National Youth Service as an Instrument of Peace and Reconciliation by Donald J. Eberly

by Donald J. Eberly

This paper was presented at the 2002 World Conference of the International Association for Volunteer Effort in Seoul, South Korea.

 

I want to explore with you my conclusion that the expanding nature of volunteer service gives the world of volunteering the opportunity to greatly increase our contributions to peace and reconciliation. I believe we can do so by challenging young people to serve as full-time volunteers, by supporting them in their service endeavors, and by awarding academic recognition to students who serve and who give evidence of their learning acquired from the service experience.

Consider the changes to volunteer service in recent decades.  The 1925 edition of Webster’s Dictionary states that to volunteer “is to enter into any service of one’s own free will, without solicitation or compulsion.”2  I think it is fair to say that the world of volunteers would be much smaller if we could not include those who had been solicited, or asked to volunteer their services.  In China, the Young Volunteers Association defines the spirit of volunteerism as “dedication, fraternal love, mutual aid and progress.”3
In many countries volunteer service was seen as an obligation of members of an extended family or of a community.  More recently, especially in Western countries, volunteer service was seen as a kind of noblesse oblige, where rich people had an obligation to be generous to poor people.  Nobody paid volunteers, and governments were not involved.  Times have changed. 

Governments now pay volunteers, for example, those in the American Peace Corps and the United Nations Volunteers. 
The expanding role of volunteer service was given official recognition in the official guidelines for IYV (International Year of the Volunteer) 2001 prepared by the UNVolunteers.  They said ”IYV 2001 is for and about all kinds of volunteers everywhere; it is not limiteed to any one category of volunteer, whether formal or informal….domestic or international, unremunerated or modestly remunerated….”  The UNV went on to note a number of ways to facilitate volunteer service, several of which had to do with financial incentives for volunteering, such as tax deductibility for volunteers, employers giving employees their normal salary while volunteering, and giving volunteers insurance protection.  They also pointed to “volunteer service schemes as accepted alternatives …to military conscription."

The sense of obligation has also expanded beyond family members and rich people.  The governments of Nigeria and Ghana decided that university graduates had an obligation to give a year of service, usually in their fields of study.  In the United States, the sense of obligation has extended to secondary schools.  For about the last 15 years, a number of cities and states in America have made a period of community service a graduation requirement.  As you might expect, these actions were challenged by civil libertarians on the grounds that they violated the constitutional restrictions on compulsory service.  When the appeal reached the Supreme Court, they rejected it, essentially agreeing with the lower court decision that community service was as much a part of the educational process as the study of history or mathematics, which were also required for graduation.

Clearly then, volunteer service is widening its scope.  It has extended to those in the Peace Corps and the United Nations Volunteers who receive stipends, to those in educational institutions where service is seen to be a vital part of the educational process, and to those in countries where service is seen to be a responsibility of citizenship.  And the sponsorship of volunteer service has broadened beyond families, neighborhoods and NGOs to corporations, governments and intergovernmental agencies.

The opportunity for a big increase in volunteer service is particularly timely because it comes at a time when three powerful forces are converging to generate a big increase in the need for service delivery.  During the last three decades the extended family system and the nuclear family system have suffered substantial erosion.  The result is that the care of needy members of the family -- especially young children and old folks – has been left to others, whether paid or unpaid.  Often that care is inferior to what it had been, and sometimes it is not there at all, as with the latchkey children who return from school to find no one at home.

In the last two decades, the revolution in computers and telecommunications has changed almost everything, from workplace activities to life in the home.  This revolution has greatly reduced the amount of time required for many tasks at work and at home.  However, it has not reduced the time needed to nurture a child or care for an old person, any more than it has reduced the time for an orchestra to play a symphony.  Consequently, it has become relatively more expensive to attend concerts and to care for those in need.

And in the last decade, many people have come to believe that the marketplace, where money is exchanged for goods and services, is the sole determinant of society’s priorities, human as well as material.  A number of governments have acted on this idea by reducing the level of expenditures for those in need.
The result of these three powerful forces is that the most deprived and at risk members of society are being neglected.  The need for volunteer service is greater than ever before.

At the same time that provision of services to those most in need of them is diminishing, we see in every country a proportion of young people who are on the fast track to education, careers, leadership and prosperity.  They seem to live in a different world from another proportion of young people – usually a much larger one – who are on the road to lives of drudgery or unemployment, or perhaps looking to crime as the only way out.

Nevertheless, we see in every country large numbers of young people who like to take risks and do new things. They experiment with dangerous drugs, consume too much alcohol, and drive dangerously on our roads.  Young people also want to participate, to be contributing members of society.  But society holds them back.  It thinks they have not matured enough to participate responsibly.  Society fails to realize that children do not gradually become adults.  As they reach adolescence, they alternate between the role of children and the role of adults.  When they feel childlike, they want reassurance.  When they feel like adults, they want responsibilities.  As they move through the teenage years, they spend more time as an adult and less as a child.

