Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"This book draws from both authors' extensive experience participating in community organizing efforts and teaching courses on community organizing to novices\"-- Provided by publisher.

The Citizens Campaign, co-founded by the author and his wife, Caroline B. Pozycki, offers citizen leadership training and citizen leadership service opportunities for regular citizens. CITIZEN POWER gives all Americans the know how to become no-blame problem solvers and be part of what is emerging as a new model for a citizen driven national public service.Citizen Power portal (https://thecitizenscampaign.org/register/). 

There are so many ways to help around the community. Clothing drives, soup kitchens, and hospitals are always looking for volunteers to give their time and energy to a good cause. Readers will be introduced to many ways they can give back to the world around them. Brightly colored photographs enhance the relatable and age-appropriate examples of volunteering opportunities, while readers learn important lessons about character. Everyday stories about helping those around us will inspire readers to do the same!

Service learning has become an institutionalized practice in higher education. Students are sent out to disadvantaged communities to paint, tutor, feed, and help organize communities. But while the students gain from their experiences, the contributors toThe Unheard Voicesask, \"Does the community?\" This volume explores the impact of service learning on a community, and considers the unequal relationship between the community and the academy. Using eye-opening interviews with community-organization staff members,The Unheard Voiceschallenges assumptions about the effectiveness of service learning. Chapters offer strong critiques of service learning practices from the lack of adequate training and supervision, to problems of communication and issues of diversity. The book's conclusion offers ways to improve service learning so that future endeavors can be better at meeting the needs of the communities and the students who work in them.

\"Using the framework of the serious leisure perspective, this book explores the concept of career and the question often tackled in mid-life and even upon retirement: 'what to do with the rest of my life?' Apart from the classic economic concerns of pay, health care, fringe benefits, and possible chances for promotion, many people give little careful thought to a career in either work or leisure. In fact, one of the principal themes of this book is that interest in a fulfilment career, even when it leads to deeply attractive work, originates in leisure. If followed, this leads to an efflorescence many years later in amateurism, hobbyism, volunteering, or devotee work. Here participants discover some of the deepest meanings of fulfilment\"-- Provided by publisher.

Service-Learning and Educating in Challenging Contexts explores the potential of service-learning identified as a way to integrate community service with academic study to enrich the on-going professional development of educators, especially in schools that are located in challenging contexts. This collection offers a further refinement of what typically comes under the remit of service-learning, switching the focus from the learning experience of the learner, to the educator and the deep and enriching professional learning opportunities that service-learning can offer. This approach to service-learning promotes collaborative practices amongst professional and in-service educators, and encourages an integration of theory and practice. The international contributors use their own experiences as well as current research to provide a thorough exploration of service-learning from national and international perspectives.

