From High Intrinsic Drive to Sustainable Resilience: The Organizational Empowerment Mechanism of Community-Based Childcare—A Field Study of “Tongxin Post” in Guangdong Province ^†

Against the backdrop of rapid urbanization in China, community-based childcare services for school-age children are confronted with the dilemma of “easy onset but difficult sustainability.” Based on self-determination theory and Fei Xiaotong’s differential mode of association, this study takes “Tongxin Post” (a community-based after-school childcare and growth center) in L Community, Guangdong Province, as a case study. It explores the internal mechanisms through which community childcare services transition from high volunteer intrinsic motivation to organizational sustainable resilience, and on how “association-based” operations build organizational empowerment mechanisms. Our findings show that the sustainability of community self-organization rests not only on meeting psychological needs but also on creatively embedding the indigenous logic of differential hierarchy. We propose that community governance (a) institutionally empowers participants to secure autonomy, (b) provides structured pathways to enhance volunteers’ competence, and (c) integrates family–community co-service to strengthen relatedness.