Shouldn’t we look for ways that permit young people to alternate these roles, where we trust them to do important work while having support readily at hand?  Shouldn't we give them the opportunity to engage their sense of adventure while serving others?
These relatively new forms of volunteer service have given us mechanisms by which we can join the needs that exist in every country with the resource represented by young people from all walks of life.     

The mechanisms for making these connections have come to be known as National Youth Service and service-learning.  National Youth Service (NYS) refers to programs where young people serve full-time for a period of six months to two years.  Service-learning refers to programs where students serve either part-time or for short periods of time and where their service activities are integrated with their studies, so that their learning informs their service, and their service informs their learning.

The young people who serve in NYS programs are given various designations, including Volunteers, Corpers, Boys, Katimavikers, and Participants.  This paper uses “cadets” as a generic term for all those in NYS.

I shall suggest that volunteer leaders can best advance volunteer service by working with their countrymen and women on developing NYS programs and on improving and expanding existing NYS programs.

Roots of National Youth Service

The roots of these youth service programs were planted in many parts of the world early in the 20^th Century.  In 1908, Mahatma Gandhi criticized the elitism of the British system that had been imposed on India.  He called for self-sufficient education in village schools throughout the country. Gandhi wanted children to learn crafts that would support them after leaving school, and ones that could be marketed to help pay for the cost of education.4  Then, at the time India was becoming independent in 1947, Gandhi invoked the military image in a challenge to his countrymen.  He urged India to form “a service army to undertake a thirteenfold constructive program to bring literacy and healthcare and schools and agricultural cooperation and decency to every village in India.”5

In the 1920s, Mao Zedong and his colleagues at the Peasants’ Training School in Guangzhou devised the system of social practice, which means connecting academic and applied activities.  And, as we all know, Mao’s motto of “Serve the people” has been a continuing guideline for the conduct of affairs here in China.

Perhaps the most evocative outline of NYS was given by Harvard University Professor William James.  While a visiting professor at Stanford University in 1906 he gave a major address to the university community entitled “The Moral Equivalent of War.”  He called for “a conscription of the whole youthful population to work on many of the toughest jobs.”  They would go “to coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clothes-washing, and window-washing, to road–building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stokeholes….”  Those who served “would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.”6  

Although James placed himself “squarely in the anti-militarist camp,” he said that martial values such as “intrepidity, contempt of softness, and surrender of private interest” must be the enduring cement of society.  And he noted that painful work would be “done cheerily because the duty is temporary and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one’s life.”7

In 1965, the United Nations Secretary General U Thant said, “I am looking forward to the day when the average youngster – and parent or employer – will consider that one or two years of work for the cause of development either in a faraway country or in a depressed area of his own community is a normal part of one’s education.”8

At about the same time in Tanzania, Julius Nyerere advocated “education for self-reliance,” where every village school would be either a farm or a workshop, and where both teachers and students were also workers. 

 In South America, religion played a role in the evolution of service-learning where – especially in the Roman Catholic schools – a voluntary or required service activity was seen as a manifestation of Christianity.

A scholarly description of service-learning was given by the Atlanta Service-Leaning Conference in 1968, where the service-learning phrase was coined.  The conference – a consortium of university professors and students as well as federal, regional, and local organizations -- put it this way:  ”It is [our] thesis that by combining the needs of society and resources of education, both will be better served.  It is hypothesized that the tension between the practical urgent demands of community and the requirements of disciplined rational thought of education can be a productive force for the development of society and for learning and the advancement of knowledge.  This combination of action and reflection, of experience and examination, this integration of service and learning, can foster a style of life where education and vocation are parts of the same fabric and the gap between education and community is closed.  Simply stated, then, service-learning is an integration of the accomplishment of a needed task with educational growth.”9

These several references illustrate the worldwide origins of National Youth Service and service-learning.  Furthermore, they emphasize the universality of service by young people – to be shared by rich and poor alike – and of deliberate linkages between education and service. It is good for NYS and service-learning to be linked conceptually because NYS administrators sometimes focus on the work to be done almost to the exclusion of exploiting the learning dimension of the experience.  And the educators who usually run service-learning programs sometimes need reminding that the delivery of needed services is an essential element of the process.  I shall give a few examples of NYS and service-learning and then identify the best practices and the outcomes of these programs.

National Youth Service

kinds of NYS programs were serving.  There was one young woman from the Volunteer Social Year, where young people serve for a year and receive a stipend and other forms of support.  And there were 12 young men from Zivildienst, where young men receive a stipend and serve as an alternative to military service.  The site was a factory in which some 400 mentally retarded or otherwise disabled people assembled and packaged replacement parts for a machine.  The job of the young people in service was to train and to nurture the disabled persons so they were able to go on the production line.  As much as seven years was required before some of the people were able to do useful work.

Both the factory manager and the young people at this sheltered work site agreed that there was no difference in the quality of service given by persons from the different service programs.  And all agreed that the experience was having a powerful effect on themselves as persons and on their career plans.  Of the four young people I talked with, one had decided on a career working with the mentally retarded and two had changed their career plans.  But there was one difference in the two programs.  About two percent of the young women in Germany served with Volunteer Social Year while some 38 percent of the young men served with Zivildienst.

