Youth Empowerment and Volunteerism: Principles, Policies and Practices

Youth studies have always been an important part of the curriculum design andacademic research of Department of Applied Social Studies of City University ofHong Kong. Over the years, the Department has successfully involved teachersand students to launch a series of international and national cross-cultural learningand social service programmes. With the teachers of the department as the core,these networks of youthful activities finally rolled and grew to a bigger idea of YouthEmpowerment and it paved the road for the two international conferences to beheld in City University of Hong Kong for academics, practitioners as well as youngpeople to further gather together for sharing and conferencing. The two youthconferences are “International Conference on Youth Empowerment: A Cross-culturalExchange” held in 2004 and “2nd International Conference on Youth Empowerment:Empowering Youth through Volunteerism” held in 2006. The two conferencesreceived overwhelming support as attended by over 800 delegates from 14 countries.Today, the Department of Applied Social Studies continues to encourage studentsand teachers to stay in touch with the contacts they developed over the years and isstill running a volunteer training and servicing project for students in City University ofHong Kong — The City-youth Empowerment Project.

Subsequent to the two international conferences, we have collected eleven fulltext papers presented in the plenary sessions from the two conferences. All of thesehave been refereed and edited for this book. The submissions are about the varioustheories, concepts, ideas, programmes, examples, projects, and issues about youth,volunteerism, and youth empowerment. This edited book serves as a testimonyand memory for all who had participated in this series of youth focused projects. Inthe collection, one clearly sees how youth potential is unlimited all over the world.Given the chance to serve their communities, youth can indeed become responsiblecitizens of tomorrow.

The chapters and numerous examples herein, clearly demonstrate thesynergistic, energising, and dynamic relationship between those who hold socialresources for youth, those who initiate and coordinate youth programmes, and theyouth themselves who participate in such projects. Youth empowerment is thus, a“Win-Win” scenario for both youth and the communities in which they live.This book is organised into three parts: Youth Empowerment and Volunteerism:Concepts, Models and Theories, Selected Examples in Countries around the Worldand Conclusions. Part One presents the various theories, models, paradigms, andconcepts related to youth empowerment and volunteerism. All of these are both “fieldtested” and practical approaches which set the context for a better understanding ofthe numerous examples which follow in Part Two.

Although the chapters in this first part are written by authors from the UnitedStates, China, and Canada, they all convey that: a) empowerment is a dynamicprocess, b) youth volunteerism is an actualising and empowering process, and c)such a process holds the potential for positive outcomes not only of an immediatenature, but for healthy life long fulfilment.

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 can be viewed as a set of cornerstones concerned withempowerment model-building through volunteerism. In Chapter 1, Snyder andOmoto use empirical studies mainly from their own extensive body of research andpresent a three stage Volunteer Process Model (VPM), comprised of antecedents ofvolunteerism, experiences of volunteerism, and consequences of volunteerism. Theyclearly address the underpinning psychology of volunteerism and empirically answerthe important question — who gets involved in volunteerism and why? In Chapter 2,Omoto and Snyder extend their model to illustrate and justify the role of communitycontext, linkages, and connections to their volunteer model. Using their earlier VPM(in Chapter 1), they clearly argue the case that any model purporting to understandvolunteering that is devoid of community context, is seriously remiss. In Chapter 3,Risler and Holosko present the core elements, distilled from the literature, of a youthempowerment model. Their model is presented as a blueprint for implementation.It includes a series of examples and open-ended process questions for others toaddress, in planning for and applying this approach. In Chapter 4, Yue concludesby using the underlying concepts of hardiness and resilience nested in dispositionalempowerment, to demonstrate how these important aspects of empowerment areinterrelated. He discusses how they impact positively on intrinsic factors such aswell-being, optimism, cognitive re-appraisal of self and coping effectiveness. Finallyin Chapter 5, Kam draws on examples from Hong Kong to describe factors andprocesses that not only empower youth but others that may disempower them. Heconcludes the chapter and this part with an eight-step model to direct a successfulempowerment approach. Interestingly, when one reads these eight-steps and looksat them as essentials for successful empowerment through volunteerism, they forma set of assumptions that underline all of the examples in the remaining chaptersthat follow.