Low Incidence of Youth Participation in Community Service Activities

In this group case, we were required to identify the forces that motivates the youth in community service activities as well as the forces that keeps youth away from community service activities. So, to complete this, we visited some NGOs involved in community service and asked few youth involved there. To name, those few NGOs are Kei Garau, Birthday forest, and Yatra Foundation. These organizations are extensively involved in community services like helping children in their educations, planting trees and environmental protection. Since we were required to understand the factors in the topic mentioned above, we did not focus on single organization.

Methodology

Pushing Forces ScoreRecognition 4

University/College Requirements 2Parental Involvement 3

Job contacts and existing skill development 3Personal Relation enhancement 4

Total 16To complete this project, we visited few NGOs and talked with some youths involved on those organizations. We collected their view with informal talks. We talked with the persons involved there and asked then about the youth participation in social work, what they think and how prepared were they for social service. We also asked them about how they feel about social service and what forces are keeping them away from social service. We made informal talks with them to ensure that they do not exaggerate the facts.

Field Force Analysis:

Restraining Forces ScoreTime Management 4

The funding factors: 3Career development pressure 5

University/College’s tight academic schedule 4Cultural Aspects 3

Lack of expertise and increased level of fear 1Total 20

Pushing Forces:

Recognition

Recognition has always been an important reason why youth pursue community involvement. By nature all human beings desire to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity that gives the person a sense of contribution, to feel accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. This is the major reason why many Youths get involved in community services. Thus, this force is assigned a weight of 4.

University/College Requirement practicesThese days many Colleges/Universities programs ask community service an unofficial requirement for acceptance. Similarly, some college prefers work experience in community services for admission purpose. In addition some make mandatory to their students to continue community service for some specific number of hours to graduate. Thus, this factor pushes the students to get involved in community services. However, this factor just compel some students not motivate them. Thus, this factor is assigned a weight of 2.

Parental InvolvementParents play an important role in linking their children to the world around them and shaping the culture. Parental Involvement in many community services has direct influences on perception of youth and it increases the rate of youth involvements. Youth whose parents are actively involved in the community are more likely to become active themselves (Chan & Elder, 1999). Youth whose parents do not participate in civic activities may still become active in their communities; however, a supportive and reinforcing parental relationship may have a greater contribution to civic engagement than parental modeling (Fletcher & Van Horn, 2000). Thus this factor is assigned a weight of 3.

Job contacts and existing skill developmentYouth and adults have identified job contacts and existing skill development as motivators for becoming active in community services. In context of Nepal, the employment opportunities are seems to be limited, and voluntary activities can offer a valuable alternative to paid employment for youth which enhance the possibilities of job contacts and sharpen the level of existing skills. Thus, youths and adults have identified this factor as a motivator for volunteering or becoming active in the community services. The assigned for this force is 3.

Personal Relation enhancementCommunity services enhance the level of attachment with great personality. Youth can use this platform to understand the importance of public relation and increase the level of rapports with big personality. This factor pushes them to get involved in community service. The assigned weight is 4 for this force.

Restraining Forces:

Time Management: Time management for youth is critical as they are quite immature to manage their academic life, social life, professional life along with their personal life simultaneously. Generally, they have a problem in prioritizing the programs and scheduling the tasks. Thus, immaturity of youth in prioritizing and scheduling tasks acts as major restraining force for them to get involved in community services. Thus, this force is assigned a value of 4.

The funding factors:Community service demands deployments of funds either gathered from charity or other sources. However, fund collection process is really not an easy task. Youth, from their perspective, have increased level of fear in fund raising issue. Thus, they hesitate to get involved in none of the community services which demands huge funds. However, this tendency decreases as the level of expertise sharpens. Thus, this factor is assigned a weight of 3.

Career development pressureYouth are often in a great deal of pressure to choose one perfect career path. It is their families, colleagues, education system, or the culture, that compels them to run in a competitive run way. This factor is one major throne that resists the active involvement of youth in community services. Thus, the assigned weight to this factor is 5.

