Author archive
-
Lost Generation? David Blanchflower warns of the ‘lull before the storm’
At a special lecture this week, organised by v, former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee Member, Professor David Blanchflower, highlighted to a packed auditorium at the RSA, the dangers of youth unemployment for society and the long term negative impact on a young person’s life chances.And the panellists, including; Stephen Timms MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury; David Willetts MP, Shadow Minister for Universities and Skills; Miles Templeman, Director-General of the Institute of Directors and Wes Streeting, President of the National Union of Students, agreed. Willetts acknowledging, ‘young people are the clear victims in this recession’.
With youth unemployment nudging one million people, Blanchflower warned that more needs to be done to support young people, stressing that, ‘we have to deal with this situation now because the costs of not dealing with it are even more serious.’
v’s Chief Executive Terry Ryall supported this analysis, saying, ‘we know from our work with 100,000s of young people that the recession is hitting them hard’.
v used the special event to call for funding and cross party political support to implement a unified national public service scheme, building on the success of our full-time volunteering programme ‘vtalent year’. Targeted at the most disadvantaged and marginalised - who will be the most vulnerable when the job market recovers - such a scheme could make a significant impact on the lives of young people as well as all the issues surrounding youth unemployment.
-
v’s robot warmly welcomed into Parliament
Well, we did it. We put a robot in Parliament. Not just any robot I have to say, a robot that writes out, word for word, what young people care most about - delivering those messages directly to the politicians. At a time when only 3% of young people have ever contacted their MP, the robot - nicknamed Voicebot - is a very modern twist on writing a letter to your MP.
Voicebot in Parliament
The Voicebot is part of v’s proactive research campaign called Voicebox.
At a reception hosted by Tim Loughton MP, shadow minister for children and young people, to launch the robot’s week-long stay in parliament, lots of MP’s got to hear about the project and meet with the robot itself.
Tim Loughton MP, shadow minister for children and young people talking with v volunteers
Speaking at the launch Tim Loughton MP said, ‘Voicebox puts young people right at the heart of democracy. This is a great initiative bringing politicians and young people together’.
Other MP’s visiting the robot, reading young peoples’ cares and talking to the v volunteers included Angela Smith MP, Minister for the Third Sector, who commented, ‘Young people are our future and it is vital that we listen and understand their needs and concerns. Voicebox is an excellent two-way communication tool. It has the potential to give us real insight, helping us to take action that is truly effective where it most counts’.
Angela Smith MP, Minister for the Third Sector reading young peoples cares
Terry Ryall, chief executive of v reminded those at the launch that ’hundreds of thousands of young people want to make the world a better place. The challenge for politicians everywhere is to take risks with new ways to engage young people ‘.
The full results of the research underpinning the robot is being fed into v’s project with the think tank Demos, A New Anatomy of Youth.
More pics of the launch available here.
-
Online volunteering, UN style
onlinevolunteering.org was launched in 2000 by the United Nations Volunteers programme. The premise is simple. Volunteers contribute their skills to help organizations address development challenges. From website building, translation, research, design work to building relationships with donors, the website connects volunteers with organizations working for sustainable human development (thats development with people and the planet in mind).
In 2007, this innovative approach to volunteering provided 3,800 online volunteering assignments offered by development organisations covering a wide range of projects.
As a volunteer you can search an easy-to-use database by task, topic or region. How about voluneering to be a moderator for an online consultation on youth migration or designing a logo and graphics for a website? Volunteers also help maintain the UN site.
-
Lost generation? Recession and the young
We’ve been talking recently in vLabs blog about how unemployment is affecting young people in the UK; looking at the role of volunteering as a lifeline during hard times, how employers could help and some of the creative ways young people have been responding to adversity.
Of course, the recession is not just impacting on young people in the UK.
Here, I thought I would share some of the best journalism I’ve come across which highlights how young people are being affected by the recession in other countries.
The New York Times leads the way with an interesting look at the development of Rural Labour Squads in Japan. In Europe, TIME’s cover page story, ‘Generation Disappointment’, looks in-depth at the impact of the recession on young people in Spain. Foreign Policy magazine looks wider, at how young Europeans face a declining jobs market, ‘Europe’s New Lost Generation’.
In the US, PBS and the veteran broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff have recorded a great series of interviews in, Generation Next: Tough Choices, looking at how 18-to-25-year-olds or trying to start their lives in one of the most challenging economic times in recent memory. For the figures and trends of youth unemployment in the US, check out Bob Herbert’s Op-Ed.
by Report Digital
In the UK, the Economist’s, ‘No Way to Start in Life’ and the Guardian’s, ‘Young People and Unemployment’ coverage is informative.
In this context, v has been working hard to get volunteering seen as an important part of the response to youth unemployment.
We’re thrilled to be hosting with the RSA a lecture by Professor David Blanchflower, the leading labour economist and recent member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee from June 2006-May 2009, who will deliver a keynote address on the recession and the young.
We’ve then got an impressive panel lined-up - David Willetts MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Universities and Skills, Terry Ryall, CEO, v, Wes Streeting, President, National Union of Students and Miles Templeman, Director-General, Institute of Directors - to debate what can be done to prevent a generation losing hope and opportunity.
-
Inspiring ideas for the future
3 billion. Thats the number of young people under twenty-five in the world - as threebillion points out, thats half the worlds population.
How can the energy and ideas of this group contribute to development? Well, Michael Boampong has some thoughts. We’ve featured Michael’s organisation, Young People We Care, previously on the vlabs blog.
