self esteem; the volunteer can spread around him/her an aura of serenity and well being which contributes as well to the happiness of others.

But is volunteerism able to work so well for anybody and any organization? By definition volunteers are people who voluntarily decide to dedicate their energy in exchange of intangible rewards. But what can we say about the people who don't have this inner impulse? Would it benefit them too?

To follow up with this study needs a keener eye on the education of people before beginning their professional life is needed, in order to see if the impulse of working in the same conditions as a volunteer can be activated. A current study in Auroville shows already that people who came by chance to Auroville, have been very intrigued by the work of a volunteer and have been inspired to become a volunteer too. Usually, this first time experience has driven them to commit to another longer period as a volunteer. Thus, a sense of benefit from self-giving can already be seen. This survey has also shown up that in numerous different cases people who were enquiring about their future with existential questions (after high school, or university/college, or even after few or many years of working experience) have found a better understanding of their interests in life or at least got a good clue. This inquiry on volunteerism shows then its high interest not only regarding the individual volunteers, but also the entrepreneurs and even any State interested in reducing health problems and expenses, unemployment and civic spirit of the citizens for a more ecological and social approach of life.