The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) supports mentoring for children and youth from disadvantaged circumstances through several of their programs. CNCS believes that caring and capable adults can make a critical difference in the lives of children and youth in need. Mentoring is a proven method to ensure students complete…

Hardly anyone can have failed to pick up on the recent flurry of stories in the national press about the Big Society, sparked off by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless's remarks that funds for volunteers are disappearing at an alarming rate, and that this is undermining the very idea of a "Big Society". At the same time, under the government's…

Children's services in England are undergoing a radical reorganisation. New arrangements for local authorities and statutory partners impact significantly on organisations in the voluntary and community sector that are encouraged to deliver more public services. Local voluntary organisations will need help to organise themselves and to build…

Volunteering is a vital and widespread activity in the United States; in fact, volunteers perform many essential community functions. Those who believe that most volunteers are women with time on their hands, that volunteers just do "charity work," and that volunteers are a source of cheap labor who can replace paid professionals and…

Birmingham Settlement has provided services to British older adults for over 100 years, including such innovations as adult day centers, meals on wheels, and transportation services. The participation of the clientele in research helped flesh out the history of the settlement through narratives that demonstrate its impact on the life of the…

This book provides information on workplace volunteering and how employee volunteering programs operate in specific corporate cultures. Chapter 1 focuses on the rationale upon which corporate volunteer programs are constructed. The rationale's four basic components are discussed in detail: quality of life, worker participation, responding to…

The RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) in E. St. Louis is described. How the program got started, guidelines, funding information, and testimony from the volunteers themselves are included. (CT)

This speech promotes student involvement in community service activities. The notions of traditional American volunteerism and community spirit support the idea of students devoting their afterschool talents and energy to helpful endeavors such as tutoring, visiting nursing homes, planting trees, cleaning up ocean shores and river banks, clearing…

Increasingly, college students are choosing to devote their spring breaks to volunteering in community services for the disadvantaged, through alternative spring-break programs administered or coordinated by colleges. Some intend to continue volunteer work after returning to campus. (MSE)

Presenting an overview of the development of a community-based information and referral system, this article describes procedures designed to teach social service workers how to use the system to provide appropriate referrals and outlines a strategy for disseminating the system to other service agencies within the community. (LRA)

The Appalachian Volunteers (AV's), conceived of by Federal, State, and private interests in February 1964, were sponsored by the Council of the Southern Mountains. The organization undertook weekend and vacation projects using college students to repair and renovate one-room schools in isolated areas of eastern Kentucky, later including summer…

A document published this week advocates some radical changes in the organization and philosophy of young volunteer work. (Editor)

Discussed the responsibilities of the community college toward the local community, and specifically considered the importance of satisfying youth, aged 16 to 19, in order that those transitional years are spent in a positive manner. (RK)

Lake Charles, Louisiana established a language bank capable of providing interpreters for 20 foreign languages. All participants are volunteers who offer to help free of charge in case of emergencies arising because of the considerable numbers of foreign visitors in the area. Smooth operation of the language bank depends on the following: (1) an…