Student Hubs exists to empower university students to become active citizens, equipping them with the tools, behaviours, and skills they need to make a positive change. Our initiatives are a bridge between students and their communities, operating on a double-benefit model, building connections and mainstreaming student social action to create active citizens for life.
Active citizenship is a word that comes up a lot when we talk about Student Hubs: why is this so important to us?
Let’s start with sculpting a shared definition of what we mean by an active citizen. To be a citizen means you belong to a group, such as a group of people with shared values and ideas. When we add ‘active’ to it, it suggests an intentional role is being played. To be a socially active citizen is to be someone who is engaged in coming together with others to improve their lives, and solve the problems that are important to their communities. This social element is important when we consider the type of world we want to create: a fair and just society, where all individuals can thrive. An active citizen has to be someone who is working towards this vision.
In their paper, “What Kind of Citizen” in the early 2000s, Westheimer and Kahne define three concepts of a ‘good citizen’ which helps to create a spectrum of engagement. From the ‘personally responsible citizen’, someone who acts responsibly in their community, to the ‘participatory citizen’, someone who actively seeks to be a part of the social life of the community, engaging in organising roles and policies, to the ‘justice-oriented citizen’, someone who engages critically with understanding and interrogating the structures which uphold social issues and injustices. These definitions help us to understand the spectrum of engagement an ‘active citizen’ may have in their community and on the world around them.
