Youth Vote 2000 they Rather Volunteer
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About 70 percent of young people volunteer in their communities, out-performing all prior generations in the altruism department. Mostly, they get involved in social services and community projects, such as cleaning trash from rivers and parks, tutoring children and working in food banks and hospitals. More than three-out-of-four middle schools and high schools offer volunteer opportunities, and almost a third of high schools require a community service project to graduate—more than double the percentage of schools with such requirements a decade ago, according to a 1999 report by the U.S. Department of Education.

Initially, many young people volunteer because they have to, but they say they keep volunteering because they find it fulfilling. For example, Campus Compact, a nonprofit organization formed 15 years ago by college presidents to encourage volunteering, recently found that 67 percent of campuses reported an increase in students participating in community service. Today, more than 712,000 students on 638 campuses are doing either long-term or one-time service projects. It doesn’t end there. Large majorities of twenty-somethings say in surveys that they volunteer in their communities.

This altruism is affecting career choices as well. A 1999 Mellman Group survey of college students under 31 found that 80 percent said it is very important for them to find a job that “will make a positive difference in people’s lives.” Moreover, about one-in-six students said it was “very likely” they would work for nonprofit organizations; by comparison, fewer than one in 12 said it was “very likely” they would work in politics or government.

Can such altruism bring major societal improvements? “I think there is wisdom out there,” says Cynthia Gibson, a program officer in Carnegie Corporation’s Strengthening U.S. Democracy program. “If all politics are local, as the saying goes, then young people are politically engaged through their community service work,” she says. “I think the challenge is to help young people take their energy and desire for social change to a higher political level. The trick is trying to figure out how to do that. You can teach young people about voting, have parents talk to them about it, remove structural barriers, whatever—but it won’t matter unless you have good candidates who speak clearly and cut through the spin and a system that’s free of big money interests.”

Until—and if—the time comes when candidates do begin speaking directly to the interests of young voters, perhaps the younger generation will continue to see community service as a better alternative to participating in politics. On one hand, more than six-in-ten college students said they do not trust the federal government to do the right thing “all” or “most of the time,” and almost half said the same thing about state government, according to a national survey conducted last April by the Institute of Politics at Harvard. On the other hand, more than eight-out-of-ten students said that community volunteerism is the best way to solve local problems and a majority even said that community service is the best way to deal with important issues facing the nation. “Today’s students do not see the political process as an agent of change,” concluded the researchers, who included Harvard undergraduates.

In their own way, young people advocated for this reform agenda last year, Gibson says. “They are media savvy, and they saw through hype very quickly. They backed candidates who at least seemed like they were talking straight with them. And you know what, I would bet most Americans wanted that.”

How the younger generation interacts with the political process, how engaged youth is with civic life and culture may well decide the kind of leadership that America elects in the future.
In the end, how young people choose
to become involved with the national life of this country is not a question with answers that have an impact on youth alone.

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Michael deCourcy Hinds is the Corporation’s chief writer. Previously, he was a national correspondent for The New York Times and he also wrote citizens’ guides to social issues at Public Agenda, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization.

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