Are we failing our youth by failing to modernise?
I expect by now we all know off by heart the government’s line for defending public service cuts. “Look” they say, indignant, “we inherited the biggest budget deficit ever. It’s a crippling legacy of debt for our young people. We have no choice but to cut back.”
That may be the case but right here, today one in five young people are unemployed. What, I wonder, will be the legacy of that?
We’re at risk of losing a generation to underachievement, and with it see its talent, energy and potential wasted. The government seems content to wait for the private sector to step in and take up the slack, but we need to act now if we’re going to stop this from becoming a crisis.
With 50% of successfully employed graduates citing volunteering as a key factor in giving them an edge, there’s an opportunity here for civil society organisations to play a key role in keeping our unemployed young people motivated, engaged and competitive in the job market.
But are we guilty of failing our young people too? At the Student Volunteering Week launch, numerous student volunteers complained that there was a fatal lack of connectivity between young people and opportunities and that this was obstructing access to a near inexhaustible volunteering resource.
I'm not surprised. Last week I spoke the Haymarket Big Society conference about micro volunteering and the importance of social media to engage new generations of volunteers. When I asked how many organisations in the room were using social networks to this effect shockingly few raised their hands. And they are not alone. At a Modernising Volunteering event a few weeks ago in Manchester, I encountered a similar situation, this time with some volunteer managers adamant that social media was irrelevant to their work when they had not even tried to engage with it.
To me this refusal to work in new ways is actually creating new barriers to volunteering and making it harder for young people to get involved.
Dame Hoodless recently attracted broad support for her scathing criticism of cuts to volunteering services, but my experience at the Big Society conference highlights to me that the third sector does need to change. Yes, government needs to invest in volunteering services if it wants to create a bigger society. But it’s not enough to keep throwing money at organisations if they are inaccessible from the grass roots: volunteering needs to modernise to be effective. We need to overcome obstacles to engagement, to make it easier for people to get involved at a level that suits them. We need to embrace digital and social media, be better connected and more open to change.
Modernisation is both inevitable and essential if the volunteering sector is to survive in these challenging times - perhaps it's time to let the old guard stand down and welcome in some new blood.
I don't think we should be buying the 'It’s a crippling legacy of debt for our young people' narrative so easily. if we do, we should be aware that we are supporting an act of propaganda and a pure act of faith. if we give young people a future of unempolyment i am not sure we're doing them any good either.
New media are imprortant and can be extremely cheap. but, again, we should approach social media with a better understanding of how young people use social media. Twitter and Facebook differ, and if you spent thousands of £££ on MySpace, you would be thinking that it was a waste. the use of digital media requires a more discerning approach.
the only rule of general engagement, with all age groups, is that they have to feel that their contributions make a difference. Vodafone spend money on social media, but their profile gets hijacked becuase they are not a very 'social' company. it's up to you if you choose digital or traditional media, but if you won't be able to respond and change as a result of the suggestions, you should avoid consultations and engagement.
And in terms of volunteering, if we want to help young people find employment we need investment in formal volunteering and in creating new volunteering opportunities. Micro volunteering and informal volunteering will help us build communities, which is of course extremely important, but I'm not sure it helps young people find jobs.
@robjackson VCS may need to use their own resources, but most of them don't any. it helps that social media comes very cheap, mainly time. if it didn't you would have to analyse very carefully what's the best return for the money you spend.
Agree totally @robjackson74 - my reference to social media is just one example of where modernisation is required.Good point about volunteer management - after all no one pays us to fundraise and volunteers are in many cases just as important to an organisation as funding.
Well said Jamie.
Whilst I have some reservations about the value of micro-volunteering, I do agree that many organisations need to urgently re-assess how they engage volunteers to meet the demands of contemporary society.
We need to spend far more time understanding the way society is (& is becoming) and what this means in terms of people's available time, motivations, interests and life pressures. We need to construct and redesign existing opportunities so people can volunteer for our causes that in a way that meets their needs and ours. And this applies not just to young people but to all of us, especially the baby boomer generation who get so rarely discussed in conversations about volunteering here in the UK.
@SteveLawless is right that this needs investment but perhaps more VCS organisations need to invest their own resources (including money) in volunteer engagement and not expect someone else to pay for it.
Interestingly, the next thing I read after your posting here was a news pieces about very similar issues in Australia. It was a summary of this report http://www.dpmc.gov.au/publications/national_volunteering/docs/consultation_report-national_volunteering_strategy.pdf.
I hear what you're saying @SteveLawless but certainly many people and organisations manage to use social media without any additional funding - Red Foundation and i-volunteer as just two examples not to mention to the countless numbers of youth groups that do the same. Yes there may be some cost in learning how to use them but this has been available for some time and many orgs have just refused to take advantage of it.
I get the whole funding issue - it's bloody hard for many people. But we also need to accept that not all volunteering costs. Social action and voluntary activity has always happened regardless of funding, indeed often in response to a lack of funding or service provision, and I suspect this is not going to change. I know of volunteer centres that have run on volunteer help for years, that have never so much as seen a penny of public money and there are many other examples of community groups that have just got on with it without any state help. I'm not saying I support the government's approach but I don't accept that volunteering is effectively over once funding is withdrawn, not by a long shot.
We know that supporting volunteering, including using social networking, has a cost. Three cheers for Dame Hoodless and Liverpool Council. I welcomed the Big Society when it was first publicised but it is now clear that the government are not going to invest in volunteering. They are expecting volunteers to pick up the work carried out by the public sector for nothing, cutting back the welfare state due to financial problems caused by the private sector and then encouraging the private sector to run what remains. We have already seen major cuts to the sector across the country with no investment in the Big Society. The wolf is no longer in sheep's clothing.