Compulsory volunteering is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Gordon Brown has announced that he wants to require young people to undertake 50 hours of community service, and that this will form part of Labour’s manifesto for next year’s (presumably) general election. It’s not particularly surprising; David Cameron and the Tories have long been floating the notion and Gordon Brown was responsible for the setting up of youth volunteering charity V and generally pushing for young people to be more active in their community.
But I think it’s a horrendous idea. The suggestion is that it will help charities, but personally I can’t think of anything worse than third sector organisations being expected to provide opportunities for young people mandated to do “goodly works”. Compulsory volunteering is a total misnomer.
There’s loads of reasons why I hold that view.
Firstly it will force an unnecessary formalisation of community service. Alongside the (disgracefully) large number of young carers in this country, there are many other young people who help others in their community by running errands, visiting, looking-out-for or taking them on trips. It’s unlikely that these activities will count towards compulsory community service, and if they do they will have to be formally assessed, agreed and recorded in a way that destroys both the relationship the young people had with the person they were helping and the reason they were helping them out.
It removes any form of social entrepreneurship: how are you going to be able to prove your community service if you have set up your own activity. Setting up an online support site, tidying up somewhere close to your house or running a street football league: these are all legitimate community activities that a young person could do without any involvement of an official organisation to oversee their contribution. Why should a young person be told that these are not acceptable activities but joining an organisation is? And if these are acceptable, how are you going to ensure that people are actually doing these activities and not just saying they are? How are you going to ensure the scheme recognises social entreprenuers but isn’t used by those wanting to duck out of getting involved?
My concern is that this creates a dangerous connection between the government and the third sector. Just as no-one is forced to give to charity, there is something wrong with government forcing people to volunteer.
Secondly, what is the scope for deciding what and what isn’t community service? Is being involved in your school council? Is being involved in a political party community service? Is playing in a community orchestra, football team or performing street dance community service? If it isn’t, is tutoring or mentoring others in those activities community service? (and if so does your training count in those hours?).
Thirdly, only this week a story broke that many teachers think that the efforts to increase literacy have led to children losing the enjoyment of reading for pleasure. I think the same will be true of compulsory community service.
Many young people volunteer to improve their CV or to develop a skill, but many more volunteer because they want to make a positive contribution. They don’t want to undertake volunteering to tick boxes or simply get a record of their achievements. This was one of the failings of Millennium Volunteers, repeated with V and going to be far worse where there is a mandatory requirement to do this. From a personal perspective, one of the reasons I didn’t want to do my MV was that it seemed to be more about achieving a set number of hours than the value you added to a project.
Indeed, Volunteering England wrote something similar last month (about using volunteering as a way of assessing people applying for permanent UK residence):
Active citizenship activities should be meaningful and enjoyable to present a good image of community participation in the UK and not imply that volunteering is purely a means to an end. If activities do not serve a community need or if the verification arrangements are too simplified, the process could become a “tick-box exercise” and provide the applicant with little benefit.
Finally, why is it just young people? What message are we trying to convey if we say that only those under 19 should be mandated to be involved in community service whereas everyone else only needs to choose to?
And I as every youth organisation will tell you until they are blue in the face; the lack of the young people isn’t the problem: it’s the youth leaders needed to support them. I volunteered for many years as a youth leader, but I don’t think I would have done so had I had to work with young people who didn’t want to be there apart from whatever threat the government will use to get them to complete their community service.
Yes, I definitely want more young people to volunteer and be involved in their community. But I don’t think it’s through forcing them to complete a certain number of hours or tick a particular set of boxes, any more than using volunteering as a stick to reduce student tuition fees etc.
Young people need to be engaged citizens, active in their community, not because they are forced to but because they want to. It would be so much better if Gordon Brown and David Cameron both changed their pledges from making every young person undertake community service to making a society where every young people wants to undertake community service.
And if you do want to volunteer, try here.
Images courtesy of Paul Allison. Used under licence.
Tags:comunity service, david cameron, gordon brown, v, volunteering, volunteering england
14. April 2009 at 4:08 am :
I think its a great idea. You do raise some valid points (for instance “what is considered volunteering”), but there are some damn good reasons for doing it as well.
The life of many teenagers at this age hangs in the balance. They are finishing school but don’t know what to do next. They have so many options, they have no idea which is the best for them. Many teens go to university, get a degree and find themselves this way, but many also become apathetic and then angsty towards a system that devalues them by not helping them. Often the “help” these young adults need is learning that waking up in the morning and looking forward to a day of valuable work that makes a difference, is important. This motivates them to contribute towards something other than their own (and often the community if violence/vandalism is involved) downfall.
I suspect from the tone of your post, this might not have happened to you, but it happens to a lot of young people – I was one of them. After being pushed into conservation volunteering, I realised the importance of my contribution which motivated me to do more. Now a degree later and volunteering in a developing nation, I feel a great sense of contribution. But if I was never pushed into it to start with… I might now be pushing trolleys into parked cars and spray painting bridge supports.
This won’t work for some, but it will give a number of teens the much needed guidance and sense of community that is now so obviously lacking in general suburbia. Instilling this into them when they are young is an excellent idea, forcing them to do so is unfortunately the only way it will occur because community work is not “cool” or seen as a way to further yourself.
14. April 2009 at 3:10 pm :
To answer your question about why only unders 19s, maybe it’s because they’re the ones who can’t vote to do anything about it.
14. April 2009 at 10:45 pm :
“Instilling this into them when they are young is an excellent idea, forcing them to do so is unfortunately the only way it will occur because community work is not “cool” or seen as a way to further yourself.”
I know many young people who would disagree with you – and so would I. None of the benefits you point out could not also be achieved without the requirement of compulsion. I think the very Key point that Olly makes is the lack of ‘youth leaders’ – working with young people has become a profession – something that only those with suitable qualifications can do, or because of the complexities of funding and health and safety requirements are prepared to do. Why then should young people be expected to volunteer when the only people prepared to support them need to be paid to do so?!
Of course they don’t and there are still brilliant volunteers running really good voluntary youth projects, as indeed there are many young people already doing genuine volunteering without having to be forced or bribed to do so – its these things that need to better supported, not more investment into schemes that have very little real value and that inevitably become more concerned with meeting targets and ticking boxes.
Do we want a society where people freely give their time because it was part of their culture from a young age to do so, or where the only way anyone will give something back is if they are forced or paid to do so?