This article examines tensions and developments in youth work following the Albemarle Report in 1960, which sought to revive the flagging youth service. It uses oral history interviews with former youth workers and club members in London and Liverpool, archival research looking at the documents of voluntary youth clubs and associations in London…

Teachers are being asked to implement cultural awareness into their instruction in the 21st century classroom, yet many lack the requisite knowledge and skills to accomplish this. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the perceptions of teachers who are returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCV) regarding what in their long-term international…

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…

The Peace Corps Masters International program offers students the opportunity to combine their Peace Corps service with their master's education. This article demonstrates how classroom learning strengthened the author's Peace Corps service in Tanzania, which in turn strengthened her master's thesis. Peace Corps supports an approach to community…

While her background leading a variety of public, private and voluntary sector organisations was not an obvious preparation for her new role as General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association, the WEA is, nevertheless, in Ruth Spellman's blood. Her grandfather, who left school at 12, became fully numerate and literate through WEA courses…

A number of structural and contextual changes underway suggests that now that the Peace Corps has begun its second half-century, it may be the opportune time for a broader and deeper strategic partnership with higher education along the lines that the Peace Corps founders' envisioned. That partnership would involve higher education playing an…

While people might not be familiar with the term "voluntary arts", they are probably either involved with some voluntary arts activity themselves or they know someone who is. They use "voluntary arts" to mean any situation in which someone is voluntarily participating in an art form for pleasure, social reasons, skills…

Open Stages is Britain's biggest amateur theatre project, a hugely ambitious scheme to bring the professional and amateur theatre worlds together. It is a learning project but, as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Ian Wainwright tells this author, it is not only the amateurs who are learning. Wainwright states that the amateur and professional…

In this article, the author talks about Up for Arts, a Liverpool-based radio project aimed at promoting engagement in the arts. Up for Arts is a unique social action project which uses radio as a means of increasing public engagement in the voluntary arts and crafts. Its success has depended not only on the commitment of its partner organisations…

From President Kennedy's first announcement of a non-military US volunteer corps in 1961, the Peace Corps has been one of the preeminent government grassroots volunteer development agency. This study explores the history of the ambiguities inherent in this contention, pressure primarily stemming from the organization's role as both a governmental…

Diversity in the workforce can be attributed to both a popular, cultural shift and legislative intervention. Despite these forces, discrimination endures in all aspects of Western society from education to employment. Unequal pay and opportunities for promotion are symptoms of a systematic discrimination of individuals based on race and gender.…

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…

The informal learning that older (age 50+) men experience in Australia has been the subject of a suite of recent, intensive, mixed methods research projects in community-based voluntary organizations. The purpose of the research was to examine where men are learning in these contexts beyond work and formal education rather than to assume and…

The Institute for International Public Policy program provides a single grant to assist a consortia of institutions of higher education in establishing an institute designed to increase the representation of minorities in international service, including private international voluntary organizations and the Foreign Service of the United States. A…

This basic interpretive qualitative study used individual semi-structured interviews to explore and understand the experiences of seven self-identified Latina participants, who reside in Northeast Ohio and belong to a volunteer organization promoting professional Latinas. The study used Latina Critical Race theory and feminist perspectives to…