The New Volunteers of America

The youth of America are setting a volunteerism example we should all follow. Their message is socially conscious service.

More on:

• Election 2008
• Politics

A year before the 2000 election, two Harvard sophomores asked me how to run a survey that would measure the level of civic engagement among people their age. Of course, we didn't know then how much the project would presage the youth movement we see gathering in America today.

These students were eager to vote in a national political contest for the first time. But they were also frustrated by the perception that young people were apathetic and wouldn't vote. It was true that the participation of young voters in major elections had been declining. But these kids and their friends were devoting themselves to community service, spending unpaid hours tutoring children and working at food banks. They were hardly apathetic. Several months after the election, 12 other students and I began conducting biannual surveys of the attitudes of the younger generation toward politics and public service. The results showed that our youth were committed to serving their communities but not necessarily at the voting booth. Their ardent volunteerism was striking. At least 60 percent of students participated in some form of community service -- more than half of them on a regular basis.

In high school they may have flocked to volunteer work to embellish their college applications. But once in college, they'd had enough experience to see that serving others could actually be enjoyable, and they continued to stay involved past graduation.

In 2004, as the war in Iraq escalated, the under-30s came out to vote in numbers that hadn't been seen since 1972, jumping 31 percent from 2000. This trend continued through the 2006 midterm elections and deep into the '08 primary season. Already the Millennials have separated themselves from the generation that preceded them.

If the spike in 2004 can be characterized as Millennial 2.0, the evidence we have in both our poll and on the national stage could be called Millennial 3.o. What will these enormous changes mean?

Above all, it will put socially conscious service front and center. Millennials look at problems they've inherited, such as AIDS, global warming, and homelessness, as theirs to solve. Whatever way the coming election goes, we know now that millions of young Americans await a President who will call on them to serve. They are ready to write the next chapter.

John Della Volpe is director of polling, Harvard University Institute of Politics, and founder and managing director, SocialSphere Strategies.

From Reader's Digest - June 2008

 

• The Facebook Election
• With their voices and votes, the under-30s are galvanizing politics. But they're not easy to typecast, as an exclusive RD poll reveals.
• 
• National Survey of the Millennial Generation
• 
• Quick Study: Voting Machines
• Learn who's who when it comes to making sure the nation's voting machines work, plus get up-to-speed on ballot lingo.
• 
• About Our Survey
• Find out more about how we conducted our poll of young voters in the 2008 election.
• 
• In Their Own Words
• To gauge how today's youth will shape our upcoming election, Reader's Digest commissioned a poll that posed a broad range of questions about the political and personal views of young adults between the ages of 19 and 29.
• 

My husband had been stationed in Europe and away from home for what seemed like years when I went for my annual gynecological checkup. My doctor asked the usual questions, including what I was using for birth control. I gave the only possible response I could: "The Atlantic Ocean."

-- Vicki L. Bailey

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