In its response, The NYA calls for any framework to seek to bring volunteering into young people's everyday lives and encourage them to identify and take action to address community problems, rather than focusing on matching young people to pre-identified opportunities.
"This is an important opportunity to endorse and celebrate the breadth of models and activity encompassed under the heading of 'volunteering'," the response says. "We believe that the national framework should therefore be based on an understanding of the variety of ways in which young people are currently involved in voluntary activity and the approaches, factors and personal circumstances that are likely to encourage or discourage their involvement."
It continues: "It should identify those factors that lead to positive experiences of volunteering for young people and communities. Critically, it needs to give equal value and recognition to different approaches to volunteering: between local and national; group and individual; full time and part time; long term and one-off; and adult-led and young people-led activity."
The response considers how to improve awareness of volunteering opportunities to engage more young people, improving the image of volunteering; engaging with more young people from lower and higher income backgrounds; the barriers to engagement and how these can be overcome; the supply and demand of opportunities; the characteristics of best practice; the results of young people's volunteering; and how society could better recognise young volunteers' achievements.
- The full report is available on The National Youth Agency web site at www.nya.org.uk. The Russell Commission web site can be found at www.russellcommission.org.
