The current recession has shone a spotlight on how unequal our society is with huge disparities in wealth and income distribution. Polly Toynbee and David Walker have written a superb book "Unequal Rewards", which I reviewed for our ACEVO quarterly magazine "Network".
People are now more clearly aware of the huge gap between those used to the largese of big bonuses and the vast majority of the rest of society. The scam that these bonuses are needed to encourage enterprise and innovation is also exposed. The idea these people also give of their largese to charity has also been shown as hollow.
We do now have an opportunity to rebuild; to create a fairer distribution of wealth and to tackle the extremes of poverty - aims of so many of our great charities. Ensuring that the third sector is geared up for this challenge should be an important aim for Government. Darling needs to deliver a budget that targets unemployment and enables the sector to spearhead the job creation drive.
Nowhere is this more important than action on youth unemployment. We are now seeing that this recession will bite hard on the young. It is said that youth unemployment stands at 621,000. This is at its highest rate for a decade. At 14.6% that is shocking enough but the picture is very much worse. The Prince's Trust have pointed out the official statistics lie because they exclude the vast army of the 16-18 NEETS - the kids not in education or training. If you include those then we have youth unemployment at 1.5m. This is shocking.
The third sector can provide the answer. When will the Government act to enable us to sort it?
2 comments:
The third sector has the answer to this stuff - just those nasty types in Govt won't let you fix it. Be careful what you wish for....
Perhaps you can enlighten us (specifically what the third secotr would and could do)so that we can all benefit/lobby?
i think the key is in our role in education and traiinig , and in direct provision of jobs and full time volunteering . BTCV have called for a 500,000 green army of full time volunteers to do environmental work . We also have great opps in regenration etc to gear up to provide more jobs. And investement into Ts organsiations and social enterprsies to expand and grow is importnat , so a Social Investment Bank is also key.
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