Posts Tagged ‘teach for america’
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Youth volunteering drops in the US: What should we learn?
For the first time since 2001, volunteering amongst youth in the US is seeing a downward trend. The Washington Post speaks to Peter Levine, director of Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement or CIRCLE, who acknowledges a ‘loss in momentum’ in youth volunteering based on research by the institute, though young people below the age of 25 are still ‘volunteering in higher numbers than their parents did’. (That shouldn’t be cause for comfort per se because the population of the country has grown significantly as well). Levine is hopeful that the Serve America Act which will inject funds into AmeriCorps will be instrumental in changing this situation. Well-known US site Volunteer Match, that lists opportunities for volunteers, also had similar findings from a separate research study though they believe that the situation isn’t as bad as it sounds with thousands of young people having volunteered recently for the Obama campaign, for example.
Another potential reason for this drop is the bad economy, with young people preferring to work at McDonald’s for money rather than to volunteer their time for charity. Surprisingly, however, a lot of young people are applying to programmes like AmeriCorps and Teach for America, but are often failing to gain admission because they are so over-subscribed. So there are two clearly demarcated kinds of groups applying to volunteer – one, those that would volunteer locally but can’t afford to anymore, and the other, those that are willing and qualified to work in specific well-known, community service-focussed government paid schemes but don’t get admitted. What is important then is to create opportunities that make volunteering attractive enough for those who are unsuccessful in getting admission into these schemes not to give up community service altogether.
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