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ISSUES: Citizenship
Chapter 2: Active citizenship
Thousands of young people doing their bit
for society? Let’s be more ambitious
We should expand the National Citizen Service to all 16- and 17-year-olds. It’s those
who are hardest to reach who would benefit from the sense of purpose it creates.
By Dan Jarvis
P
eople often say to me that we should re-introduce
national service: that some basic military discipline
would imbue our young people with a sense of
purpose and direction. But rather than going back to the
1950s, we should look for new ways to harness the ideals
of service in a way that works for young people in Britain
today.
Times have changed and so have the attitudes of today’s
youth. The
Generation Citizen
report from Demos found
that teenagers are more engaged in social issues than any
previous generation. Yet service is still important. For a
young person, having the opportunity to serve – whether it
be participating in the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme,
or scouts, or the National Citizen Service – can help lay vital
foundations for adult life.
Ghandi said: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself
in the service of others” – and there is a critical link between
service and society: it is by helping others that we best show
our solidarity and sense of shared humanity. Anyone who
pays taxes does this to some extent, but it is a far less direct
way of cementing the bonds between us.
The vast majority of people care about their local community
– whether they are rich or poor, and regardless of age. Many
seek to make a contribution through service. The Games
Makers from the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics are
a standout example. Future First is another: it has recruited
more than 100,000 state school alumni across the country to
act as role models for the next generation in state education.
The National Citizen Service – a vision of the last Labour
Government brought to life by the Coalition – is proving
its worth as another, more widespread route for service.
It is a scheme that gives young people the opportunity to
take part in team-building exercises, learn new skills and
participate in practical community volunteering in their
area. It has seen year-on-year increases in the number of
participants, with more than 55,000 young people last year.
But I think we need to be more ambitious.
The most recent independent evaluation showed that NCS
delivers as much as £3.98 of benefit for every £1 spent.
Yet if 55,000 young people are participating in this great
programme, that means there are hundreds of thousands
who still are not. Those who are the hardest to reach are
often the ones who would benefit most from the sense of
purpose and community that service creates. They would
find real value from the teamwork, social mixing and
camaraderie. These are the young people whose potential
risks being wasted, and for whom a programme like this
could offer a chance to shape their future for the better.
So I think we should look to expand the National Citizen
Service, so all young people aged 16 and 17 have the
opportunity to take part. We should also look at howwe best
support other great programmes that allow young people
to serve – schemes such as City Year, which recruits people
aged 18–25 to volunteer full time as role models, mentors
and tutors at schools in deprived areas over the course of an
academic year.
Schemes like this are crucial not just because of the social
value they add, but because they would help build on the
NCS programme. Service should not just be a month-long
programme, but a lifetime mission. It has the potential to
help transform our society. The case for supporting it is
all the stronger in a time where in many places it feels like
the bonds of community are loosening. If as a society we
embrace service, then we will find that serving others serves
us all.
13 April 2016
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