The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon
Despite its growing popularity, evidence that volunteering enhances civic values and social cohesion among different communities remains limited in developing countries. This study presents novel evidence from Lebanon on the impact of offering a vo...
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/676801546874918189/The-Short-Term-Impact-of-Inter-Community-Volunteering-Activities-and-Soft-Skills-Training-on-Self-Reported-Social-Cohesion-Values-Quasi-Experimental-Evidence-from-Lebanon http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31134 |
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okr-10986-311342021-06-24T12:21:46Z The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon Alaref, Jumana Leon Solano, Rene Asenjo, Carlos Alawiye, Marwan El-Kik, Marwa SOCIAL COHESION CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYABILITY LABOR MARKET IMPACT EVALUATION LABOR SKILLS LABOR MARKET REFUGEES VOLUNTEERING COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION YOUTH EMPLOYMENT Despite its growing popularity, evidence that volunteering enhances civic values and social cohesion among different communities remains limited in developing countries. This study presents novel evidence from Lebanon on the impact of offering a volunteering program that consisted of inter-community volunteering activities and soft skills training on self-reported social cohesion values in the short term. The results show that youth who were selected to participate in the program were more likely to report higher tolerance values as well as a stronger sense of belonging to the Lebanese community roughly one year after the completion of activities. The results show that selection into the program had no impact on improving volunteers' soft skills that were thought to contribute to social cohesion. This finding implies that the mechanism for improved social cohesion values most likely came from the program's innovative feature, which required 20 percent of selected youth to come from communities outside where the area where the project was implemented. Selection into the program had no impact on other secondary measures, namely, employability and employment outcomes. The results should be interpreted with caution, given study design limitations that relate to the nonrandom assignment of youth into the treatment and comparison groups, as well as the presence of nonrandom attrition between the two tracked time periods. 2019-01-09T19:57:38Z 2019-01-09T19:57:38Z 2019-01 Report http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/676801546874918189/The-Short-Term-Impact-of-Inter-Community-Volunteering-Activities-and-Soft-Skills-Training-on-Self-Reported-Social-Cohesion-Values-Quasi-Experimental-Evidence-from-Lebanon http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31134 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8691 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Middle East and North Africa Lebanon |
| repository_type |
Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
English |
| topic |
SOCIAL COHESION CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYABILITY LABOR MARKET IMPACT EVALUATION LABOR SKILLS LABOR MARKET REFUGEES VOLUNTEERING COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION YOUTH EMPLOYMENT |
| spellingShingle |
SOCIAL COHESION CIVIC ENGAGEMENT EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYABILITY LABOR MARKET IMPACT EVALUATION LABOR SKILLS LABOR MARKET REFUGEES VOLUNTEERING COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION YOUTH EMPLOYMENT Alaref, Jumana Leon Solano, Rene Asenjo, Carlos Alawiye, Marwan El-Kik, Marwa The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| geographic_facet |
Middle East and North Africa Lebanon |
| relation |
Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8691 |
| description |
Despite its growing popularity, evidence
that volunteering enhances civic values and social cohesion
among different communities remains limited in developing
countries. This study presents novel evidence from Lebanon
on the impact of offering a volunteering program that
consisted of inter-community volunteering activities and
soft skills training on self-reported social cohesion values
in the short term. The results show that youth who were
selected to participate in the program were more likely to
report higher tolerance values as well as a stronger sense
of belonging to the Lebanese community roughly one year
after the completion of activities. The results show that
selection into the program had no impact on improving
volunteers' soft skills that were thought to contribute
to social cohesion. This finding implies that the mechanism
for improved social cohesion values most likely came from
the program's innovative feature, which required 20
percent of selected youth to come from communities outside
where the area where the project was implemented. Selection
into the program had no impact on other secondary measures,
namely, employability and employment outcomes. The results
should be interpreted with caution, given study design
limitations that relate to the nonrandom assignment of youth
into the treatment and comparison groups, as well as the
presence of nonrandom attrition between the two tracked time periods. |
| format |
Report |
| author |
Alaref, Jumana Leon Solano, Rene Asenjo, Carlos Alawiye, Marwan El-Kik, Marwa |
| author_facet |
Alaref, Jumana Leon Solano, Rene Asenjo, Carlos Alawiye, Marwan El-Kik, Marwa |
| author_sort |
Alaref, Jumana |
| title |
The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| title_short |
The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| title_full |
The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| title_fullStr |
The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| title_full_unstemmed |
The Short-Term Impact of Inter-Community Volunteering Activities and Soft Skills Training on Self-Reported Social Cohesion Values : Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Lebanon |
| title_sort |
short-term impact of inter-community volunteering activities and soft skills training on self-reported social cohesion values : quasi-experimental evidence from lebanon |
| publisher |
World Bank, Washington, DC |
| publishDate |
2019 |
| url |
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/676801546874918189/The-Short-Term-Impact-of-Inter-Community-Volunteering-Activities-and-Soft-Skills-Training-on-Self-Reported-Social-Cohesion-Values-Quasi-Experimental-Evidence-from-Lebanon http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31134 |
| _version_ |
1764473616508911616 |