Abstract
In recent decades in the United States, the field of youth community service has burgeoned. In K-12 schools and on college campuses, community service programs are now commonplace and many classrooms use service-learning as an academic intervention. On the national level, federal programs and nonprofit organizations lead large-scale initiatives to engage youth in volunteerism. And in recent years, full-time service programs for recent high school and college graduates are seeing record numbers of applications and enrollments. Given this infrastructure and the willingness of young people to get involved if asked to do so, it is not surprising that today’s youth are serving at historically high rates. Despite the promise, youth community service has yet to reach its potential. Researchers and practitioners have highlighted a gap between what are known to be the key elements for effective service – and how programs are actually carried out. On a national policy level, the field has not gained traction in mainstream education circles, partially because findings from rigorous research studies of national service programs have yielded inconsistent or null results. This chapter in the Handbook of Child Well-Being provides an overview of, and describes the current landscape for, youth community service in the United States.
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Metz, E. (2014). State of the Field: Youth Community Service in the USA. In: Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frønes, I., Korbin, J. (eds) Handbook of Child Well-Being. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_34
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