Archive for the ‘Research’ Category
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Measuring the long-term benefits of youth volunteering
The Institute of Volunteering Research has released a new report, Young people, volunteering, and youth projects: A rapid review of recent evidence. (Well worth a read and a good place to start if you’re looking for sources of facts to back up a funding application.)
One of the things the report points out is that, in England, there have been few studies which look at longer term impact on volunteers or on wider social and community impacts of volunteer programmes. With youth unemployment rising, there’s a real need to understand one particular key long term impact: the link between volunteering and employability.
In the USA there have been useful studies assessing short, medium and long-term impacts of a range of schemes including Americorps and City Year. One example, Still Serving: Measuring the eight-year impact of Americorps on alumni, shows that sixty percent of AmeriCorps State and National volunteers go on to work in a nonprofit or governmental organization.
The City Year Experience Over Time: Findings from the Longitudinal Study of Alumni shows that more than three-quarters of City Year alumni reported that City Year had contributed to the development of their early careers, and their assessment of City Year’s impact remained relatively consistent over time. (With results like this, it’s great to see that US-based City Year is setting up a project in London.)
While evidence of the impact of volunteering on employment rates is mixed, research shows that young people perceive volunteering as enhancing their employability and employers value volunteering experience for improving skills such as communication, leadership, team work, and self-confidence.
In the medium to long term, existing research suggests that the experience of full-time volunteering, at least, can instil a lasting commitment to voluntary service, but gaps in research and evidence of the long-term impact of youth volunteering remain. v is starting to address this with a scoping study which aims to develop best practice and attract investment in research into the long-term benefits of youth volunteering.
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Reimagining volunteering in a connected world: a process for developing creative new volunteering ‘products’
In 2008 and Timebank v co-commissioned a piece of research to gain better understanding about the barriers to youth volunteering.With this new understanding, a toolkit was created for the volunteering sector to use and develop opportunities that were more relevant and enticing to young people.
The toolkit draws inspiration from “a new breed of social action brands”, emerging as a result of self-organising via The Internet. Homemade, authentic and innovative these organizations, initiatives and websites are creating new ways for people to give their time, take action and make a social difference.
Reimagining volunteering in a connected world: a process for developing creative new volunteering ‘products’ outlines how lessons from these new social action plans can help inspire innovation in the voluntary sector.
You can also view slides from a workshop based on this work on Slideshare:
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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.
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Robot enters House of Commons to Show MPs what Young People Care About
As MPs go back to work at Parliament today, v’s new research has shown that just 10% of young people believe politicians are best able to change the country. The data collected through Voicebox shows that young people are caring, considerate, articulate and passionate. We hope our interactive robot in the Houses of Commons is an innovative way to make MPs sit up and take notice.
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. Until Thursday, young people can visit a website, put in what they care about and the robot will write it out, stroke by stroke, word by word, directly to the politicians.
Voicebot has been collecting comments from 1000s of young people.
The study and robot come at a time when respect among the public for the political classes is at an all time low. A study published earlier this year by Hansard Society indicates that currently only 24% of 18 to 24 year olds are certain to vote in the next general election - the lowest of all groups by a long way. And, contrary to some images, young people are the least likely of all age groups to be politically active - just 4%.
The full results of the Voicebox are also being fed into even more detailed work with the think tank Demos, looking at young people and their relationship with power and politics. This project, titled An Anatomy of Youth will review: young people’s portrayal in media, their presence in recent policy debates and existing information on young people’s behaviours and their attitudes.
Voicebot is part of v’s proactive research campaign called Voicebox, with over 5,000 people having taken part so far. The project is live and constantly evolving. The more young people that participate the more accurate picture we’ll create of young Britons today. Over the coming months, Voicebox will continue to collect and share data about lifestyles, attitudes and behaviours of young Britons. In an age when young people are using social media more and more, Voicebox uses new and interactive social media to engage young people.
Want to find out more about the data we’re collecting? Have a look at the results here.
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The Goodie Hoodie - young people fight back about negative stereotypes of youth
The negative stereotypes of today’s youth as ‘violent’, ‘disrespectful’ or ‘apathetic’ were challenged head on today by the results of our innovative youth insight project Voicebox. At an early hour this morning, Terry Ryall, v’s Chief Executive, appeared on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme challenging the general public and politicians to re-consider their views of today 16 – 25 year olds.
The results show that while 82% of young people who participated in the research might own a ‘hoodie’ this does not equate to anti-social behaviour. Voicebox shows 85% of young people or their friends don’t carry a knife, 86% have never shoplifted, and 69% did not agree drugs were ok for recreational use.
The messages young people are submitting to the Voicebox robot demonstrate their frustration about the widely held negative perceptions of young people today. The emerging results from Voicebox blow apart the idea that the young generation are disengaged.