University/College’s tight academic scheduleBasically youth are quite immature in managing their academic life, along with social life, professional life and personal life. Their first priority is to secure good grades and achieve academic goal. The tight schedule designed by university/college trapped their life within the academic periphery. Thus, they hesitate to get involved in any community service program. Thus, the assigned weight is 4 to this factor.

Cultural Aspects (no recognition for youth involvement in social context and Friends disapproving)Generally, people in society have a tendency to neglect the youth activities. This sentiment over youth demoralizes youth to get involved in any community services. Due to this factor many youth hesitate to get involved in community services. Similarly friends disapproving in community services demoralize youth to be a part of any community service programs. Thus this aspect is assigned a weight of 3.

Lack of expertise and increased level of fear

Recognition

University College requirements

Job Contacts

Parental Involvement Personal

Relation enhancement

Funding Factor

Time management

Career development pressure

University/College’s t ight academic schedule

Restraining Force (20)

Desired State (Increased Level of Youth participation on community service)

Lack of expertise and limited knowledge about interesting programs, cost and benefits, roles and other funding techniques increases the tendency of fear in youth. Thus resist the active involvement in community services. Thus, this resistance force is assigned a weight of 1.

Fig 1: Force Field Analysis (Current State)

The various forces identified for change are:

Lack of expertise and

increased level of fear

1

2

3

4

5

1

2

3

4

5

0

Pushing Force (16)

Culture

Time management Universities/colleges Career development pressure

Unfreezing The process of unfreezing involves breaking down the existing status quo before bringing about the change. In order to improve the incidence of youth in community service, it is first necessary to make the youth aware of the importance of doing community service. Along with informing the youth, it is also important to bring awareness to the society as a whole. Compelling messages should be formed and communicated in various universities/colleges and also various organization in order to communicate the importance of community service. In order to initiate the change process, it is important to evoke strong feelings in the people so that they are willing to accept the change. Proper communication will help in enabling people to accept the various changes that will be occurring.

Moving After the importance of community service has been communicated it is important to start the change process. The first place where the change can be initiated is within the individuals themselves. It is important for the youth today to manage their time well and give importance to community service along with their careers as well. Change can also be brought about through universities/colleges. This is because an educational institution plays an important role in instilling community service values in the youth. Various change activities should be initiated in order to achieve this goal. Along with them even organizations should change their outlook towards community service and encourage their employees to actively participate in such activities. This will help in bringing about change and increasing the incidence of youth participation in community services.

Refreezing After the changes have been made, it is important to refreeze the changes. Just making the changes is not enough. After the changes are made the changes should be made permanent in order to ensure that the changes are successful. After the youth bring about changes in themselves, it is important that they make the change permanent and not revert back to their old selves. Also, the various institutes and organizations should also freeze the changes in order to ensure that the change activity is successful and the goal of the change is achieved. Once these organizations and institutions do this, the youth will be more encouraged to participate in the various community services.

Strategies for bringing about changeTime Management

Make the youth aware of the importance of time management and community service simultaneously.

Motivate them to bring about change and provide intrinsic reward in order to encourage them further.

Universities/Colleges tight academic schedule The management of the institutions should introduce community services as a part of

their curriculum. They should also provide students with special incentives in order to encourage their

participation in community services.

Career development pressure Since the youth today are busy working and building their careers, it is the responsibility

to the organizations to ensure that there is participation of youth in community services. Organizations should themselves be involved in such services and should also have

certain policies ensuring employee participation as well.

Recognition

University College

requirements

Job Contacts

Parental Involvement

Personal Relation

enhancement

Funding Factor

Time management

Career development

pressure

University/College’s t ight academic schedule

Restraining Force (10)

Desired State (Increased Level of Youth participation on community service)

Pushing Forces (16)

Pushing Force (16)