Following the Civil War of the 1960s, Nigeria decided it must make efforts to foster national unity.  University students and other youth groups called for a national youth scheme whose first projects would be the provision of relief in war-torn areas.  The Committee of Vice-Chancellors called for one year of service by all university students following their first year.  After much debate and considerable controversy, Head of State General Yakubu Gowon issued a decree in 1973 creating the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to develop “common ties among the youths of Nigeria and to promote national unity.”

The NYSC requires all university graduates to serve for one year in a different part of the country from where they grew up. The army is responsible for overall administration at the national and state levels, while the Corpsmember’s immediate supervisor on the job is usually a civilian.  Following an orientation period, they are posted to the place of assignment where they are expected not only to work for eleven months in a regular job, but also to initiate community development projects in the areas where they serve.  They serve in their professional areas.  Agricultural graduates advise farmers on crops and pesticides while English majors teach high school English. The government provides stipends for them.  After service, Corps members are brought together again to discuss their experiences, to participate in a passing out parade, and to receive a Certificate of National Service.  While many an entering Corpsmember is not happy about being sent to a distant part of the country, a study of ex-Corps members attitudes to being posted away from their home areas showed that in retrospect only one in ten were negative, the rest positive.10 (Enegwea, 1993)

Clearly the young people in Germany and Nigeria have challenging assignments.  It requires enormous patience to work day after day with persons who are seriously disabled, or to work with people in a strange part of one’s own country and of different cultural background.  But as William James suggested almost 100 years ago, Professor of Psychiatry Hans R. Huessy, who has studied this area closely, confirms that young people in a year of service are eminently suited to this kind of work.  He writes that professionals who genuinely try to give mentally ill and mentally retarded patients the kind of caring they need "'burn out.'  They cannot sustain it.  But for a time-limited period all of us can make a nearly total commitment.  Volunteers who serve six to 24 months can give of themselves to meet the needs of these unfortunate members of society....  Professional consultation without the caring does not work.  Caring without professional input also does not work.  The professional input can be bought.  The caring can come only through committed service."  And, he added, this superior caring system can be had for "one tenth the cost of current professional programs...."11

The German and Nigerian examples, as well as the American example mentioned earlier, also illustrate the acceptance by young people of an obligation to serve, just as neighbors and members of the upper class accepted the obligation in previous times.  The young men performing alternative service in Germany have accepted a period of service as an obligation of citizenship; the university graduates in Nigeria have accepted the need to perform their service year as an obligation of their privileged status as university graduates, and as a way to help unify the country; and the high school students in America have accepted the service-learning requirement as an integral part of their education.

NYS also turns the table on the traditional approach to the socially excluded. In poor countries disadvantaged young people tend to be ignored until they act up, when they are suppressed.  In rich countries, they are always having things done to them; they are given job counseling, training, lectures on birth control, and the like.  NYS asks them to do something.  It brings young people from all walks of life into the system.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the impact of a service experience on social exclusion occurred at the end of World War II.  The US Congress passed a law called the GI Bill for Education.  It gave military veterans the opportunity for free tertiary education.  Experts from the Pentagon and from the field of education estimated that no more than one million of the 15 million veterans would elect the GI Bill.  The actual figure was not one million.  It was seven million.  The experts had assumed that the same proportion of young men who went on to higher education before the war would do so after the war.  They overlooked the fact that the educational appetites of the veterans had been whetted by their service experiences.  Radar technicians wanted to study electronics.  Others with overseas experience wanted to pursue studies in linguistics, anthropology, and history.

The same is true with NYS.  Give all young people the chance to serve and the great majority of those who do so will be better off -- in terms of further education and employment and maturity – than those who choose not to serve. 

A number of NYS programs are more voluntary than those in Germany and Nigeria and generally smaller in size.  Still, they are important because they have the potential to develop into much larger programs.  In the UK, Community Service Volunteers was launched in 1961 as a private sector program challenging young people to give a year of service.  It has since obtained partial governmental support and grown in size and scope.

In Canada, the government started Katimavik in 1977 in large part because of the separatist movement in Quebec.  Katimavik comprises service teams of 12 young people, half-male and half-female, one-third French speaking and two-thirds English speaking, from all parts of Canada.  They undertake a set of three-month service projects, one in Eastern Canada, one in the West and one in Central Canada.

President Clinton started AmeriCorps in 1993 and it has since acquired the strong endorsement of President Bush.  Some 50,000 young people serve full-time for nine months to a year in a wide variety of locally-organized community projects and in a number of conservation activities.  AmeriCorps cadets receive financial assistance for education and training.

Under the umbrella of the Chinese Young Volunteers Association, China started the Poverty Alleviation Relay Project in 1994 to encourage university graduates to serve for a year or two in villages in central and western China.  About 70 percent serve as teachers, the others in the fields of health and agriculture.  Those who serve gain special recognition for future employment.

