some good points made by yourself and I agree with what you are saying about making better use of those on giro, it would be a good gateway for them back into society and work, but the report also confirms the deeper issues I mentioned, particularly the ones affecting the East and SE England.
I tried to find the whole full report from “wearev” but they haven’t uploaded it to their website, which is just full of in part taxpayer funded spin, so have to go with what they have shared with the Grauniad,
but it shows numbers are dropping (maybe and understandably due to the credit crunch), many youths (presumably the more rebellious ones) themselves view this as “geeky” (I expect this is in part due to the domination of religious or “boring” organisations amongst the people in power in voluntary groups..
round here even when younger people like yourself set up sucessful projects (like the cybercafe 6 miles from my work, set up by a former raver) no one of that age group wants to volunteer as its “too much like hard work” – other than the “geeky” youths i.e those what go to church regular, don’t do drugs / stay up late etc- are also more likely to go uni, get a good degree (many also leave EA for good) and then stay in the rat race (out of necessity perhaps?)
even those what do volunteer are doing it more for their personal career development priorities above the actual causes being supported (we had about 5 CV’s in recently and all of them did have a bit of voluntary work to look “good”)
that said all this is more reason to strongly encourage use of people on giro/benefits as volunteers… would be one way of making young people do something constructive… I know people who might be “persuaded” to go down this route in my area…
