The Wall Street Journal reports a surge of interest by Millennials in cause-related jobs. Teach for America and the Peace Corps are experiencing a surge in applicants in response to these frightening statistics: “Only 59% of employers surveyed expect to hire 2008 graduates by the end of the summer, down from 76% the year before … “
Historically, the public sector has seen a surge of job applicants in slow economic times, it will be interesting to see how the slowdown affects the nonprofit sector and its ability to continue to hire young people. Hopefully, the slowdown and the employment prospects for young people will all show signs of recovery soon.
Today’s guest blogger is the Case Foundation’s very own Megan Stohner, our resident mobile expert. Megan keeps us up to speed on the latest trends in mobile technology, and today she introduces us to some exciting developments in the world of mobile giving.
As a Millennial I think my favorite tool is my mobile. It’s my alarm clock, my land-line, my post-it note, my filofax, my road-map, my to-do list, my grocery list, my camera, and my lap-top — oh yeah and now with the blackberry curve — it’s my discman too. With each week that passes, I feel like there is more and more that I can do from my phone.
However, there is one major activity that I cannot accomplish easily from my mobile phone and it drives me nuts. That activity is mobile giving. I can go to a concert and send a text message that shows up on a jumbo-tron. I can vote countless times for David Cook on American Idol. YET — when it’s time to give to my favorite musician’s charity or donate during “Idol Gives Back” — I’m always being told to go get my computer and get online. Finally, that’s all about to change.
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Sally Kohn, a writer and moving force behind the Movement Vision Lab for the Center for Community Change, wrote an editorial published in the Christian Science Monitor on what she sees as the limitations of Millennial activism: individual action over collective action.
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In researching the Social Citizens paper, I was struck by a potential problem in public life. We have been witness to an explosion in interest in volunteerism and nonprofit careers, while interest in government careers has waned. Elected officials and other community leaders regularly laud the importance of the nonprofit sector … but is it time for nonprofit leaders to extol the virtue of government service?
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Amazing set of speakers at the plenary this morning at PDF.
Doug Rushkoff, the author of Open Source Democracy, opened the session. He gave a passionate denunciation of the oxymoron of putting the ideas of “personal” and “democracy” together. Going back to the origins of the notion of the individual in the Renaissance, Rushkoff explained that the rights of the individual reduce a sense of community and inevitably to more centralized, and powerful, government.
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