Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Charity Village® Research: Working with YOUTH

Charity Village® Research: Working with YOUTH: "I am going to focus this article on high school age youth since I seem to get the most questions about how to successfully engage and keep this group of volunteers.

It has been twelve years since the Ministry of Education introduced 'mandatory community involvement' for students in high schools. In order to graduate, students must successfully complete 40 hours of so-called volunteer work. With little to no preparation, the nonprofit community was flooded with requests from students or their parents and were ill-prepared to engage them. Some research was started during the CVI project years (Canadian Volunteerism Initiative) but to my knowledge there has never been a review or evaluation of the impact of youth volunteering on the sector or the impact on youth themselves. What we do know came from a NSGVP study in 2000: 'An interest in volunteering, developed during one's youth is likely to be maintained in adulthood. This suggests the importance of providing positive, early volunteering experiences for youth, as these experiences may lead to continued volunteering in the adult years.'"

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