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Back to School: Unis-Cité Aims for 7000 Young People in 2018 and Continues its Advocacy for the Development of Civic Service
After a summer marked by fears that Civic Service would be hindered in its development by the proposal for a new national service, the program sees its budget stabilized in the 2018 finance bill.
With an allocation of 448 million euros, it is even described as a “reaffirmed priority.” This amount should reach 150,000 young people in 2018, which is slightly more than in 2017 (about 130,000 envisaged).
The President of the Republic, in his “Open Letter to the Youth” distributed during the presidential campaign, referred to Civic Service as a “tremendous vector of voluntary engagement and integration,” and announced his intention to “sustain it by retaining its fundamentals” and making it “accessible to all young people.”
The Civic Service, voted into law in 2010 by almost unanimous parliamentary support, was created to strengthen national cohesion and social diversity, following the footsteps of the Voluntary Civil Service launched by J. Chirac in 2005 after the suburban riots, modeled on the experience since 1995 by Unis-Cité.
Since then, strongly promoted and supported by both the associative movement and youth movements, it allows 16-25-year-olds (up to 30 for those with disabilities) to dedicate a period of their lives (6 to 12 months) to general interest missions within associations, local governments, or public institutions.
In 2016, nearly 92,000 young people were able to engage in Civic Service, which is 75% more than in 2015. In 2017, the target is expected to reach 130,000.
However, Civic Service is still far from being accessible to all young people: despite its recent significant development, to make it accessible to all the youth, a massive increase in the number of Civic Service missions offered will need to be considered. Particularly if we want to reach all those who are neither in training nor employment but would be interested because they wish to feel useful and gain experience.