Results from the online polls support this showing that 78% of young people do, in fact, respect their elders, 75% are happy with the relationship they have with their family, and 68% are content living at home.
Voicebox will continue to collect, use, and share data about life styles, attitudes, and behaviours of young Britain’s. In a modern day twist on writing a letter to your MP, the Voicebox Robot will be appearing in the Houses of Parliament from 12 – 16 October. The robot will directly articulate the care of a generation directly to politicians. We want as many young people to have their voices heard. All they need to do is visit Voicebox to write what they care about and it will be written out by the robot.
For further information on the Voicebox results, download the press release or visit the Voicebox website.
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Robot gives young people a voice in Westminster
Throughout October, as part of Voicebox, v’s youth insight and empowerment project, a writing robot will be installed in the Houses of Parliament. Its role is to take the views of individual young people from all over England right to the heart of the UK’s political system; voicing young people’s concerns, in their own words, in the corridors of power.
v, the National Young Volunteers’ Service, and Sidekick Studios have created The Voicebot, an industrial web-enabled writing robot arm which writes out the messages sent via the internet. We pose the question, ‘what do you care about?’ and their answer is written out and recorded for all to see. In October, The Voicebot and the messages it has recorded will be displayed in a unique installation within the very walls of Houses of Parliament, literally getting the views held by young people under the noses of MPs.
v aims to tell the government what people really care about (in less than 160 characters). Its like updating your Facebook status, but its a direct conversation with the government. Like this example, from the Wired blog (see also their top 5 bizarre Twitter replacements).
“I care about my Mum with Alzheimer’s, I take care of her every day but she doesn’t even know who I am. Can you help us?”
The aim is to demonstrate that people, and young people in particular, do have views and opinions on politics, they just might not want to communicate via the traditional channels provided to them. Not many people can be bothered to write a letter to their MP, but if it was a bit easier maybe they would…
Another real prompt for action is the fact messing around with a writing robot is just kind of cool. Political agenda aside, visitors to the site want to see if it really works and this is a compelling motivation to send a message.
v are aiming this activity at 16-25 year olds but anyone of any age can send a message via The Voicebot. Messages sent by over 25s have their own digital image created and are logged in a digital gallery on Flickr. People aged 16-25 get emailed a photo of their message in the flesh - check out what they’re talking about on the results page.
We have one month to get as many people as possible to send their message and ensure we have a big impact on the Houses of Parliament. Spread the word - and try it out for yourself here.
The Voicebot from sidekick studios on Vimeo.
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Recognise us and respect us
New research by the British Youth Council, Recognise and respect us, examines the barriers some young people face in volunteering. The research highlights that young people often don’t know if their volunteering is recognised or appreciated. The research recommends greater recognition and respect for young volunteers.
NCCPE’s Student Volunteering: Background, Policy and Context (June 2009) highlights other reports championing recognition for young volunteers. Both the Morgan Enquiry and the Volunteering Works report (from Volunteering England and the IVR) conclude that young people, like adults want feedback and to know what they have done has been valued. They are often more inclined to want some accreditation for their achievements which will have currency in the workplace.
The National Youth Agency’s 2007 report, Young People’s Volunteering and Skills Development, showed that while a minority - usually those who were already achieving well in formal education - did not see formal recognition as important, most young people involved in the research wanted their skills to be at least recorded through certificates and evidence for CVs. This was seen as particularly important for those who had little or no other evidence of achievement.
Whilst youth unemployment figures continue to rise there’s much discussion that volunteering can viable way for young people to enter their chosen industry whilst building up the necessary skills set needed for the world of work. But we must work to ensure high profile recognition and respect for the contribution young people can make through volunteering. Young volunteers need, and deserve, to feel valued. Employers need to respect their contribution and ensure that they don’t perceive volunteering as a source of cheap labour.
This finding strikes a chord with us here at v. Our vinspired awards are recognised by the CBI, and have won support from Dragon’s Den star James Caan, EMI’s Felix Howard, and Birmingham City’s Karren Brady. We’ll be celebrating the achievements of some our our vfifty award holders in the national press in the coming months.
And we’re busy working towards the vinspired National Awards ceremony for young volunteers, which takes place in October. Nominations are now open, so nominate volunteers you know – give them the recognition and respect they deserve!
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The science of happiness study concludes: “Perhaps we are a selfish nation”
Depressing news for altruism today, with the news that The Science of Happiness study has concluded that altruism has a negative effect on happiness compared to the control group.
Some 26,000 people participated in last week’s online study, testing one of four, commonly-used happiness techniques: expressing gratitude, smiling, recalling a pleasant event from the day before and carrying out an act of kindness. Each was instructed via a YouTube video - here’s the kindness clip:
All groups recorded an increase in happiness, but the “acts of kindness” group achieved -8% less happiness than the control group. In an article in today’s Guardian, Dr Wiseman concludes: “Perhaps we are a selfish nation.” This conclusion will come as a surprise to people working in the voluntary sector, where there’s an abundance of case studies, anecdotes and research showing how volunteering can make people feel more confident, healthier and happier.
