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
To 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 Score
Time Management 4
The funding factors: 3
Career development pressure 5
University/Colleges tight academic schedule 4
Cultural Aspects 3
Lack of expertise and increased level of fear 1
Total 20

Pushing Forces:

Pushing Forces Score
Recognition 4
University/College Requirements 2
Parental Involvement 3
Job contacts and existing skill development 3
Personal Relation enhancement 4
Total 16
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 practices
These 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 Involvement
Parents 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 development
Youth 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 enhancement
Community 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 pressure
Youth 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/Colleges tight academic schedule
Basically 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
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)

Lack of expertise and
increased level of fear

1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
0
Pushing Force (16)
Cul ture
Recognition

Uni versi ty
Col l ege
requi rements
Job
Contacts
Parental
Invol vement
Personal
Rel ati on
enhancement
Fundi ng
Factor
Ti me
management
Career development
pressure
Uni versi ty/ Col l ege
s ti ght academi c
schedul e

Restraining Force (20)
Desi red State
(Increased Level of
Youth partici pation on
community servi ce)
The various forces identified for change are:
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 change
Time 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

Uni versi ty
Col l ege
requi rements
Job
Contacts
Parental
Invol vement
Personal
Rel ati on
enhancement
Fundi ng
Factor
Ti me
management
Career development
pressure
Uni versi ty/ C
ol l eges ti ght
academi c
schedul e

Restraining Force (10)
Desi red State
(Increased Level of
Youth partici pation on
community servi ce)
Pushing Force (16)