Young adults who grew up in the shadow of the 9/11 attacks and saw the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina are volunteering at home and abroad in record numbers. The generation that learned in school to serve as well as to read and write, the Millennials were the first global Internet explorers even as they pioneered social networking for favorite causes at home.
“Community service is part of their DNA. It’s part of this generation to care about something larger than themselves,” says Michael Brown, co-founder and CEO of City Year, which places young mentors in urban schools. “It’s no longer keeping up with the Joneses. It’s helping the Joneses.”
Surveys show people born between 1982 and 2000 are the most civic-minded since the generation of the 1930s and 1940s, say Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, co-authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics.
