Volunteer Vogue. "This is not a turned-off generation ... They are caring and want to make a difference," says Elizabeth Hollander, commenting on the "vogue of volunteerism" among America's young people, reports Sharon Jayson in USA Today. Elizabeth is executive director of Campus Compact, compact.org, a non-profit group based at Brown University that "supports service programs at U.S. colleges and universities." It seems that growing numbers of young people, "for a variety of reasons, have decided it's quite cool to help others." The trend will be documented in "two major studies," to be released next week, that will "offer insight into who volunteers, and why." One of those studies is courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, an "annual report on volunteerism, including demographic data on the volunteers themselves and the rate of volunteerism." It will be released next Thursday.

The other study is a five-year, $5 million affair commissioned by AmeriCorps, "a 10-year-old national program that provides scholarship money to young people in return for their volunteer work." The study shows that, while most young people sign on because they need the money, they also take with them a lasting passion for volunteerism. "There is a large, swirling controversy about whether participation in service actually improves a person's civic engagement," says David Eisner, ceo of the Corporation for National and Community Service, "This study answers that definitively." The study won't be released until next Tuesday, but the thrust of its findings is confirmed by Lana Little, 19-year-old a high-school student who was required to complete 20 hours of volunteer service to graduate from high school (growing numbers of high schools are adding volunteerism as a "required course"). "At first, I didn't really care for the idea," Lana admits. Her volunteer project involved teaching anti-pollution classes at elementary schools. "When I started actually working on it," she continues, "it was amazing ... You can change children's lives in a matter of an hour."

Inspired by the experience, Lana signed on with AmeriCorps to help build energy-efficient, low-income housing. She comments: "What we're doing here -- people who never owned a house before -- they're gonna have a house ... It's wonderful." So wonderful, that when Lana finishes her current six-month tour, she's signing on for another year. Much of the impetus to require kids to volunteer resulted from "critics in a series of books," published mostly in the '90s, "blasted academia for not fulfilling ... its mission toward civic engagement." Now the White House is joining in -- just yesterday it launched a website, usafreedomcorpskids.gov, designed to show "elementary and middle school students how to volunteer." But David Eisner, of AmeriCorps, says "volunteer vogue" is just a start: "We think institutions of higher education could push a lot harder. Hm. Why not marketing organizations? What do you think?

Tim Manners, editor