Vietnam launched a small NYS program in 1995 in an effort to have more university graduates work outside the big cities.  Known as the “Organization of Young Intellectuals participating in Rural and Mountainous Development,” 250 cadets served from 1995-97 primarily in the fields of public health, literacy, agriculture, and economic development.  Sixty percent of them then stayed on as regular employees.  In the 2000-2002 biennium, 500 cadets are serving in remote areas.

 A number of countries have adopted NYS programs primarily to increase the employability of young people.  The emphasis in these programs is on skill training augmented with some service activities usually related to national development priorities.  Some of these programs also aim to instill a sense of patriotism in the cadets.  The results have been mixed, as the training activities are sometimes out of line with job prospects, and as the cadets and others become disillusioned with the program if they cannot move directly into jobs.

One of the more successful such programs is Australia’s Green Corps, begun in 1997.  It combines six months of conservation work with skill training for 17-20 year-old men and women.  About 2,000 cadets serve every year with Green Corps, which is government-funded and is administered by Conservation Volunteers Australia

Another is the Gambia National Youth Service, which was founded in 1996 and enrolls men and women from 17 to 25 years of age for a period of two years.  A six-week para-military training course is followed by 22 months of skills training and community service.  The service concludes with cadets re-assembled for a de-briefing and award of national service certificates to successful cadets.

Profiles programs in China, Germany, Nigeria, and the United States are given in Tables A.  Although these programs have varied origins and goals, and have different degrees of voluntariness, they have many similar features.  The service period is about one year; cadets receive living allowances or the equivalent in food and accommodation; the central government sets the regulations and most cadets serve with NGOs or local public agencies; most cadets are in the age range of 18-25; the major areas of service are care of the very old, health, and education.

TABLE A: PROFILES OF NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE IN FOUR COUNTRIES
Country: China

Program: Young Volunteer Poverty Alleviation Relay

ProjectGoal: Alleviation of poverty in rural areas.

Operations: Central government sets regulations, provides medical insurance, some travel costs and a subsistence stipend.   About 80 percent of projects are run at the local level, the remainder by central government.

Qualifications needed: Good health, university education, and a spirit of volunteerism.

Age range: 20-45, with most in their 20s.

Responsibilities of cadets: Give 6 months to 2 years of service, with most giving one year.

Number of cadets/year: About 3,500.

Annual budget: Estimated at $4 million, including local contributions.

Material benefits to cadets: Medical and some travel costs; $800 per year stipend, with community where cadet serves often providing housing and a bicycle.  Cadets who complete a year or more of service may enter subsequent employment without going through the usual probationary period.

Areas of service: Mostly rural areas in central and western China.

Kinds of service: About 70 percent teach at primary or secondary level; others primarily in public health and agriculture.

Country: United States

Program: AmeriCorps

Goals: Meet human and environmental needs, renew the ethic of civic responsibility, expand educational opportunities, expand and strengthen existing service programs, and provide tangible benefits in the community where service is performed.

Operations: Central government sets regulations and provides about 80 percent of program costs; administration and 20 percent of costs are met at state and local levels.

Qualifications needed: Meets eligibility requirements of project to which cadet is assigned.

Age range: 17 and over, with most cadets 17-30.

Responsibilities of cadets: Serve for 10-12 months.

Number of cadets/year: 50,000

Annual budget: Estimated $750 million, including local contributions.

Material benefits to cadets: Stipend of about $9300, educational voucher of $4725, some medical and legal costs.  Many universities and both private and public sector employers recognize AmeriCorps service as a plus when considering cadets for admission or employment.

Areas of service: Mostly in poor neighborhoods and in rural areas needing conservation work.

Kinds of service: Mostly care of the very young and very old, education, health, literacy, conservation, anti-poverty

Country: Nigeria

Program: National Youth Service Corps

Goals: Promote national unity, instill a sense of industry in young people and raise their moral tone, encourage free movement of labor throughout Nigeria.

Operations: Central government sets regulations; universities send call-up letters to recent graduates; NYSC state offices conduct orientation at beginning of service and final exercises at end of service; local authorities and employers supervise service by cadets.

Qualifications needed: University or other tertiary qualification.

Age range: Up to 30 years

Responsibilities of cadets: To serve for one year in place of assignment.

Number of cadets/year: About 100,000

Annual budget: Not available

Material benefits to cadets: Subsistence living is provided by combination of stipend and housing and other benefits provided locally.

Areas of service: With few exceptions, all cadets serve in a part of Nigeria far from where they grew up.

Kinds of service: Teaching, public health, other professional areas consistent with cadets’ education.

Country: Germany

Program: Zivildienst

Goals: To have Conscientious Objectors give a somewhat equivalent service to military service.

Operations: Central government sets regulations and pays for the program; service is performed largely with NGOs, whose staff supervises cadets on a day-to-day basis.

Qualifications needed: Male, 18+ years of age.

Age range: Mostly 18-24

Responsibilities of cadets: To complete a period of service one-third longer than military service; current Zivildienst service period is 10 months.

Number of cadets/year: 100,000

Annual budget: Estimated $1.3 billion, including local contributions

Material benefits to cadets: Subsistence stipend.

