Essay (C1 CAE):Encouraging young people to be more involved

Your class has attended a panel discussion on how young people can be encouraged to be more involved with their local community. You have made the notes below:

What can be offered to young people?
- Voluntary work with young children and the elderly
- Talks on local environment issues and practical sessions
- Youth centre for people to meet and share ideas


Some viewpoints expressed during the talk:

“Spending time helping the elderly creates understanding between the generations.”

“Young people can be educated to take care of the area they live in.”

“Events and activities can be arranged at youth centres. This will make young people more sociable.”

Write an essay discussing two of the ways in your notes that the younger can become more interested in the community. You should explain which way you think is more effective, giving reasons to support your opinion. You may, is you wish, use some of the arguments used in the talk; however, you should express the arguments in your own words.

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(What could I do to make it sound more natural?)

There have been a huge change from elderly to younger generations. Nowadays, youths are often much less involved in their neighbourhood than previous generations were. Therefore, it is necessary to promote alternatives in order to turn this situation around.

I would highlight two proposals from the meeting: volunteering with kids and older people and reusing our old sports hall as a centre for young people to meet. In regard the first option, I completely agree with some of the opinions that I heard in the discussion about how a better communication between distant generations through different volunteer activities will help to solve the problem. In my way of thinking, this could fix the root of the problem, especially in case of younths and elderly, because they will be able to find out how much they have in common, in spite of having grown in very different times.

As for the second alternative, I have not been able to find the point on giving so much public money to reaconditionate a place for a different purpose from which it was built for. Moreover, as I see it young people have their own spaces to spend free time, so creating a new public place for this goal will not be helpful for those who find it more difficult to socialize, unlike some neighbours proposed in the discussion.

All in all, in terms of budget and effective results, the best choice to me to encourage younger to get involved in the community is sharing time playing with children and helping older people in their daily life, rather than giving them new ways of having fun.

What could I do to make it sound more natural?