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June 18, 2003

just thinking

Changes in society do not occur swiftly and perhaps it is difficult to see erosion in social capital occurring in real time. The question then becomes what is going to happen to volunteerism within the United States as changes in social capital are assessed. Some proposals from modern politicians have involved the idea of government sponsoring volunteerism through financial reimbursement. This idea is probably not the way to set the standard for using non-governmental organizations and individuals to provide services to society for the greatest possible good. Since the idea behind volunteerism is that individuals within society can benefit society by strictly adding value that would not be generated otherwise. It is true that the government does have an active role in volunteerism as a supporter of the idea and as a homing beacon for locating problems.

137 words posted by nels lindahl at 01:45 AM | Copyright | Reader Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)
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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 | Copyright | Reader Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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June 09, 2003

Communitarian Network

I started reading about the Communitarian Network which is a coalition of individuals and organizations who have come together to shore up the moral, social, and political environment. I found this bit of information on the Communitarian Network very interesting to read.

"In the late 1980s, a growing number of academicians and social commentators began to notice a breakdown in the moral fabric of society. Attributing this condition to an excessive emphasis on individualism in the public sphere, they recognized the need for a social philosophy that at once protected individual rights and attended to corresponding responsibilities to the community. Transcending the stalemate between left and right, this new "responsive communitarian" philosophy articulated a middle way between the politics of radical individualism and excessive statism.

In 1990, a group of academicians and social thinkers came together to formulate the core ideas they shared, spelled out in the Responsive Communitarian Platform, and to spur the movement toward a recasting of the social and moral foundations of society. A quarterly journal, The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, was founded in 1991 to provide a forum for the development and exploration of Communitarian ideas. In 1993, Amitai Etzioni formed The Communitarian Network, a non-partisan, transnational, not-for-profit network of Communitarians, and he has since served as its director."

214 words posted by nels lindahl at 02:56 AM | Copyright | Reader Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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