National Civic Review
Vol. 97, Issue 3, Pages 52-55
Fall 2008
Abstract
Champions of service have every
reason to be upbeat going into this
presidential election, in which both
parties are promoting expanded
government support for civic
engagement. Their advocacy complements
the efforts of a new set of
social entrepreneurs who employ
new technologies to foster a youthful
resurgence of volunteerism.
How government should go about
inspiring and bolstering civic
engagement is much less clear.
For the past eight years, I have
chaired the federal government
agency charged with supporting volunteerism,
the Corporation for
National and Community Service
(CNCS). Our explicit assignment is
to strengthen and expand how government
helps communities extend
civic involvement. We have aided,
witnessed, and documented this
encouraging burst of civic participation.
For more than forty years, the
highly respected Higher Education
Research Institute at the University
of California, Los Angeles, has collected
data on first-year college students.
In 2005, they reported a
twenty-five-year high in the belief
among first-year students that it is
“essential or important to help others,”
and those numbers remained
steady in 2006.
Citation
Goldsmith, Stephen. "Service 2.0 and Cities." National Civic Review 97.3 (Fall 2008): 52-55.