Areas of service: Cadets serve where assigned.

Kinds of service: Largely care of very old persons and disabled persons and nursing services.

An assessment of a number of NYS programs from around the world suggests the following set of best practices.

• The government challenges young people to serve, gives them strong moral support, and underwrites financial support to the extent that all young people who choose to serve are able to do so.
     
• It makes the opportunity for service universal by having a profile of service positions that reflects the profile of abilities brought by young people into service.  
•  It offers service opportunities that are important and are seen by young people to be important.
       
• It gives young people a choice in what they do and when they do it.
       
• The duration of service is 9 months to two years.
    
• Both NYS participants and their supervisors receive appropriate orientation and training.
   
• Opportunities for reflection on the service experience are an integral part of NYS.
      
• Completion of service is recognized and rewarded.
  

It is often a good idea to organize NYS participants into teams, where members work together on a project with a supervisor.  If serving away from home, they may share living quarters and meet together as teams to discuss the plan of work, to reflect on what they have learned, and to discuss problems that have been encountered.  Even when NYS participants serve individually, they are often assembled into teams and meet frequently with their colleagues.

It must also be recognized that governmental support for NYS is essential if large numbers of young people are to enroll in NYS.  NGOs simply do not have the resources to support such large efforts.  At the same time, it is important for NGOs to offer NYS opportunities, even in countries with large-scale NYS.  Government programs have a tendency to become overly-bureaucratic and inefficient.  NGO programs offer a benchmark for assessing the efficiency of governmental programs, and are also more likely to develop innovative ways of meeting the goals of NYS, which can then be adopted by governments.

There are still questions about the outcomes of NYS.  Longitudinal research especially is needed to assess the long-term impact of the service experience.  Still, a good deal of research has been done and it reveals these major outcomes.
   

• The value of services rendered by NYS participants is equal to or greater than the cost of the NYS program.
     
• NYS contributes to society by extending the outreach of public and charitable service organizations and by adding to the quality of the services they give to those in need. 
     
• NYS aids in nation-building especially in countries with different ethnic and racial groups 
     
• NYS contributes to the development of young people by offering a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood.
      
• NYS combats social exclusion by inviting those on the outside and those on the inside to join together in common endeavor.
      
•  NYS contributes to employment policy by giving young people full-time work experience and career exploration, thereby assisting the transition from school to work.
     
•  NYS is a form of experiential education.  Participants learn simply from the NYS experience but with advance preparation and periods of reflection during the service, their learning increases.
    
• NYS adds to social capital as young men and women from different walks of life serve together and as they serve other people in different age groups and from different backgrounds.
     
• NYS serves as preparation for responsible citizenship as participants gain the understanding that comes from serving others.
     
• NYS participants gain increased self-confidence.
  

Service-Learning

All NYS participants learn from their experiences in NYS, but their learning is enhanced when measures are taken to establish linkages between the service and the learning.   Schools and universities have developed more highly structured service-learning experiences in cooperation with NGOs and public agencies. This is understandable when we consider that 200 years ago the education which young people acquired was about 99 percent experiential.  The girls learned cooking from their mothers and the boys learned farming from their fathers or they learned trades as apprentices.  Then the public schools came into being and young people were taught in classrooms.  Then along came television and computers with the result that in many countries young people spend most of the day sitting down, both in classrooms and in front of the TV or the computer screen.

As a former teacher and computer worker, I do not demean the learning found in the classroom or in front of the computer.  But I do want to suggest as strongly as I can that a balance is needed between passive education and active education.  Here are a few examples of how service-learning is helping to provide that balance.  As part of a structured service-learning program, high school chemistry students in Santa Fe, Argentina tested the water and found that it contained high levels of arsenic.  They went into action and got the government to build a safe water system.

Members of Volunteer Social Year in Germany are required to attend 25 seminar days during the course of the year for the purpose of enhancing the educational value of the service experience.  And members of Nigeria’s NYSC spend one week together at the end of their service when they convene in regional camps to reflect on their service activities.

The University of Costa Rica has required students to participate in service-learning projects since 1977.  Typically, teams of a dozen or more students from several disciplines give full-time service for several months.  They are accompanied by one or more professors who work with the students and meet with them almost daily to discuss the relationship of their services to their academic pursuits, and to apply the academic learning they have acquired to their service activities.

The National Service Scheme started in India in 1969 and in 2001 involved nearly one million college students doing 240 hours of social service over a two-year period.  Although participation is not a degree requirement, students who serve may receive a certificate of performance and a special reward if they are judged to have made an extraordinary contribution.  There is also a National Cadet Corps that was started in 1948.  It involves about one million school and college students and, while it is primarily concerned with character development and motivation, does include some community service activities.  

Mexico made a bold advance with service-learning in 1937 when it began requiring medical students to serve for six months in areas lacking medical services.  The students sent weekly reports describing the general conditions as well as the state of sanitation and disease rates.  The program, known as Servicio Social, made such an impact that the federal government doubled expenditures on public health.  In 1947, Servicio Social became mandatory for all students in higher education. However, little or no federal funding was provided, as it had been for the medical students.  As might be expected, the results were mixed.  It is strongest in the medical field; in other areas the strength of Servicio Social varies with the university and the faculty.

