Students

In a recent report, The National Youth Agency in England explores the skills, knowledge and attitudinal development that young people derive from volunteering. The research did not intend to evaluate volunteering projects in terms of quality or volunteer management. Rather, the study focused on how youth benefited from volunteering, and what mattered most to them during the volunteer process. The researchers explored this issue in depth through 30 case studies and interviews with 215 young people. This Research to Practice reviews the key themes of this report, suggests how organizations can use the findings to promote the message of volunteering to the young, and discusses how the results can benefit and enhance the volunteering experiences for volunteers of all ages.

What does a canned meat product called SPAM™ have to do with volunteer recruitment?  In this article, the authors explore the answer to this question by reviewing the key steps in volunteer recruitment, a process that helps remind an organization that it needs not only a clear purpose but people to rally around that purpose.  All it takes is a little S.P.A.M. − Skill development, Product knowledge, Audience understanding and Motivation.

Synergist was a magazine published three times a year during the 1980s by the National Center for Service-Learning (NCSL), one of the lesser-known programs of the former American federal government agency, ACTION. NCSL provided resources and technical assistance to schools and agencies seeking best practices for service-learning projects for students. Synergist offered its articles at no charge and without copyright. The article reprinted here is the “Guest Speaker” feature from the Spring 1980 edition. It’s by a young Marian Wright Edelman, already director of the Children’s Defense Fund.

In her passionate essay, Edelman examines how students can combat small injustices to break the larger patterns of neglect bringing woe to millions of children. Still pertinent 25 years later, her words give a blueprint for taking constructive action as one person against the system.

When the 1997 National Survey for Volunteering in the UK was published, it appeared to show that young peoples’ regard and enthusiasm for volunteering was in decline. Responding to this, the Institute for Volunteering Research produced the report ‘What Young People Want from Volunteering’ (a summary can be obtained at http://www.ivr.org.uk/youngresearch.htm), based on qualitative research with groups of young people. This research resulted in a ‘wish-list’ for volunteering: ‘Flexivol’ summarises the essential requirements of 16-24 year olds, and serves as an acronym for the most important elements young people want in a volunteer assignment.

Read about ‘Flexivol’ and the report’s findings in this review.

The Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada has a dedicated volunteer corps that until recently was comprised mainly of adults who had been serving the Museum for 20 to 30 years. Little thought had been given to succession planning, although the volunteers were clearly aging and not very diverse, yet some of these older volunteers are eager to train and teach others to take over.

The Glenbow made a conscious decision to focus recruitment efforts on youth, especially students from junior high to university. These young people have brought new enthusiasm to the volunteer program and offer hope for maintaining volunteer commitment into the future. This article examines what was learned about the special needs of young volunteers, particularly in how to communicate our recruitment appeals and how to support their efforts.

One of the fastest growing areas of volunteer involvement is that of the participation of youth.  This area, however, has its differences from traditional management of adults.  In this issue of Along the Web we'll look at studies on what motivates youth to volunteer, how to work effectively with youth volunteers, and some innovative programs offering models and support for youth volunteer involvement.

With volunteering by youth at an all-time high in the United States, it is important to examine the continuum of civic action to ensure that we are creating pathways that allow more volunteers to facilitate more sustainable community change.  We must recognize that each level of participation plays a valuable role in meeting needs in our society and that volunteers may be involved in multiple points along the continuum at the same time.  However, the hectic pace of life, lack of infrastructure to more fully engage volunteers and a skepticism of policy-making in the US and worldwide result in the vast majority of volunteers being involved only sporadically.  If we do not focus our energies on providing infrastructure support, training and networks to facilitate the involvement of the 90 million volunteers in other parts of the continuum of civic action, we risk resigning ourselves to clean the same dirty rivers and tutor in the same underfunded schools year after year.