Center for Social Development

Vision

We foresee a time, perhaps fifty or a hundred years from now, when one or more periods of service - during childhood, youth, adulthood, and/or older adulthood - are considered a normal and desirable feature of the life course. Many opportunities for service will exist, and they will be as well defined and taken for granted as educational and labor market opportunities are today. The purposes of the Global Service Institute are to inquire, understand, inform, innovate, test, enact, and expand those service opportunities. Working with many partners around the globe, we intend to inform and facilitate the emergence of service as a major institution.

-Michael Sherraden and Susan Stroud

Service is expanding in many countries, primarily for youth, but also for adults and elders. The purposes of service include social and economic development, citizenship, experiential learning, skill development, and nation building. Examples in the United States include AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, Campus Compact, Student Conservation Association, Experience Corps, and the Senior Volunteer Corps. In nations such as Mexico and Nigeria, service is required of university graduates. In some countries with mandatory national service requirements, such as Germany, civilian service is an alternative to military service.

The history of service is largely positive; for example the U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s was one of the most popular and successful public programs in the history of the nation. However, examples such as the Hitler Youth in Germany and the Red Guard in China remind us that service can sometimes be turned to evil purposes of the state. Negative examples of service must never be forgotten, but they are historically uncommon.

Initiatives for service arise from different political viewpoints, and have wide public support. For example, President George W. Bush soon after taking office endorsed service tied to faith-based organizations and the expansion of AmeriCorps. This is noteworthy because AmeriCorps, a signature program of President Clinton, was attacked by many Republicans for eight years. To take another example, civilian service by young people in Germany is so common, popular, and productive that it has the long-standing support of the major political parties. In emerging service program in the universities of South Africa, all political parties are supportive. Thus, visions of service may vary, but the concept typically prevails over political partisanship. Looking at the overall pattern, there is reason to believe that service is an emerging institution that may one day become as accepted and taken for granted as education and employment are today.

Service as an emerging institution is poorly understood. The emergence process has qualities of a social movement, with strong advocates and policy and program innovations in many countries, but theory and research have been limited. Many positive impacts of service are recorded as anecdotal information and widely believed to be genuine, but there is little systematic documentation. We do not know very well how to understand service as an institution, nor do we have an adequate theoretical and empirical foundation to guide policy and program development.

See also publication: Service and the Human Enterprise