Service as a Strategy: Post Conflict Reconstruction

Youth service is a strategy whose promise is demonstrated in programs throughout the world, addressing unemployment, promoting democracy, or strengthening bonds within and between communities. In post-conflict settings, where many youth and their communities face a loss of social and human capital, sporadic violence, inter-group hostility, and shattered infrastructure, well-designed and context-sensitive youth service programs have enormous potential to mitigate these impacts. Service as a Strategy presents the latest research on post-conflict youth programs alongside case studies from around the world and from a variety of different kinds of conflicts. These case studies present different ways civic service programs help to deal with the results of conflict, as well as to prevent future conflicts, from re-integrating child soldiers in Sierra Leone to meeting educational needs in rural Cambodia to fighting unemployment in Bosnia. Youth are often disproportionately affected by conflict, losing opportunities in education and vocational training, suffering high levels of unemployment, and being disenfranchised from civil and political life. Service as a Strategy proposes that actively involving youth does more than just meet the needs of young adults -- it can strengthen the whole community.