Since 1967, university students and their teachers in Indonesia have participated in Kuliah Kerja Nyata (KKN), in which teams of about a dozen students and one professor work on projects in rural areas.  University coordinators work closely with the team and with village leaders to design projects that will be useful to the village, that utilize the learning of the cadets, and that can be accomplished by the KKN team.  The projects are sometimes completed by a single team and at other times by a succession of KKN teams.  Villagers contribute to the project as well, typically by providing free labor and housing.  While participation in KKN is required of students, it is optional for teachers.  Still, many are encouraged to serve knowing that they will receive points toward promotion within the university if they serve with KKN.

I think you will agree that the learning acquired by the young people in Argentina, Costa Rica, India, Mexico, and Indonesia has been more indelible than that acquired in the classroom.  From among these and other service-learning programs that have operated in various parts of the world, here are the attributes of the best programs.
¨      

• It is designed so as to offer the promise of a successful experience by the service-learning student.  Students are challenged to perform but the task is not so difficult that it is impossible to accomplish.
  ¨      
• The service part of the experience is a meaningful activity for the student and for the agency involved.
  ¨      
• Academic recognition is given on the basis of the learning acquired from the experience, not for simply having performed a service.
  ¨      
• There is a learning framework for the experience.  It includes a set of learning objectives in advance of the service, a daily account of one’s service activities and of questions raised by the experience, periodic reflection sessions, and a final report and recognition.
  ¨      
• The school has a service-learning coordinator.  This is a person who understands community needs, who understands the educational interests of the school, and who understands the varied interests of students, from those who seek constructive participation in the community to those who seek any excuse not to go to school.
                 

Thus, service-learning is linked with the curriculum.  It is not a separate activity, like sports or an after-school job.  We know that every person who participates in service-learning has a unique experience and derives a unique profile of values from the experience.  Studies have revealed these major outcomes of service-learning:
¨      

• Increased awareness by the participants of the needs of others;    
• A better way to learn values than being lectured to;
      
• An effective way to reduce school violence;
       
• Increased levels of personal and social responsibility;       
       
• More positive attitudes toward adults and others with whom they worked;
       
• Increased willingness to be active in one's community.
  

Service-learning can also have a profound impact on the way the adult members of a community view the younger members.  Too often adults regard young people as trouble-makers.  They view young people themselves as the problem.  With significant numbers of young people involved in service-learning activities, the adult perception of young people may be expected to change as young people develop the qualities noted above.

Service-learning is valuable for the message it sends to students, teachers, and the community.  A school teaches values by its actions and policies, e.g., the money it spends on sports, theater, and driver education. A school that places service-learning in the curriculum and gives it adequate support sends the message to students that the school cares about the community and the environment.

Service-learning also serves as a prelude to full-time NYS.  Although it cannot always be justified as a program where services rendered exceed the cost, students do get acquainted with the challenges and rewards of serving others, they add to social capital by serving people of different ages and economic levels, and they get a good idea of the choices they want to make regarding entry into full-time NYS.

NYS Impacts, Problems, and Costs

 

Table B is the writer’s attempt to ascribe a quantitative rating to the impacts on society and the impacts on cadets of ten of the programs cited above, with 5 the highest rating and 2 the lowest. 

 

TABLE B: IMPACTS OF NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE ON SOCIETY AND ON CADETS
TEN PROGRAMS IN NINE COUNTRIES

 

SOCIAL IMPACT	CAN	CH	CR	GAM	GZIV	GVSY	IND	MEX	NIG	USA
Cultural     Integration	5	4	4	3	3	3	4	4	5	2
Citizenship   Responsibility	2	4	5	2	5	3	4	4	5	3
Value of Service	3	5	3	2	5	5	2	4	4	5
IMPACT ON CADETS
Personal development	5	4	2	4	4	4	3	4	4	4
Education & Training	3	2	4	5	3	4	3	3	2	3
Employment Opportunities	2	5	2	4	4	4	2	3	4	4

 

The programs in order are Canada’s Katimavik, China’s young Volunteer Poverty Alleviation Relay Project, Costa Rica’s Trabajo Comunal Universitario, The Gambia’s National Service Scheme, Germany’s Zivildienst and Voluntary Social Year, India’s National Service Scheme, Mexico’s Servicio Social, Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps, and the United States’ AmeriCorps.
Problem Areas. NYS is not without its problems and detractors.  Some are ideological, some are pragmatic, some arise from misconceptions about NYS. 