Francesca Borgonovi’s 2008 paper, Doing well by doing good. The relationship between formal volunteering and self-reported health and happiness, concludes that people who volunteer report better health and greater happiness than people who do not, a relationship that is not driven by socio-economic differences between volunteers and non-volunteers. A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality in 2008 showed that students who engage in virtue-building activities such as volunteering report being happier than their more hedonistic counterparts. And ICM Research findings commissioned for CSV (Community Service Volunteers) and Barclays in 2004 found that 71% of volunteers offering their professional skills and experience said volunteering helps combat depression.
So what’s going on with The Science of Happiness? There are obvious differences between Wiseman’s study and the altruism we see in volunteering, including motivation, community impact and level of commitment. Maybe doing things for others with the sole objective of making yourself happier just doesn’t amount to true altruism.
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Brazillian project provides practical solutions to bridge the digital divide
MetaReciclagem is an open network in Brazil which shows young people how to acquire, recycle and use technology for social change and inclusion in their communities.
This programme has spread really quickly, creating dozens of recycled computer labs throughout Brazil. In these labs, young volunteers collect used computer parts from donations and learn how to reassemble them, taking advantage of free software and internet access to learn through structured workshops, mutual learning and experimentation.
Completed, recycled computers are often donated to non-profit organisations or used to provide lower-income communities with access to technology and the Internet. The volunteers are then encouraged and incentivised to go on to set up new laboratories, with support from the virtual community of projects throughout the country.
Volunteers stay involved for an average of 1 year. Since 2003, over 5,000 young people have participated, most of whom come from families earning less than US$500 a month. Labs champion youth leadership, as volunteer Joe Nascimento explains: “The project is very decentralised; there is no boss. Instead, decisions are made through group discussions, and every opinion is valued.”
MetaReciclagem is a really practical way to show young people that it is possible - and affordable - to access technology and use it for social change and inclusion in their communities. It’s an inspiring project which keeps young volunteers at its heart, giving them the tools they need to help their communities cross the digital divide. MetaReciclagem champions open source, collaborative production and the use of technology for positive social change, and their business model suggests a commitment to practicing what they preach.
For more examples of practical projects tackling the digital divide, visit the UNESCO website, which also hosts a Community Multimedia Centres guide.
MetaReciclagem was one of 22 global projects analysed as part of Innovations in International Youth Volunteering, by v and Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP).
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Visualising the views of young people with Voicebox
As this blog demonstrates, there’s a lot of excitement around social innovation right now. At the beginning of July myself and my colleague from Sidekick Studios went along to Nesta’s Reboot Britain conference, which was all about how we make the plethora of social tools now available to us all online more useful. Can we start to create a more open dialogue between the public and the government through social media? Can the public provide feedback from the service-user viewpoint and help the government make better decisions? And will the government listen?
What’s massively interesting is the fact that people really do think change is possible, it might not be an almighty revolution as the idealists (or is that anarchists) predict but it looks certain that a shift is on the horizon. Finally the government and policy makers have cottoned on to the fact the internet can provide a cost efficient way of getting closer to the real issues for public services and perhaps more importantly that participation in these conversations will make them more popular with their constituencies!
A couple of interesting examples of service-user platforms we’ve recently heard about are Patient Opinion and MyPolice. The latter of which was born at the most recent Social Innovation Camp in Glasgow, a series of events that facilitate face to face brainstorming and problem solving between service users, web developers, producers, social entrepreneurs and creative marketeers. With all that talent and experience in one room, people are coming up with some really smart ideas.
With this kind of stuff going on as the back drop, Sidekick believe that it’s extremely timely for v’s Voicebox project. We know that v is committed to being youth-led and empowering young people, so when presented with the brief to create an open research project that would not only engage young people but create a useful youth insight tool for the voluntary sector, we jumped at the opportunity.
What we have created for v is a platform that facilitates youth representation. Our hope is that through interactive opinion polls, a growing community blog space to discuss social issues and data visualisations that bring the survey results to life, we will bring people closer to young people’s views.
Not only this but we will help young people get their views heard by the government and policy makers and we will be developing our work further in this area. And by finding out about the causes and issues that most affect young people, v can ensure its programmes are creating volunteering opportunities which are relevant to them.
Voicebox is an open project, anyone of any age can complete the survey and anyone can download the data or play around with the filters on the results page so they get a visualisation specific to their own queries, there’s even an Application Programming Interface (API) so that the real geeks can take the data and create their own data visualizations.
More than anything we think its fun, but with a very serious back bone - it’s an experiment in using social media to inform public policy. The more people that take part in the surveys, the more meaningful the results become - so spread the word.
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