Why Youth Service?

Under the broad umbrella of youth civic engagement, ICP focuses on youth service strategies that engage youth in organized, goal-oriented service to meet community needs. Research shows that intensive, long-term service leads to many positive impacts on participants and the community. For this reason, ICP works to strengthen national youth service programming and the pedagogy of service-learning.

What is the Relationship Between Youth Service and Civic Engagement?

ICP has developed the following topology of youth civic engagement and voluntary service.

What is youth civic engagement?

Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes.

Types of youth civic engagement

Community service and volunteering:

Formal, long-term service: 20 hours per week of service for three months or longer
Part-time volunteering: anything less than formal, long-term service but more than two hours per week for two months
Occasional volunteering: anything less than the above
Service-learning: Service-learning is a teaching method that enriches learning by engaging students in meaningful service to their schools and communities. Young people apply academic skills to solving real-world issues, linking established learning objectives with community needs. This can be either school or non-school based.
International volunteering: volunteers offer services to communities in countries other than their own
Mutual aid: providing assistance and support to others within the same community or social group; the distinction between the volunteer and the beneficiary may be less clear

Governance: representation to government consultation bodies, involvement in local development projects, or participation in NGOs that monitor government policies

Advocacy and campaigning: raising public consciousness or working to change legislation

Youth media: video, radio, film, newspaper or other form of media production by young people; audience may be other young people or adults

Social entrepreneurship: creating innovative solutions to social problems by designing products or offering services

Leadership training and practice: mechanisms for learning and exercising leadership skills, including workshops as well as participation in volunteer activities

What is National Youth Service?

Building teacher housing for a week is community service. Rebuilding houses with community members full-time for a year after a hurricane while learning how to conduct project management, public relations, and manage a team of co-workers� that is national youth service.

National youth service is a civilian program in which young people spend several months meeting local communities� needs in exchange for minimal financial compensation. National youth service programs provide young people with training, essential self-knowledge, skills, and hands-on experience.

What is Service-learning?

Picking up trash on a riverbank is service. Studying water samples under a microscope is learning. When science students collect and analyze water samples, document their results, and present findings to a local pollution control agency�that is service-learning.¹

Service-learning is a teaching method that enriches learning by engaging students in meaningful service to their communities. Young people apply academic skills to solving real-world issues, linking established learning objectives with genuine needs.

¹ This definition and examples are from the National Youth Leadership Council: nylc.org/discover.cfm?oid=3152