Youths propel a push toward volunteerism

Change predates Obama's overtures

From left, students George Castillo, 6, and sister Desteni Castillo, 8, prepared to make thank you cards under the tutelage of student volunteers Laura Boston, right, and Emily Casiano, rear, at the Tobin Elementary School in Roxbury. (George Rizer/Globe Staff)

LEOMINSTER - President-elect Barack Obama rode a spirit of civic engagement among young people to victory, harnessing a hunger for service and belonging that was sweeping across the nation's high schools, college campuses, and online communities.

But that hunger had been building long before Obama launched his campaign, and it is poised to continue growing long after he has left the White House.

By many accounts, the interest and participation in public service, volunteerism, and social entrepreneurship among youth - from middle-schoolers to graduates with advanced degrees - have risen dramatically over the last decade.

Today's teenagers and young adults, thanks to encouragement from their baby boomer parents, an Internet revolution that makes the world feel smaller every day, and a growing number of service and nonprofit-career preparation programs at colleges, are far more likely than their predecessors to seek out ways to give back and to shape the world they will inherit.

"Volunteerism is becoming a culture," said Sejal Hathi, a 17-year-old high school senior from Fremont, Calif., who founded an organization, Girls Helping Girls, to empower females around the world.

This service ethic is evident nationwide - inspiring middle-school students to raise arts scholarship money for their needy peers; driving college students to craft programs combating youth violence and promoting small loans to entrepreneurs; and moving 20- and 30-somethings to create internationally focused nonprofit organizations.

The trend is difficult to precisely measure, as volunteerism and public service take so many forms, and there are some data suggesting otherwise. But there are signs everywhere of increased participation and interest among youth.

American teenagers today are 100 percent more likely to volunteer than teenagers in the last few decades, federal research shows. A record 68 percent of K-12 schools offer or recognize service opportunities for students, according to a study by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a government agency, which also reports a 69 percent increase in applications to the AmeriCorps program over the last four years. A survey by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute found that two-thirds of students entering college in 2006 felt that helping others in need was essential or very important, the highest rate in 26 years.

One widely cited visionary is Wendy Kopp, who 20 years ago founded Teach For America, which sends top college graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools. Early on, she said, people laughed at her vision.

"What I ran into everywhere was the reaction that, this is a great idea, but it will never work because college students would never want to do it," she said.

They're not laughing anymore. In 2000, Teach For America was averaging 3,000 to 4,000 applications a year. This academic year, the organization received 25,000, and it's on pace to beat that figure by 50 percent next year.

Locally, the number of public service student groups at Harvard University has nearly tripled since 2002-03. Northeastern University has added classes on nonprofit management and bulked up its alternative spring break program, which pairs students with service projects. In 2003, the program put six students on one trip; last spring, it sent 90 students on 10 trips, and that's expected to grow further in 2009.

"Students are coming in with more experience serving their community, and we're really building off their interest as well as our own," said Kristen Simonelli, associate director of Northeastern's Center of Community Service.

Youth have been active in causes for decades, of course, but specialists say their participation is taking a different form, partly because of their greater exposure to world problems through the Internet, including websites such as Facebook's Causes, whose popularity has exploded. Steven Culbertson, president and CEO of Youth Service America, noted that young people have grown up with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, high-profile, catastrophic natural disasters, and the increasingly apparent threat of climate change.

"They've moved beyond planting tulips and painting murals to really engage on some of the biggest problems facing the world," Culbertson said.

One catalyst for youth activism, specialists say, is a shift in mindset among adults, who are more willing to see teenagers as assets to society. A pioneer in this movement is Bill Drayton, who in 1980 founded a group called Ashoka, which aims to give youth the tools to be "change-makers" in their communities. Indeed, the exercise of young people engaging in public service, which specialists say leads to lifelong civic participation, is sometimes more important than the often modest projects they take on.

"This is like language," Drayton said. "A child that grows up in a family with a small vocabulary is crippled for life. The same thing is true for these fundamental social skills that are essential in a world of escalating change."

The Leominster area has become a hotbed of youth activism, with hundreds of area students involved in a host of service programs, thanks partly to a partnership with Drayton's Youth Venture organization. Lizzy Marquis, 13, is one of several eighth-graders helping build an outdoor classroom at her Sky View Middle School. Today the site is just a muddy patch on a hillside, but the classroom, called Hawk's Nest, is slated to open next fall.

"When we're older, say we're 16, 17, 18, and we come back to the school, we can say, 'We did this,' " Marquis said.

At the other end of the age spectrum is Nina Dudnik, a 32-year-old with a doctorate in genetics. While at Harvard Medical School, she married her love of science with a calling for humanitarian work, starting - with like-minded students - an effort to ship surplus equipment to needy labs around the world. The initiative became a nonprofit called Seeding Labs.

Dudnik has helped stock 22 labs in 13 countries and hopes to eventually equip 100. Her ultimate goal is to put herself out of business - to help the world's scientists get to where they no longer need handouts.

"What I really want to do is change the map of where science is done, and the sustainability of science around the world," she said.

Not all trends on youth involvement in public service are positive. Specialists say students from disadvantaged backgrounds - including many in minority communities - often lack access to such opportunities. And one government study showed that service-learning opportunities in K-12 schools has declined since 1999, which some specialists fear reflects an increased focus on standardized testing.

"In many schools as a result, there's been a narrowing of the curriculum," said Susan Root, research director for the National Youth Leadership Council.

Overall, though, specialists say that there's an unmistakable rise in civic awareness among young people, and that Obama's victory is a validation of that. He's going to need to draw on that spirit: The president-elect is facing challenges graver than perhaps any incoming president in 75 years. Obama's message to young people, Culbertson said, was this: "I want you to fall in love with the problems of the world and help me solve them, not shun them."

Drayton and his peers expect that love to endure.

"Once you have tested the fact that you can change the world," he said, "no one can take that away from you."

Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.