This thesis addresses the theme of volunteering as collective action and its empirical object of study is the particular experience of an non formal civil organization, the Social Project Casa Reviver. This is a local initiative which serves residents of Morro do Estado slum, settled in Niterói, a city part of the Metropolitan Region of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The study aims to demonstrate that this type of associative experience, recognized by the category social project, presents significant elements that allow it to be placed in the field of formation of Brazilian civil society. The associative and participative format conform to the profile of the solidarity action networks that have emerged in the country since the 1990s, a period marked by the protagonism of new collective actors, known as NPOs and civic movements such as The Campaign Against Hunger created by Betinho (GOHN, 2005; SCHERER-WARREN, 1994). The changes resulting from the democratization processes, in Europe and Latin America, led to the resurgence of the concept of contemporary civil society in a tripartite version (State, market and society) (KEANE, 1988; WOLFE, 1992, COHEN and ARATO, 1994; AVRITZER, 1994 etc.). The tripartite model is applied as an analytical reference for the study of the problem related to the theme and object of this work. It is regarded to the emergence of the new social volunteering phenomenon (SILVIA, 2004; CUNHA, 2010), aim of intense critical debate, largely polarized, in academic circles, in political militancy and in the public sphere, from the height of the 1990s until, at least, the first decade of the 21st Century. Social and civic values, such as solidarity and citizenship, which form the field of meaning of the new networks of voluntary social actions, indicate a relationship of elective affinity as a process of secularization of the traditional practices of Christian charity and the formation of an engaged and politicized philanthropy, based on second half o the 20th Century (LIMA NETO, 2013). These historical antecedents, as well as the Citizenship Action movement, and the context of neoliberal reforms, are related to the process of forming the new social volunteering, which redefined the profile of civil society participation and contributed to a change in the civic culture of the country.