Innovative Grassroots Pilots
With the help of a local program coordinator in each town, we have developed service-learning programs that link secondary and higher education to local NGOs and municipal agencies. On average, 15 students from a school volunteer one afternoon a week, meeting any number of locally defined needs : tutoring children at a refugee camp, designing youth projects at cultural houses, educating at-risk youth about HIV/AIDS, volunteering with local environmental and human rights groups. The local coordinator is usually a high school or university teacher but in some instances is a youth worker from a local youth center.

The YSI Model is extremely flexible. We encourage our program coordinators to adapt the model to local conditions and priorities. We have numerous sites that host a service-learning seminar, where students are convened one hour a week to reflect on their service and discuss civil society with NGO leaders from the community. With the University of Debrecen, for example, we developed a fully accredited, 13-week lecture series on civil society for 40 students that required volunteering. Our goal is to demonstrate a variety of models that can be replicated and expanded with greater support from government, corporations, foundations and individual donors.

National Advisory Council in Hungary