Most of you will have seen the Coalition’s shallow and weary resuscitation of a form of National Service for Young People.

David Cameron unveils pilot plans for a National Citizen Service designed to teach 16-year-old school leavers social responsibility as part of the prime minister’s “big society”.

Photograph: Christopher Furlong/PA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/22/david-cameron-national-service

Doug Nicholls responds in combative style, arguing that we don’t need short-term gimmicks; that we already have the flesh and bones of a universal service for young people; and it is this Service, which needs to be defended and extended. His opening salvo begins:

Since 1961 we have had a national youth citizens service. Participation in it is voluntary. It operates 365 days a year. For every £1 invested in it, at least £8’s worth of voluntary activity is generated. It organises around 500,000 committed adult volunteers to support it and 40,000 trained youth support workers and over 7,000 fully professionally qualified youth workers. Their work generates hundreds of millions of hours of voluntary youth involvement each year.

Read it in full and circulate – Our National Youth Service

You will find attached too the August edition of RAPPORT, the CYWU’s journal with its front page, DON’T BREAK BRITAIN – CUTS KILL COMMUNITIES

AUGUST RAPPORT