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June 16, 2003
School age volunteers
William A. Galston from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland raises an interesting question about the nature of why individuals who are in school volunteer time to the community. A small expert from one of his online articles, “To be sure, freshmen are reporting significantly increased levels of volunteering in their last year of high school, a trend that seems to be carrying over to their early college years. But only a third of today's young volunteers believe that they will continue this practice once they enter the paid workforce. And there is no evidence that it will lead to wider civic engagement. On the contrary, young people characterize their volunteering as an alternative to politics, which they see as corrupt, untrustworthy, and unrelated to their deeper ideals. They have limited knowledge of government's impact, either on themselves or on those they seek to assist.” This targeted my attention to the nature of volunteering and how it is truly a natural playground in terms of ideology. No political philosophy that is wildly observed condemns volunteering so the question what will it take to focus more energy on how to organize and facilitate individuals becoming involved. I consider wider civic engagement as one of the reasons to value civic opportunity within civil society. The questions raised by William A. Galston are very valuable to understanding why volunteers get involved and it is a gateway to the bigger question of how to keep them motivated and recruiting others.
253 words posted by nels lindahl at 12:16 AM
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