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A Social History of Student VolunteeringFrom Service to Action? Rethinking Student Voluntarism, 1965–1980

A Social History of Student Volunteering: From Service to Action? Rethinking Student Voluntarism,... [In February 1969, two thousand students at Birmingham University took part in a “Community Action Week” on 30 projects ranging from surveys on hypothermia and attitudes to mental health; parties and entertainments for underprivileged children; and a series of redecoration schemes at social institutions across the city—including two homes for unmarried mothers, Birmingham Settlement youth center, a hostel for vagrants, an old people’s home and the Institute for the Deaf.1 Involving a third of the university’s undergraduates—a greater proportion than any of the higher profile university sit-ins or protests of the “long sixties”—the Birmingham Community Action week reflected growing dissatisfaction with a lack of contact with communities outside the university, and was a key episode in the development of a national Student Community Action (SCA) movement in Britain. Just nine months later, National Union of Students (NUS) conference in Margate passed a motion decrying the lack of student activity in the community, urging unions to make community action a “majority activity” of students and mandating NUS to establish a SCA program. In the same month, February 1969, a group of Oxford students began knocking on doors, talking to friends about problems of third world development.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Social History of Student VolunteeringFrom Service to Action? Rethinking Student Voluntarism, 1965–1980

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2014
ISBN
978-1-349-47523-0
Pages
175 –194
DOI
10.1057/9781137363770_10
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[In February 1969, two thousand students at Birmingham University took part in a “Community Action Week” on 30 projects ranging from surveys on hypothermia and attitudes to mental health; parties and entertainments for underprivileged children; and a series of redecoration schemes at social institutions across the city—including two homes for unmarried mothers, Birmingham Settlement youth center, a hostel for vagrants, an old people’s home and the Institute for the Deaf.1 Involving a third of the university’s undergraduates—a greater proportion than any of the higher profile university sit-ins or protests of the “long sixties”—the Birmingham Community Action week reflected growing dissatisfaction with a lack of contact with communities outside the university, and was a key episode in the development of a national Student Community Action (SCA) movement in Britain. Just nine months later, National Union of Students (NUS) conference in Margate passed a motion decrying the lack of student activity in the community, urging unions to make community action a “majority activity” of students and mandating NUS to establish a SCA program. In the same month, February 1969, a group of Oxford students began knocking on doors, talking to friends about problems of third world development.2]

Published: Nov 4, 2015

Keywords: Voluntary Work; Social History; Student Voluntarism; Voluntary Service; Student Movement

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