Perhaps the biggest problem over the years has been conceptual.  Both politicians and the public like simple answers: “If there is a medical problem, send in the doctors.  If it’s an education problem, send in the teachers.”  And so on.  We have already noted how most NYS programs come into being for a single primary reason; in Germany to make conscription more equitable; in Nigeria, to help unify the country; in China to serve the people in outlying areas.  When we examine these programs and others like them, we see that they have numerous positive outcomes to those who serve, to those who are served, and to the larger society.  For example, Germany’s Zivildienst has a strong career and employability impact on cadets while Nigeria’s NYSC has a strong service delivery impact.  If society’s decision-making processes were more receptive to recognizing the total impact of new policies, I think we would see more and larger NYS programs.

References to “universal service” and “compulsory service” are frequently mis-applied and mis-understood.  It is most unlikely that there will ever be a NYS that engages all young people.  There will be those in military service, the police force, the fire brigades, as well as those who may be exempted for reasons of religion, because they are physically or mentally incapable of serving, because they have children, or because they are in prison.  Although the NYS programs in Nigeria and Germany are frequently referred to as large, the proportion of young people who do NYS in Nigeria is about 6 percent and in Germany, about 10 percent.

As for compulsory service, I find that a good test of the degree of compulsion is to examine the penalty for refusal to serve.  Only in the most totalitarian of states might one find harsh penalties like death or long prison sentences.  Most often when I meet compulsory service advocates I learn that they would like everyone to serve but don’t want to penalize them for not doing so; rather, they would reward those who serve with recognition and with financial, educational, or employment assistance.

At the pragmatic level, I find that host agency personnel sometimes have misperceptions about the role of NYS cadets, particularly in new NYS programs.  In fact, from what I have seen of NYS, I would say that the majority of unsuccessful placements are caused by this problem.  The typical hosts – both NGOs and public agencies – know about employees and volunteers but tend to be poorly informed about the role of cadets.  Both the director of the host organization and the persons who will be the immediate supervisors should receive several hours of orientation about NYS and the role of cadets.  

Some economists criticize NYS for its opportunity costs.  For young people required to serve for a period in the military or NYS, it is a valid criticism with respect to those who could otherwise move into gainful employment.  As yet there has not been a rigorous economic comparison of the costs and benefits of NYS versus a system without NYS.  A somewhat related criticism of NYS comes from trade unions in some countries.  Although NYS has many features in common with apprenticeships, some union leaders complain that cadets take jobs away from union members.
Other problems are financial and political.  When the world price of oil fell in the early 80s, governmental funding of Indonesia’s KKN was greatly reduced.  In the mid-1980s a newly-elected conservative government in Canada canceled Katimavik, which was brought back to life in the early 90s with another change in government.            

Some problems are more apparent than real.  In programs with a fairly strong element of compulsion, one would expect to find a goodly number of rebellious and uncooperative cadets.  In reality, we find that when young people in such programs are placed in challenging positions and have a degree of choice as to where they are placed– whether in nursing homes or day care centers or fighting forest fires -- they respond positively.
 

Costs.  All programs provide basic living requirements and not much more.  Thus, in conservation programs where cadets are housed and fed, their stipends are much lower than for those cadets serving in cities and living on their own.  Actual costs vary because of the differences in the cost of living and the level of assistance given to cadets.  The annual cost of AmeriCorps cadets is about $12,000 (excluding the educational bonus of nearly $5,000) while that of a Chinese cadet in PARP is about $1,000. 

Financial management. Most NYS programs are financed largely by the central government.  Many have arrangements whereby the locality where the cadet serves provides some support, often in the form of housing and local transportation.  The share of the local cost – which may come from the organization where the cadet serves as well as local government and business – typically is about 20 percent of the total costs noted above.

NYS as an Instrument of Peace and Reconciliation

 

Given this background on NYS within the context of the expanding nature of volunteer service, let us conclude by examining several ways in which NYS has been– and can be even more substantially -- an instrument of peace and reconciliation. 

Young people make a powerful statement for peace by choosing to serve their country in full-time civilian service instead of military service.  That is happening increasingly in a number of countries as young people choose to perform alternative service as Conscientious Objectors.  By 2000 in Italy and Spain, the number of COs exceeded the number of conscripts each year.  It is happening most notably in Germany, where every year for the past decade more than 100,000 young men have opted for civilian service one-third longer than the service period in the military.  Thirty years ago in the United States, the fact that more young men were registering as COs than were being drafted into the military was a major factor in the American decision to withdraw from Vietnam.

It is interesting to consider alternative possibilities along the same line.  Suppose India and Pakistan agreed to suspend military action against one another for ten years if one million young people from each country volunteered to give a year of service as members of the service army that Mahatma Gandhi envisioned half a century ago.  Nobody can foretell the result but we do know that frequent border wars over the past 55 years have not resolved the conflict.
Dr. Reuven Gal of the Carmel Institute for Social Studies in Israel in 1995 proposed a Civic Youth Service comprising teams of Jews and Arabs serving together.  A survey in 1994 had found strong support for the idea among the survey sample of 3,500 Israeli Arab and Jewish 16-17 year olds.  A Civic Youth Service for young Arabs was favored by 75 percent of Arab respondents and 60 percent of Jewish respondents.12  One doubts that those figures would be as high today, but one also wonders what effect such an NYS would have had on the violence of the last two years.

