CharityVillage� Research: Best practices for engaging youth as volunteers (part one)

CharityVillage� Research: Best practices for engaging youth as volunteers (part one): "Best practices for engaging youth as volunteers (part one)
Donna LockhartBy Donna Lockhart
June 13, 2005

Many people would not look upon working with 'youth' as a gift, especially adults with teenagers still living at home. I know many who would like to ship them out until they have matured and bring them back as adults! Just skip those challenging, frightening years of discontent and go directly to adulthood.

When the Ontario Ministry of Education introduced 'community involvement hours' almost five years ago, I was likely one of a small handful of Managers of Volunteers who actually embraced the idea. To me it was a 'gift' to the voluntary sector, but as such it was not immediately apparent and there were many layers of wrapping to get through.

Managers of Volunteers are in the business of promoting voluntarism. This mandated opportunity to engage youth even as quasi-volunteers provided us with the potential to build them into lifelong volunteers - an actual opportunity to work towards sustainable voluntarism."