The idea of a \"third sector\" beyond the arenas of the state and the market is probably one of the most perplexing concepts in modern political and social discourse, encompassing as it does a tremendous diversity of institutions and behaviors that only relatively recently have been perceived in public or scholarly discourse as a distinct sector, and even then with grave misgivings. Initial work on this concept focused on what is still widely regarded as its institutional core, the vast array of private, nonprofit institutions (NPIs), and the volunteer as well as paid workers they mobilize and engage. These institutions share a crucial characteristic that makes it feasible to differentiate from for-profit enterprises: the fact that they are prohibited from distributing any surplus they generate to their investors, directors, or stakeholders and therefore presumptively serve some broader public interest. Many European scholars have considered this conceptualization too narrow; however, arguing that cooperatives, mutual societies, and, in recent years, \"social enterprises\" as well as social norms should also be included. However, this broader concept has remained under-conceptualized in reliable operational terms. This article corrects this short-coming and presents a consensus operational reconceptualization of the third sector fashioned by a group of scholars working under the umbrella of the European Union's Third Sector Impact Project. This re-conceptualization goes well beyond the widely recognized definition of NPIs included in the UN Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts by embracing as well some, but not all, of these additional institutions and forms of direct individual activity, and does so in a way that meets demanding criteria of comparability, operationalizability, and potential for integration into official statistical systems. L'idée qu'un « tiers secteur » puisse exister au-delà de l'État et du marché est possiblement un des concepts les plus déconcertants des discours politique et social modernes, englobant, comme il le fait, une incroyable diversité d'organismes et de comportements qui, jusqu'à tout récemment, étaient perçus, dans les discussions publiques et savantes, comme appartenant à un secteur indépendant, même si sous réserve. L'examen de ce concept s'est initialement concentré sur ce qui est toujours largement perçu comme son fondement institutionnel, soit une vaste gamme d'organismes privés et sans but lucratif et les bénévoles et travailleurs rémunérés qu'ils mobilisent et engagent. Ces organismes ont en commun une caractéristique essentielle permettant de les différencier des entreprises à but lucratif: l'interdiction de répartir les surplus qu'ils génèrent à leurs investisseurs, directeurs ou intervenants, et ce, dans l'intérêt présumé d'un plus vaste public. Plusieurs savants européens ont toutefois jugé que cette conceptualisation était trop étroite, affirmant que les coopératives, les mutuelles d'assurances et, plus récemment, les « entreprises sociales » devraient en faire partie, en plus de normes sociales données. Cet article présente une conceptualisation repensée du tiers secteur modelée par un groupe de savants oeuvrant dans le cadre du projet d'impact du Tiers secteur (Third Sector Impact) de l'Union européenne. Elle va bien au-delà de la définition largement reconnue des organismes sans but lucratif inclus dans le manuel des Nations Unies du système des comptes nationaux, en intégrant quelques-uns de ces organismes supplémentaires, pas tous, et des formes d'activités individuelles directes, et ce, de façon à satisfaire d'exigeants critères de comparabilité et d'opérationnalité et à être éventuellement intégrée aux systèmes statistiques officiels. Das Konzept eines „Dritten Sektors“ neben Staat und Mark ist wahrscheinlich eines der verblüffendsten Konzepte in modernen politischen und sozialen Diskussionen. Es ist äußerst umfassend, da eine große Vielfalt von Institutionen und Verhaltensweisen inbegriffen sind, die erst seit relativ kurzer Zeit in öffentlichen oder wissenschaftlichen Diskussionen als ein eigener Sektor betrachtet werden, und das auch nur unter großen Bedenken. Anfängliche Arbeiten zu diesem Konzept konzentrierten sich darauf, was noch immer weitgehend als sein institutioneller Kern betrachtet wird, nämlich die weite Reihe privater, gemeinnütziger Institutionen und die ehrenamtlichen und bezahlten Mitarbeiter, die sie mobilisieren und engagieren. Diese Institutionen teilen ein wichtiges Merkmal, aufgrund dessen eine Unterscheidung von gewinnorientierten Unternehmen praktikabel ist: die Tatsache, dass es ihnen nicht erlaubt ist, Gewinne an ihre Investoren, Direktoren oder Stakeholder auszuschütten, wodurch sie vermeintlich einem breiteren öffentlichen Interesse dienen. Viele europäische Wissenschaftler betrachten diese Konzeptualisierung jedoch als zu beschränkt und argumentieren, dass Genossenschaften, Gegenseitigkeitsgesellschaften und in den letzten Jahren „Sozialunternehmen“ sowie gesellschaftliche Normen ebenfalls eingeschlossen werden sollten. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert einen Konsens zur Rekonzeptualisierung des Dritten Sektors, die von einer Gruppe von Wissenschaftlern erstellt wurde, die im Rahmen des EU-Projekts zu den Auswirkungen des Dritten Sektors (Third Sector Impact Project) arbeiten. Diese Konzeptualisierung reicht weit über die weitgehend anerkannte Definition gemeinnütziger Institutionen laut dem UN Handbook on Nonprofit Instituions in the System of National Accounts hinaus, indem sie zudem einige, jedoch nicht alle, dieser zusätzlichen Institutionen und Formen direkter individueller Aktivität auf eine Weise umfasst, die die anspruchsvollen Kriterien der Vergleichbarkeit, der Operationalisierbarkeit und des Potenzials zur Integration in offiziellen statistischen Systemen erfüllt. La idea de un \"sector terciario\" más allá de los ámbitos del estado y del mercado es probablemente uno de los conceptos más desconcertantes en el discurso político y social moderno, englobando, como hace, una tremenda diversidad de instituciones y comportamientos que sólo relativamente hace poco han sido percibidos en el discurso público y erudito como un sector diferenciado, e incluso entonces con graves recelos. Los trabajos iniciales sobre este concepto se centraron en lo que se sigue considerando ampliamente como su núcleo institucional, la vasta variedad de instituciones privadas, sin ánimo de lucro y los voluntarios, así como también los trabajadores pagados que movilizan y contratan. Estas instituciones comparten una característica crucial que hace factible diferenciarlas de las empresas con ánimo de lucro: el hecho de que se les prohíbe distribuir cualquier excedente que generen a sus inversores, administradores o partes interesadas y por consiguiente sirven presuntamente a algún interés público más general. Sin embargo, muchos eruditos europeos han considerado esta conceptualización demasiado limitada, argumentando que las cooperativas, las sociedades mutuas y, en años recientes, las \"empresas sociales\", así como también las normas sociales también deben ser incluidas. El presente documento presenta un consenso, una reconceptualización del Sector Terciario fabricada por un grupo de eruditos que trabajan bajo los auspicios del Proyecto sobre el Impacto del Sector Terciario de la Unión Europea que va mucho más allá de la definición ampliamente reconocida de las instituciones sin ánimo de lucro incluidas en el Manual de las NU sobre las Instituciones Sin Ánimo de Lucro en el Sistema de Cuentas Nacionales abarcando también algunas, pero no todas, de estas instituciones y formas adicionales de actividad individual directa, y lo hace de una forma que satisface los exigentes criterios de comparabilidad, operacionalizabilidad y potencial de integración en los sistemas estadísticos oficiales.

