Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults

Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2015-01-27

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 0309309980

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Young adulthood - ages approximately 18 to 26 - is a critical period of development with long-lasting implications for a person's economic security, health and well-being. Young adults are key contributors to the nation's workforce and military services and, since many are parents, to the healthy development of the next generation. Although 'millennials' have received attention in the popular media in recent years, young adults are too rarely treated as a distinct population in policy, programs, and research. Instead, they are often grouped with adolescents or, more often, with all adults. Currently, the nation is experiencing economic restructuring, widening inequality, a rapidly rising ratio of older adults, and an increasingly diverse population. The possible transformative effects of these features make focus on young adults especially important. A systematic approach to understanding and responding to the unique circumstances and needs of today's young adults can help to pave the way to a more productive and equitable tomorrow for young adults in particular and our society at large. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults describes what is meant by the term young adulthood, who young adults are, what they are doing, and what they need. This study recommends actions that nonprofit programs and federal, state, and local agencies can take to help young adults make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. According to this report, young adults should be considered as a separate group from adolescents and older adults. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults makes the case that increased efforts to improve high school and college graduate rates and education and workforce development systems that are more closely tied to high-demand economic sectors will help this age group achieve greater opportunity and success. The report also discusses the health status of young adults and makes recommendations to develop evidence-based practices for young adults for medical and behavioral health, including preventions. What happens during the young adult years has profound implications for the rest of the life course, and the stability and progress of society at large depends on how any cohort of young adults fares as a whole. Investing in The Health and Well-Being of Young Adults will provide a roadmap to improving outcomes for this age group as they transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Volunteer Tourism

Volunteer Tourism PDF

Author: Jim Butcher

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-06-05

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1317750349

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Just a generation ago the notion that holidays should be invested with ethical and political significance would have sounded odd. Today it is part of the lifestyle political landscape. Volunteer tourism is indicative of the growth of lifestyle strategies intended to exhibit care and responsibility towards others less fortunate, strategies aligned closely with developing one’s ethical identity and sense of global responsibility. It sits alongside telethons, pay-per-click, Fair Trade and ethical consumption generally as a way to “make a difference”. Volunteer tourism involves a personal mission to address the political question of development. It draws upon the private virtues of care and responsibility and disavows political narratives beyond this. Critics argue that this leaves the volunteers as unwitting carriers of damaging neoliberal or postcolonial assumptions, whilst advocates see it as offering creative and practical ways to build a new ethical politics. By contrast, this volume analyses volunteer tourism as indicative of a retreat from public politics into the realm of private experience, and as an expression of diminished political and moral agency. This thought provoking book draws on development, political and sociological theory and is essential reading for students, researchers and academics interested in the phenomenon of volunteer tourism and the politics of lifestyle that it represents.

Volunteerism and World Development

Volunteerism and World Development PDF

Author: Allen Jedlicka

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1990-06-26

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0313389527

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Allen Jedlicka proposes a revolutionary new approach to the development problems faced by much of the world. Arguing that government controlled bureaucracies are not effective in addressing the social and economic concerns of developing nations and regions--because they are more concerned with organizational survival than with helping people--Jedlicka develops an alternative solution that relies on volunteer efforts. He asserts that, free of the corrupt influences that affect bureaucracies, volunteers are often more successful in directly helping their target audience because the environmental factors that impede that process--greed, institutional survival, and indifference--are not present. Jedlicka shows how such a volunteer effort can be organized and mobilized, demonstrates the facilitating role that must be played by government in any such process, and calls upon the education system to foster a commitment to volunteerism in the nation's young people. The author begins by showing why bureaucracies are inherently incapable of helping to create true world development. He goes on to offer an extended discussion of why volunteers are more appropriate to accomplish that objective. As Jedlicka notes, people volunteer and work for nothing because they want to help other people--not because they want to enhance their careers or perpetuate the organization. Volunteers, therefore, are more committed, more interested in actually helping people, and, argues Jedlicka, more effective. In order to encourage the development of a volunteer ethic, Jedlicka proposes that the educational system be used to inculcate the values of volunteerism beginning with the very young. He shows how the federal government can be used to provide equipment and logistical support to volunteer efforts and demonstrates how to use participative management techniques to run voluntary organizations. The end result of educational training, government assistance, and committed management, Jedlicka asserts, will be a vastly more effective aid to development than has heretofore been available to the peoples of the Third World. Students of economics and international relations will find Jedlicka's work a provocative look at development problems and solutions.