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To better understand how corporate communicators and human resources professionals can champion volunteer activities and youth engagement as evidence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability commitment, this chapter explores representations of urban youth conservation–environmental empowerment through a textual analysis of three organizations’ websites: Clearwater, the Philadelphia Zoo, and The Nature Conservancy. In addition to identifying common themes across the websites, I compared each program to the Critical Social Theory of Youth Empowerment (CSTYE) framework consisting of six dimensions for maximum success in empowering youth stakeholders (Jennings, Parra-Medina, Hilfinger-Messias, & McLoughlin, 2006). Recommendations are provided for organizations using environmental–conservation programs targeting young people – and other researchers of this phenomenon.

In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, the authors draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. The authors develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

Israel is a desirable destination of international migration. Most migrants suffer from job insecurity, the small number of supportive family, and environmental anchors.

This chapter aims at outlining the activities and concepts of the young volunteers of the non-formal education practice operating in a big city for the benefit of the migrant children and the implications of this practice on the future of the children in the receiving society.

The research findings indicate that the young volunteers operate in three different focuses of interaction: (1) creation of a personal–emotional communications system; (2) ethical-humanistic education; and (3) promoting success in school studies.

The practice described in this research dealing with the assistance of young volunteers may serve as a model for the advancement and integration of other migrant populations in both, Israel and the world.

Forward-thinking companies are interested in promoting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) while remaining profitable. Some critics have raised concerns regarding the motivations of companies that engage in CSR, suggesting that inauthentic efforts are little more than “green-washing.” However, when efforts are integrated into the core values of a company, it is likely that CSR can result in important benefits for companies and communities. In this study, we present a case study of Cotopaxi, an outdoor products company located in Salt Lake City, UT. During the early spring and summer of 2016, Cotopaxi developed a computer coding and filmmaking workshop for refugee youth to assist them in learning marketable skills for future employment. During the course of the workshop, the authors volunteered with individuals from Cotopaxi, Adobe, Goldman Sachs, and local universities to assist in the workshop. We interviewed volunteers to determine what motivated them to participate. By analyzing the interviews, we identified three specific volunteer types: Experienced Volunteers, Kindred Spirit Volunteers, and Emerging Volunteers. We suggest that by understanding these volunteer types, organizations can leverage overlapping values between volunteers and the organization to create more authentic CSR efforts.

Multiple forces that shape the identities of adolescents and young adults also influence their subsequent career choices. Early work experiences are key among these forces. Recognizing this, youth service programs have emerged worldwide with the hope of shaping participants’ future trajectories through boosting engagement in civically oriented activities and work. Despite these goals, past research on these programs’ impact has yielded mixed outcomes. Our goal is to understand why this might be the case.

We rely on interview, archival, and longitudinal survey data to examine young adults’ experiences of a European youth service program.

A core feature of youth service programs, namely their dual identity of helping others (i.e., service beneficiaries) and helping oneself (i.e., participants), might partly explain the program’s mixed outcomes. We find that participants focus on one of the organization’s identities largely to the exclusion of the other, creating a dynamic in which their interactions with members who focus on the other identity create challenges and dominate their program experience, to the detriment of a focus on the organization and its goals. This suggests that a previously overlooked feature of youth service programs (i.e., their dual identity) might prove both a blessing for attracting many diverse members and a curse for achieving desired outcomes.

More broadly, our results suggest that dual identity organizations might attract members focused on a select identity, but fail to imbue them with a blended identity; thus, limiting the extent to which such organizations can truly “redirect” future career choices.

Young people in rural areas often face barriers when accessing participation opportunities in their municipalities. This affects their voices being heard and their ability to create change. Even though almost half the world’s population lives in rural areas, rural young people’s activism is often overlooked in the literature. In addition, when young people’s activism is explored in empirical research, conceptualisations of activism and methods are often not tailored to rural areas. This chapter, thus, adds to our understanding of young people’s activism in rural municipalities by drawing on a mixed methods case study including thirteen focus groups (FGs; n = 35) and a questionnaire (n = 106) with young people aged 13–17, and semi-structured interviews (n = 11) with teachers from one secondary school in a rural municipality in Germany. Five of the FGs were conducted and analysed by Year 10 students, adding unique insights into participants’ experience of activism. In this chapter, activism is conceptualised as one of the multiple dimensions of citizenship. Activism includes demanding systemic change, individually or collectively, which may include refusing to do things, aiming to prevent laws, raising awareness, and making consumer choices. Rather than being full-time activists, the young people in this study were engaged in only a few forms of activism, often carried out ad-hoc, part-time and in connection with other citizenship activities such as volunteering. Spaces for activism included online, the local municipality, everyday spaces such as the supermarket, and school. Participants experienced multiple barriers when engaging in activism including narratives of non-activist young people, age restrictions, power imbalances and few opportunities for creating change, particularly at participants’ school and in their municipalities.

Purpose: This chapter presents a brief overview of national youth service (NYS) in different countries around the world. NYS offers an alternative to military service in many countries.

Method: The chapter traces the development and growth of diverse NYS schemes, and their relative success.

Findings: The chapter argues that with continued support for NYS programs countries can harness youthful energy and power to invest in a number of social, economic, and environmental programs that serve as building blocks for sustaining peace.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.