National Youth Service: Why is there renewed interest, and what can we learn from the youth…

National Youth Service: Why is there renewed interest, and what can we learn from the youth programs of the 1960s and 70s?

More discussions (pro and con) about national service youth programs have been popping up recently in the US, Canada, and the UK.

In the US, podcaster and author Scott Galloway argues for a mandatory National Service, especially for the positive impacts on young men.

In Canada, Seth Klein and other environmental leaders propose a Youth Climate Corps (YCC). On the other side, Paul Kershaw, leader of Generation Squeeze, argues against any extra burdens placed on younger generations.

Over in the UK, the Conservative Party’s election platform in 2024 proposed reintroducing National Service for young people.

Let’s take a closer look at these ideas:

US podcaster and author Scott Galloway has recently been calling for mandatory paid national youth service since the publication of his 2025 book, “Notes on Being a Man.” He says such a program, similar to AmeriCorps, would especially help young men. The program could involve military, community, or environmental work, and would foster camaraderie among people from diverse backgrounds to build a sense of national unity. Interestingly, he makes the same argument as Generation Squeeze but is in favour of national service. He speaks about how young people are deeply disadvantaged compared to previous generations and believes a well-funded National Youth Service is an investment in the future. In sum: National Service like AmeriCorp, paid, mandatory, military or civil service. Source: https://www.profgalloway.com/national-service/ (Nov. 15, 2025)

Seth Klein, Team Lead of the Climate Emergency Unit, proposes a robust and purely voluntary national 2-year Youth Climate Corps (YCC) as a nation-building initiative that would offer meaningful work such as emergency response, community infrastructure, building retrofits, and renewable energy at a living wage. The YCC would also aim to create a unifying sense of purpose for youth. In sum: Canada Youth Climate Corps — well-paid, widely available, 2 years, not mandatory Source: https://www.theenergymix.com/canadians-support-mandatory-youth-service-but-young-people-need-paid-meaningful-work-klein/ (2025)

Paul Kershaw of Generation Squeeze, on the other hand, is against any compulsory national youth service. He argues that younger Canadians already perform national service: “they sacrifice their standard of living to protect healthy retirements for our aging population. Young Canadians don’t need to give another year of national service. They need recognition — and reciprocity from older generations.” While clearly against adding burdens to younger generations, Gen Squeeze doesn’t address how paid community service (such as what the YCC is proposing) could be offered instead of low-paid service jobs. In sum: No mandatory youth service; provide recognition and reciprocity for younger generations’ disadvantages compared to earlier generations. Source: https://www.gensqueeze.ca/gen_z_year_national_service_already_drafted (2025)

The UK Conservative Party proposed in their 2024 election platform to reintroduce national service. Their plan would have mandated all British 18-year-olds to either do community volunteering one weekend a month for a year with civil organizations, or take a selective military placement (for the ‘brightest and the best’ candidates) in areas like logistics, cyber security, procurement or civil response operations (limited to one year and to 30,000 placements). In sum: Mandatory volunteering and limited paid military placements. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c988jdxl02vo (2024)

Given the renewed interest in these national service ideas, it’s worth looking back to the 1960s and 70s and similar programs that ran in Canada and the US. There are three reasons to do this now:

1. While national service could be a big benefit to individuals and society, it could also go very wrong.
2. Due to near-future AI job disruptions, a guaranteed income benefit will also be needed for there to be any possibility of economic and social stability. (i.e. Universal Basic Income (UBI), Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI), Citizen’s Income or Dividend, or Buckminster Fuller’s Lifetime Fellowship.)
3. The world of work is never going back to what it was. We humans need to update our “software” about how we think about work. If we instead cling to the old and familiar system of formal paid work as our ‘main frame’ to organize our economy and society, it will fail. Badly. We will be needlessly choosing mass misery. Wealth will be no insulation from the dysfunction and social breakdown. We will need anything and everything that could help with this transition. Along with income security, these national service programs could play a key role.

It was for these reasons in 2023, I read written sources and interviewed people who participated in the 1960s youth service programs for a chapter of my book, Economic Offramp.

Here’s some of what I found, including why these programs started, some of the main problems, and the benefits.

In the mid-1960s, half of Canada’s population was under twenty-five. This was the era of government-sponsored youth service work and volunteer projects. These initiatives sprang up both to tap into the youthful idealism of the times and because officials feared trouble from the big wave of boomer youth.

For many participants, these youth employment projects — despite their imperfections — provided an enriching and meaningful experience.

One participant from the early 1970s told me how her work in a remote community over one summer made her more compassionate and changed how she looked at the world. This was not uncommon. Other interviewees told of how they’d broadened their perspectives, changed their plans for the future, and used volunteering as a springboard to acquire new skills.

On the negative side, some participants noted a negligent lack of supervision (here, have a chainsaw), and some described how there was occasionally more play and less work happening.

While the near future will likely combine paid work, unpaid work and some form of guaranteed cash benefits, this might be a difficult transition for many people. This is especially true if their main source of self-worth and socialization comes from paid work.

