This case study addresses the role and impact of independent volunteering forms and initiatives during war by focusing on three examples from the July War in 2006, as experienced and narrated by several humanitarian volunteers and experts. This study argues that acts of volunteerism produce locally engaged forms of expertise that have the ability to challenge, direct, and transform global packages of aid into more locally informed and effective interventions. The personal and political transformations that volunteers experience, and the deep form of local expertise they acquire are important resources in communal responses to war and conflict. They reveal the importance of local forms of expertise in challenging and transforming universal humanitarian programs, policies and visions of how to intervene during war.
