A report released by the think tank Demos has recommended that the Government introduce a comprehensive national strategy for youth social action that ensures that everyone from the ages of ten to twenty five has the opportunity to get involved in social action.
Service Nation 2020 evaluates the evidence of benefits that social action brings to areas such as youth unemployment, personal wellbeing and loneliness in old age, and calls for more to be done to help increase the number of young people involved in social action.
Service Nation 2020 references several studies that show the benefits that youth social action brings to sport, such as one done by Join In which shows that participants in sport volunteering programmes have 10% higher levels of self-esteem, emotional well-being and resilience than those who don’t take part.
The report also identifies the possibility of volunteers giving “extra help” within the public sector in, amongst other areas, sport and leisure centres to deliver community benefits.
The report also recommends:
• The Government should establish an independent social action coordinating body to implement this strategy and coordinate the use of youth social action to achieve policy objectives in areas such as public service reform, health and social care and unemployment
• Social action should be embedded in schools, including introducing a new social action component for students to take alongside the English Baccalaureate, giving pupils the right to take part in social action if they want to and monitoring participation in social action levels
• Develop full-time social action service years placements as an alternative school-leaver pathway
• Support a quality mark for social action provision, to be used to identify organisations that focus on measuring their impact
The Alliance are supporting the #iwill campaign to encourage the sector increase opportunities for youth social action.
For more information on the #iwill campaign and youth social action in sport, click here.
Download the "Service Nation 2020" report here.
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