Volunteering, Civic Agency and Citizenship-Some preliminary considerations On the back...
Volunteering, Civic Agency and Citizenship-Some preliminary considerations
- Sectors: A! Active Citizenship
Volunteering, Civic Agency and Citizenship-Some preliminary considerations
On the back of renewed global faith in the voluntary sector as a putative conduit for civic renewal,
volunteerism has made a notable return to the hub of policy and scholarly debates. Often times, the
advocacy of volunteerism has been as intriguing as the very quarters from which it has issued. An
illustration: British Prime Minister David Cameron’s solution to the wave of ‘recreational rioting’ which
lashed London and other parts of the United Kingdom in the summer of 2011 is a proposal for a national
citizens service programme to be made available to young people of sixteen years and above. Driven
apparently by his diagnosis of the riots as evidence of Britain’s “slow-motion moral collapse,” Cameron
desires a return to “old-fashioned” values like “teamwork, discipline, duty” and “decency”. Hence the
proposal of a national service program, seen as an integral part of what he refers to as the British
government’s “social fight back”
Share