In recent years, mandated community service has been on the rise, driven by increasingly cash strapped (and perhaps more humanitarian) correctional systems, and by moves to encourage the notion of in youth. Many in the voluntary sector argue that they are expected, often with no additional funding, to pick up these functions from justice and educational systems.

Campers have included cancer survivors, current cancer patients -- some of whom are still undergoing active treatment, and cancer-patient siblings.

Controversy exists around the terminology used is seen as oxymoronic, since definitions of volunteering overwhelmingly include the element of free choice to act. Many opponents of the term also see a threat to the spirit of volunteering if it becomes contaminated with notions of force and punishment. Ironically, there is some indication that the term originated in the voluntary sector itself ? the sector now most keen to clarify the difference between volunteering and mandated activity. A term that allows clearer definition is .