Here, Michael discusses Youth-Led Development: Promoting Sustainable Development and Empowering Youth in an essay for the website Youthink!’s International Youth Day Essay Contest.
Responding to the essay question set by the World Bank, What are your tangible ideas for how youth can create effective, long-lasting change? other ideas include a TV channel by and for youth around the world, a wider look at how our attitudes can help shape our planet’s future and how obstacles like red-tape or limited finances should not young people from making a difference.
What are your ideas?
In preparation for the Y2Y Global Youth Conference 2009, the World Bank is seeking essays on Youth Entrepreneurship in times of crisis.
Get writing.
-
Spotlight: The Good Gym
Be good, get fit. Thats the tag being used by the creators behind a new project bringing together volunteering and exercise. By linking runners and isolated less-mobile people, the Good Gym aims to overcome the loneliness experienced by some older people. Runners will jog to their house, deliver something nice, have have a brief chat and be on their way again.
Like v’s work to define volunteering for a new generation by providing a range of opportunities to fit young peoples lives (we value whatever time they can give), the Good Gym is an interesting example of what they term, the ‘fine-grain’ approach to volunteering, where participation is based on frequent low impact activities that are integrated usefully into the participant’s life.
Over the Summer and Autumn of 2009 the Good Gym will test the working and processes of the project in Tower Hamlets. If you live or work in the area then join the good gym pilot project.
As the people at the Good Gym say, it will help you get fit by provding a good reason to go for a run and it will help the person being visited by providing them with some friendly human contact.
Join the pilot. Get running.
-
Young people: Living online?
Recent stories regarding young people’s use of the internet and social media have raised an interesting question mark on an assumed trend; that young people live online.
First came the research note into young people’s media habits wrote by a 15 year-old intern at Morgan Stanley. The note, which describes his friends’ declining social media habits ended up on the front page of the Financial Times and caused a stir with City investors and media analysts alike.
And although it received a bashing on the blogs for being the views of one young guy, the launch of Ofcom’s Communications Market Report 2009 seemed to back up part of the note by reporting that in the 15-24 age group, use of social networking sites declined from 55 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 to 50 per cent in 2009. This contrasts with Ofcom’s findings in 2006 which highlighted social media as the next big thing for 15-24 year-olds.
Gerry Greaney/Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
So what are young people doing online?
There is of course lots of research to quote in answering that question, but most of it is contradictory.
One interesting answer comes from Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper’s and the author of “And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.” Wasik believes that as ‘old-model’ opportunities disappear in the real world; jobs, internships and grants, young creatives are turning to the Bright Lights, Big Internet to get their big break. Suggesting the growth of much more entrepreneurial and creative uses for the web when the real world is letting them down.
On life online and keeping creativity alive in the recession, check out ‘A little rant about ‘the lost generation’.
-
Promoting a Creative Generation
Today marks the start of Promoting a Creative Generation, a two-day conference in Göteborg looking at the role of children and young people in the new culture and media landscape.
Taking place within the context of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation and hosted under the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, 350 experts and participants will discuss the creativity and cultural habits of children and young people.
Gunnar Seijbold/ Regeringskansliet.
Swedish Minister for Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth says, “this conference is to learn more about both the possibilities and problems of the new culture and media landscape that our children and young people encounter. The digital cultural platforms create new and often difficult issues that, despite their different starting points, are clearly related. And it is almost always young people who are affected”.Keynote speakers include Renad Qubbaj from the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Ramallah and Professor Bamford, Director of Cultural Programmes for Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), London.
The conference programme focuses on different aspects of daily life for children and young people, recognising that, today, children and young people are to a great extent not only consumers but also producers in the new media landscape. Sessions will look at how to strengthen children and young people’s right to culture, how traditional cultural institutions can find ways to remain attractive and accessible for the new generation, promote the exchange of experience and knowledge on how public investments can help to ensure that children and young people’s right to culture in all forms is guaranteed and will also include participants trying out the younger generation’s world of digital communication.
The opening and closing sessions can be watched via webcast
In the UK, very similar questions are being raised by The New Deal of the Mind coalition, chaired by the journalist and former political editor of the New Statesman, Martin Bright. The New Deal of the Mind is a grouping of like-minded individuals who believe we must not let the recession crush creativity and innovation. Learning the lessons of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal, the coalition believes the creative and digital industries can help provide a route through the recession for young people and others. Check out their latest report, ‘Do It Yourself: Cultural and Creative Self-Employed in Hard Times’, exploring self employment options in the cultural and creative sector.
Of course this blog celebrates how creativity and innovation are changing youth volunteering, but revolutionising how young people can share their time and talents with others is becoming of much broader concern, across many sectors.
Any thoughts on these issues?
-
‘United We Serve’: Michelle Obama opens US volunteering conference
In what is becoming a signature domestic issue for the First Lady and the President, Michelle Obama kicked off the ‘United We Serve’ summer initiative, which runs from June 22nd to the National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11th 2009.
In a video message released on May 16, Michelle Obama called on all Americans to help in the nation’s recovery by volunteering in their communities this summer and beyond to help lay a new foundation for growth by engaging in sustained, meaningful community service.
The ‘United We Serve’ campaign launch formed part of the First Lady’s keynote opening speech at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. The conference, co-hosted by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Points of Light Institute, brings together more than 4,000 volunteer and service leaders from across the nation and globe at a time of strong momentum for service and civic engagement.
In the US, momentum is building following President Barack Obama’s signing on April 21, 2009, of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The Serve America Act reauthorizes and expands national service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency created in 1993.
Check out the conference programme and speeches.
Loading ...
Nice piece, yourself.
Comments