One can also contemplate the effect of similar kinds of NYS among contending groups in Africa, in the former Yugoslavia, and between North and South Korea.

Young people contribute to reconciliation by serving in different parts of their own country.  The civil war in Nigeria during the late 1960s was the major factor leading to the creation of the NYSC in 1973.  Similarly, the separatist movement in the Canadian province of Quebec was a major reason for the creation of Katimavik in 1977.  University graduates in Nigeria have helped to reconcile the sharp differences among Yorubas, Hausa, Ibos and other groups by serving for one-year in a part of the country far from where they grew up.  They have been doing this ever since a few years after the civil war of the late 1960s threatened to tear the country asunder.  University students, the vice-chancellors committee, newspaper columnists, and the government all called for a National Youth Service.

Young people develop bonds of trust and friendship when those from diverse backgrounds serve together in common cause.  Katimavik teams are formed in this way, as are those of City Year in the United States which became a model for many of the NYS programs supported by the Corporation for National Service since 1993.  In Canada and the United States, young men and women from different backgrounds are placed in teams that serve together for a period of 9 months to a year.
 

Young people and those they serve gain a better understanding of people from another country when NYS cadets serve overseas.  In addition, the cadets gain a new perspective on their own country.   There are a number of overseas programs, such as Britain’s Voluntary Service Overseas, America’s Peace Corps, Japan’s Overseas Cooperation Volunteers, as well as the UNV and Service Civile International and other programs affiliated with the Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service.
 

Young people gain a constructive understanding of other ages, races, ethnic, and linguistic groups when they help elderly people stay in their own homes instead of being placed in nursing homes, when they nurture children in day care centers, teach immigrants how to read and write, and work patiently with mentally retarded persons to enable them to take up sheltered employment. In fact, this kind of understanding may prove to be the most important aspect of the service-learning activities of high school and university students.

Young people help the reconciliation process when they serve with peacekeepers. The distinction between military and civilian service need not be as great as the media often suggest, as in the labeling of hawks and doves in relation to a war, or in the seeming dichotomy of conscientious objectors and soldiers.  For example, the majority of the young men classified in America as conscientious objectors during World War II served as noncombatants with the armed forces, and many served on the front lines as medics and cooks.

Peacekeeping missions around the world could employ a mix of NYS and military personnel, with the armed soldiers providing protection and the NYS cadets doing civilian work.  The variety of activities is illustrated in this account of an interview with Corporal Paul Robertson of New Zealand, just returned from a six-month tour of duty with the United Nations peacekeeping force in East Timor in 2001:  “Locals love the military presence because it is a big deterrent.  It provides them with the opportunity to get on with their lives and rebuild what they have lost.  He says it can be the little things that make a difference such as when his company adopted one of the local schools, built a new playground, tidied it up and donated stationery.”13
 

Young people combine the merits of teamwork and overseas service when they join a Global or Regional Youth Service.  The First World War led directly to the creation of international service programs that have endured through the years.  Both Service Civile Internationale and the International Student Service (now World University Service) began in the 1920s by arranging for university students and others from several countries to help with the reconstruction of war-torn countries. Their premise is that all peoples are entitled to the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute to a more equitable world, and their mission is to foster human development and global understanding through education and training.  At first, students served for brief periods during the summer vacation, but in later years these programs have facilitated longer-term placements as well.

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) is a global service program but since its founding in 1971 most of its participants have been mid-level career people aged 30 to 50.  UNV did make an opening to younger participants in 2000 with the decision to accept an Italian offer to place recent university graduates as UNV interns for one year of service outside of Italy.

The most significant regional NYS is European Voluntary Service, founded in 1996.  It facilitates the placement of young people in NYS programs in other countries in the European Union, and has developed a clear allocation of responsibilities for the sending and receiving organizations as well as for the cadets.

Each of these international programs has a good reputation but each is quite small.  If they were linked with sizable NYS programs like those in Nigeria and Germany, and given appropriate support, there would be an opportunity to more fully realize their mission of increased international cooperation and understanding.

An Emergency Relief Corps would offer a good opportunity for such cooperation.  Cadets working in NYS conservation camps could be given specialized training in rescue and relief and be available on short notice to respond to natural disasters.

I suggest that the best way to facilitate volunteer service is for volunteer leaders to work on NYS and service-learning programs with NGOs, governments, and educational institutions.  Those of you who do so will be extending the outreach of volunteer service and will be helping to build a strong future for service to others.  And perhaps most of all, you will be giving the leaders and parents of the future first-hand experience with the challenges they will confront in the years to come. 

We have noted how a sense of responsibility to those in need began with extended families, moved outward to neighborhoods and communities, and is now found in some nation-states.  It is time now to consolidate these programs at the national level and then move to regional and global levels.  I am sure this can be done.  If our countries would give all students the opportunity to engage in service-learning, provide for at least as many young people in NYS programs as they have in military service, and work together on service and conservation projects, I think it would soon become apparent that that kind of expenditure, and that kind of cooperation, are better roads to peace and reconciliation than military might and high walls.