Good citizens take an active role in making their communities better places to live. This motivating book provides several practical examples of ways young readers can demonstrate that they care about their communities. From helping to care for community gardens to participating in community clean-up events, readers will learn the value of becoming active citizens in their communities. Teacher's guide available.

Citizens around the world look to the state for social welfare provision, but often struggle to access essential services in health, education, and social security. This book investigates the everyday practices through which citizens of the world's largest democracy make claims on the state, asking whether, how, and why they engage public officials in the pursuit of social welfare. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in rural India, Kruks-Wisner demonstrates that claim-making is possible in settings (poor and remote) and among people (the lower classes and castes) where much democratic theory would be unlikely to predict it. Examining the conditions that foster and inhibit citizen action, she finds that greater social and spatial exposure - made possible when individuals traverse boundaries of caste, neighborhood, or village - builds citizens' political knowledge, expectations, and linkages to the state, and is associated with higher levels and broader repertoires of claim-making.

This volume engages with the contested concept of ‘active citizenship’. It analyses the use and understanding of active citizenship in youth civic and political initiatives in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Portugal and the UK. Using ethnographic data and insights from the cross-European project CATCH-EyoU, the contributors to this collection illuminate the experiences of young people taking action for social change. It does so at a unique moment when a resurgent populist political right is deploying racial prejudice and neoliberal protectionism in both established media and new digital media to fuel xenophobic nationalism. The book asks a range of questions, including: What is life like for active young citizens with an interest in the civic and political spheres? What practices, relationships and motivations characterise their participatory movements, organisations, initiatives and groups? The chapters use case studies to analyse how friendship and emotion, social media, diversity-work, racism, precarity and burnout feed into motivating and developing or curtailing sustained pro-democratic activism. Youth Active Citizenship in Europe will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including politics, sociology, education and cultural studies.

Active Citizenship gathers a group of political actors and academics who believe a radically more active citizenship is a worthy aim. They spell out how it can be achieved in their particular area of concern, looking at the obstacles and how they might be overcome. Together, they shows us how we can realise the dream of a citizen culture and what benefits it would bring for democracy in the UK.Bernard Crick's first and final essays set the tone, respectively, on Civic Republicanism Today and Political Identity. Other contributors consider active citizenship in relation to: Labour Government Policy (David Blunkett and Matthew Taylor); Scottish Devolution (George Reid); Public Services (David Donnison); Gender Equality (Rhona Fitzgerald); Schools (Pamela Munn); Multiculturalism (Dina Kiwan); Integrating Immigrants (Elizabeth Meehan); Lifelong Learning (John Annette); Europe and International Understanding (Derek Heater); Young People (Andrew Lockyer) and Scottish Independence (Kevin Francis).

Community Service Volunteers is known nationally for its citizenship and community learning schemes, and provides a support and consultancy service for schools, education authorities and government. This book is based on that experience and carries.

It's never too early to become an informed, active citizen. Citizens of the United States have certain rights and duties. Readers learn about these freedoms and responsibilities as they are presented with useful facts about U.S. citizenship. This accessible main text delves into what it means to be an active citizen, the importance of learning about the government and political leaders, why voting is crucial, how to get involved in causes that are important, and volunteering. Eye-catching full-color photographs, insightful sidebars, and information graphic organizers provide further understanding of this vital social studies and civics curriculum topic.

Active citizenship is an objective of schooling in an increasingly complex context, in which social cohesion of the multicultural society is a cause for growing societal concern. International co-operation between European countries and a growing heterogeneity of the (school) populations of most European countries have led to an increased interest in education for citizenship. The core question dealt with pertains to the role that schools can play in developing citizenship through formal and informal learning. Day-to-day school life is seen as a rich environment in which aspects of functioning in a democratic society and dynamic interplay with rules, leadership and peers with different backgrounds are experienced and form a source of learning. In this view the school context functions as a micro-cosmos to exercise “school citizenship” as a bridge to societal citizenship and state citizenship. The book brings together material from Cyprus, Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Romania and The Netherlands.