Youth and community service

Abstract

We discuss findings and issues regarding community service by youth in the United States, for example: Is school-based required service as effective as voluntary service, and if increasing numbers of youth are doing service, why has political engagement not increased? We next present a theory proposing that certain kinds of service can contribute to the development of social identity. Such service would be challenging, bring youth into direct contact with the strange "other," and engage youth with organizations which represent moral and political traditions. We conclude with speculations on ways community service might benefit identity development in German youth and help to resolve tensions in contemporary German society.Zusammenfassung: Wir diskutieren Forschungsergebnisse und Folgerungen hinsichtlich gemeinschaftförderlichem Engagement von Jugendlichen in den USA, z. B. die Frage, ob Dienste, die die Schulen vorschreiben so wirksam sind wie freiwilliges Engagement, oder die Frage, warum die zunehmende Zahl von Jugendlichen, die Dienste leistet, nicht zu einem zunehmenden politischen Engagement führt. Als nächstes schlagen wir eine Theorie vor, derzufolge bestimmte Dienste zu einer Entwicklung der sozialen Identität von Jugendlichen beitragen können. Solche Dienste stellen eine Herausforderung dar, indem sie Jugendliche mit fremdartigen "Anderen" zusammenbringen, und dies im Rahmen von Organisationen, die moralische und politische Traditionen repräsentieren. Wir schließen mit Spekulationen über Wege, wie freiwilliges Engagement möglicherweise der Identitätsentwicklung deutscher Jugendlicher zugutekommen und helfen kön-nte, Spannungen in der gegenwärtigen deutschen Gesellschaft zu lösen.

How does community service promote prosocial behavior? Examining the role of agency and ideology experience

“…For example, working in a service setting provided by a church or environmental organization, or interacting with adults who are also involved in service, could make adolescents think about their own value system. Thus, service provided a setting of experiences affecting adolescents' ideologies (Youniss & Reinders, 2010;Youniss & Yates, 1997). However, the transformation of these ideology experiences into increasing prosocial behaviors was not supported by our data.…”

“…According to Yates' and Youniss' (1996) review, adolescents who engaged in community service were more socially-oriented than adolescents who were not engaged. More recent research showed that participating in community service is positively associated with a prosocial development (Carlo, Okun, Knight, & de Guzman, 2005;Metz, McLellan, & Youniss, 2003;Youniss & Reinders, 2010), helpfulness, other-oriented empathy (Penner & Finkelstein, 1998), prosocial value motivation (Carlo et al, 2005), social responsibility (Scales, Blyth, Berkas, & Kielsmeier, 2000), and prosocial norms (Hansen, Larson, & Dworkin, 2003). One of the few published longitudinal studies reported positive effects of community service on adolescents' prosocial behaviors over time (Reinders & Youniss, 2006).…”

“…Moreover, youths' service activities can take place within a structured or organized context (Penner & Finkelstein, 1998). Those organizations running service activities often provide a certain set of world views that serve as rationales for attending service (Youniss & Reinders, 2010;Youniss & Yates, 1997).…”

“…Moreover, students learned that they can actually provide support for people in need, resulting in the experience of being self-efficacious. Reinders and Youniss (2006;Youniss & Reinders, 2010) presented longitudinal evidence in an American sample, showing that different types of service (interaction with people in need vs. no interaction) affected helpfulness in different ways, depending on the experiences the adolescents made. This was supported by parallel cross-sectional analyses in a German sample (Youniss & Reinders, 2010).…”

Experiences That Matter: Unraveling the Link Between Extracurricular Activities and Emotional and Social Competencies

“…Previous studies have maintained that volunteering is a way to develop an active identity (Sǎveanu and Sǎveanu, 2013) by stimulating the assessment of one's abilities, values, interests and place in the society (Eccles et al, 2003;Brown-Liburd and Porco, 2011), thus influencing one's self-awareness. Moreover, volunteering allows students to change their perception on "the other" (Youniss and Reinders, 2010) and their perspective on people and their problems (Reed, 2001), showing empathic abilities.…”