Thus, it’s important to address and recognize the psychological role of paid work. People of any age, but especially youth, may still want or need a structured way to gain skills, meaningful experiences, and social connections.

Daniel Pink writes how people have “three innate psychological needs — competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.” (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, 2011.)

Derek Thompson (The Atlantic) recently pointed out the problem of framing a basic income as something for ‘losers’:

“Nobody grows up thinking, man, I hope I become an economic loser in a techno-macro-economic circumstance that requires the federal government to bail me out forever.” (‘How Superintelligent AI Could Upend Work and Politics’, Plain English Podcast, Nov. 18, 2025.)

So… how to design a support infrastructure for a smooth economic transition during a time of drastic change to the world of work?

One place to start looking for answers is to examine what we can learn from the robust youth programs in North America in the 1960s and 70s.

In Canada, numerous youth initiatives started in the 1960s: The Company of Young Canadians, Canadian Universities Service Overseas (CUSO), Katimavik, Opportunities for Youth (OFY), Local Initiatives Program (LIP), the Alberta Service Corps, and UN youth volunteers. Some of these groups did grassroots community organizing, others did more conventional community improvement projects.

In the U.S., the International Peace Corps began in 1961. In 1963, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) began and continues today as part of AmeriCorps.

(It should be noted that overseas volunteer programs have, in some cases, been described as “voluntourism” or “backpacktivism.” See Mai Ngo’s 2014 paper “Canadian Youth Volunteering Abroad: Rethinking Issues of Power and Privilege*”.)*

Most unusual was the 1966 government-founded and funded Company of Young Canadians. The CYC was designed to be led and run by youth volunteers with an aim to create social change through grassroots community organizing.

Right from the start, however, there were serious divisions. Conflicts erupted between volunteers who had only a pittance to live on and the well-paid staff. More tensions came from competing visions: radical social change versus practical community projects.

Canadian author Ian Hamilton describes his CYC experience in his book, The Children’s Crusade: The Story of the Company of Young Canadians (1970), where he said it left “scars” on people and that it was “an organization driven by emotion, with personality pitted against personality.”

Despite this, Hamilton described how many projects had a very beneficial impact on local communities. Other recent assessments echo this and give notable examples:

“By the time it wrapped up operations, its projects and volunteers had been on the frontier of the fight against [unwanted] urban renewal, the establishment of community-run social services (Cool Aid), alternative education (Rochdale College), and the development of community radio and television (Radio Kenomadiwin), had reinvigorated the nation’s cooperative movement, and finally, had contributed to the emergence of a whole new generation of First Nations leaders, including future Assembly of First Nation’s grand chief George Erasmus. As the story of the founding of Greenpeace told at the outset illustrates, it also had a hand in nurturing the development of Canadian and global environmental activism from the grassroots.”

(From the Grassroots: The Company of Young Canadians, Local Activism, and Sustainable Development in Canada, 1965–1975, Kevin Brushett. Canadian History and Environment, August 2020.)

While there could be many benefits from a formally organized volunteer service program, there are also ways such a program could go wrong:

• If work opportunities are not strictly voluntary, it could easily turn into exploitation.
• Without accountability, it could put people at risk.
• Without transparency, it could be a source of corruption, nepotism, and petty fiefdoms hogging resources.
• Participants might get coerced into political or religious ideology.
• Replicating old dysfunctional boss-employee patterns.
• Rigid bureaucracy that can’t respond to new problems and conditions. (e.g. maybe mandatory might need to switch to non-mandatory or vice versa)

Summary: There are several reasons that the idea of national service is gaining traction.

The world of paid work is changing and no longer plays such a connective linking network role in society. A volunteer service infrastructure could become one of the key ways alienated, lonely, or directionless people could gain connections, self-worth, broaden perspectives, and develop or share skills. Service programs from the past, or any current programs in any country that have shown good outcomes, should be examined.

This would address people’s psychological needs. But people can’t flourish without a foundation of material security. Income security programs are also essential.

Final note: Most discussions of national service don’t pay much (or any) attention to the topic of unpaid care work. While there’s much talk of a climate emergency, there’s little about the coming care emergency needs of an aging population. Nor is there recognition of how those who bear and raise the next generation provide a service to society. Because of decades linking overpopulation to environmental harm, some people still regard raising children as a negative, not a service to society, but a drain. Yet everyone depends on help from younger generations as they age. Care work for the young and old must be recognized as what it is: a beneficial and difficult service to society. Another gap in the national service discussion is the importance of young people learning ‘soft skills’, such as emotional intelligence, and not just hard skills. Both are important to a healthy society. (E.g. see “AI, Neuroscience & Boarding School: Why Emotional Intelligence is the Future” by Piers Cross, An Evolving Man Podcast, Nov. 12, 2025.)

Recommended Book:

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life by Eric Klinenberg, 2018

Recommended Article: “Most Young Radicals of Canada’s New Left Distrust the Idea of the Company of Young Canadians” — Maclean’s Magazine editorial, November 15, 1965.