Theoretically, the more important a role-identity is to a person, the more it should provide a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Believing one's life to be purposeful and meaningful should yield greater mental and physical well-being. These hypotheses are tested with respect to the volunteer role, specifically, Mended Hearts visitor, in which former heart patients visit current heart patients and their families in the hospital. Analyses of survey data from Mended Hearts visitors (N = 458) confirm that a sense of meaningful, purposeful life mediates the positive influences of role-identity salience on mental and physical health. The results hint at an unfolding process: the more time spent in volunteer activities, the more important the volunteer identity. The greater the identity importance, the more one perceives one matters to other people, which in turn enhances purpose and meaning. The more life seems purposeful and meaningful, the better one's well-being.

In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created America's first domestic national service program: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). As part of this program-the largest and most highly esteemed of its kind-nearly three million unemployed men worked to rehabilitate, protect, and build the nation's natural resources. It demonstrated what citizens and government could accomplish together. Yet despite its success, the CCC was short lived. While more controversial programs such as President Johnson's Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and President Clinton's AmeriCorps survived, why did CCC die? And why-given the hard-won continuation and expansion of AmeriCorps-is national service an option for fewer Americans today than at its start nearly eighty years ago? InThe Politics and Civics of National Service, Melissa Bass focuses on the history, current relevance, and impact of domestic civilian national service. She explains why such service has yet to be deeply institutionalized in the United States; while military and higher education have solidified their roles as American institutions, civilian national service is still not recognized as a long-term policy option. Bass argues that only by examining these programs over time can we understand national service's successes and limitations, both in terms of its political support and its civics lessons. The Politics and Civics of National Servicefurthers our understanding of American political development by comparing programs founded during three distinct political eras-the New Deal, theGreat Society, and the early Clinton years-and tracing them over time. To a remarkable extent, the CCC, VISTA, and AmeriCorps reflect the policymaking ethos and political controversies of their times, illuminating principles that hold well beyond the field of national service. By emphasizing these programs' effects on citizenship and civic engagement,The Politics and Civics of National Servicedeepens our understanding of how governmental programs can act as \"public policy for democracy.\"