‘Work-life balance should include time spent volunteering’

WORK-LIFE balance should become a four-way effort of family, work, leisure time and volunteering as doing unpaid service improves young people’s resilience, a retired general says.

Sir Nick Parker, who served as Commander of the Land Forces from 2010 to 2012, says the Government must encourage people to volunteer to improve social mobility and life chances.

Writing on the Telegraph website, he warns that ministers have become so focused on Brexit, important social initiatives have become less important creating a risk that a generation of young people will be left behind.

Sir Nick says volunteering should be normalised and all 10 to 20-year-olds should be encouraged to give their time to help them learn new skills.

Adults must lead the way and all areas of society should get on board and promote the opportunities available so that projects such as the #iwill campaign do not “join the smoking ashes of our predecessors”.

He says that volunteering should become a habit so that youngsters get used to including it in their social calendar when they are in school, helped by teachers and youth group leaders.

If this were to happen on a large scale across the country, he says, it would be much easier to encourage them to continue volunteering when they get older, benefiting society as a whole and building resilience.

He writes: “If young people consider participation in social action to be the norm by the time they reach adulthood, then they will continue to volunteer even as the pressure on their work-life balance increases. There is an assumption that those between 20 to 30 are so busy with young families, and establishing themselves in jobs, that they have no time to volunteer.

“If we are able to promote volunteering for social action as a normal part of everyone’s life, and particularly in young people as they transition to the workplace, it will become a habit, improve social mobility and stiffen our resolve to face the challenges of the future.”

He adds that the Government is “transfixed with internal politics and the demands of Brexit and there is a

‘Over the past 18 months, we have watched as our campaign has slipped down the agenda’

real risk that we will overlook our wider responsibilities, particularly in relation to setting up the younger generation for success”.

He warns that fewer young people from poorer areas are volunteering because of a lack of opportunities. “These schemes have been fuelled by a sense that we lag behind other comparable countries and that, if more can be done, we will revitalise civil society. But they have been vulnerable to politics. Over the past 18 months, we have watched as our campaign has slipped down the agenda and there is now a risk of something that can be hugely positive at this critical time joining the smoking ashes of our predecessors.”