Thursday, July 23, 2009

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Defining National Youth Service There are some ideas many claim to understand, but which few actually do. One such idea is the national youth service (NYS), which the country should better define before moving ahead with new initiatives which bear the name, but have little resemblance to more authentic models of NYS. In defining an idea, it's clarifying to acknowledge what it isn't. Efforts to rehabilitate non-violent juvenile offenders or provide alternative programs for school-age youth the public education system is unable "to handle" have been wrongly defined and mislabeled as national youth service. Military and penal oriented programs are not examples of NYS. The Youth Empowerment and Skills Training Institute (YEAST), for all its merits, though not without its problems is similarly not a form of NYS. Despite current criticisms, those who initiated, built and supported YEAST deserve our gratitude. While successive governments have spoken eloquently of the importance of NYS, they have failed to define the concept. But, despite this lack of clarity, there has been an enduring effort to provide our young people with opportunities to contribute to the common good through community service. This spirit has produced fine programs such as the Girl Guides, Kiwanis' Key Clubs and an impressive list of private efforts to develop character and promote active citizenship among our youth. But these laudable programs are also not NYS. National youth service by its definition is broader based involving significant numbers of young people. Whether we realize it or not, the country has already developed a form of NYS, namely the mandatory community service program in our public and most of our private secondary schools. This is an example of having a good thing and not recognizing its goodness, especially with regards the thousands of hours of service thousands of Bahamian youth have already given to the nation. But this good idea, yet underdeveloped program, is quite flawed in terms of its mission, direction, oversight and effectiveness. We have to make this good thing even better by holding these school-based programs to a higher standard and providing them with clearer guidelines and better management and accountability. While there are other forms of NYS that can be geared towards college and post-college young people, and should be thought through, the country already has a national youth service infrastructure, namely our junior and secondary schools filled with all of the nation's youth, to whom we can provide a myriad of citizenship-building and community service-learning experiences. Our national challenge is not to launch new programs that check-off some box called national youth service, but to take what we already have and dramatically revise it so that the promise of NYS, already realized in some form, can more fully fulfill the idea and ideals of national youth service of which we have long dreamed. Tuesday, June 23, 2009