Polovyk Svetlana

“Volunteers in Service to America” as the Basis of the Domestic Political Program of the US President Lyndon Johnson

Abstract: Purpose of the article. The article presents analysis of the domestic policy of the US President Lyndon Johnson on the development of the volunteer movement, which had a positive impact on the social and economic development of the country as a whole and led to the solution of socially significant problems of society. The mechanism for the implementation of the program to combat poverty in the context of the national project Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) has been determined. Methodology. The research methodology is based on a number of general scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, comparison and refinement. It is an important methodological basis for the work of domestic and foreign scholarsw ho studied volunteering in the context of the President’s Institute. Scientific novelty. The obtained results make it possible to form a holistic systemic understanding of the experience of the US presidential institutions in the fight against poverty with the help of the volunteer movement, which had a positive impact on the socio-economic development of the country. Conclusions. It was concluded that the active development of the volunteer movement in Ukraine requires an analysis of the volunteer movement invarious countries, in particular the USA, in order to study positive experience. As the analysis shows, President Lyndon Johnson emphasized the importance of expanding the national government’s role in domestic governance through VISTA as the nation’s largest and best volunteer program. It has been established that the analysis of VISTA activities and its lessons in the context of L. Johnson’s state policy is important for the volunteer activities in Ukraine during the Russian invasion, namely more volunteers should be involved to solve the urgent problems of citizens affected by Russian aggression. It is established that L. Johnson brought to his presidency a vision of a society in which everyone could use a variety of possible means to improve their lives. By the end of Johnson’s administration, the percentage of people living in poverty had been nearly halved, thanks in large part to the work of VISTA. After L. Johnson, no president has put the fight against poverty at the forefront of his domestic policy. It is noted that thanks to the involvement of volunteers in the implementation of the anti-poverty program, L. Johnson provided new opportunities for the institute of presidential power, which in Ukraine can also become a model for the development of similar volunteer projects.

Keywords: Lyndon Johnson, President of the United States, volunteering, poverty alleviation, Volunteers in Service to America, social politics.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/np.74.245     Citation

• Polovyk Svetlana (V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Ukraine, Kyiv, [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5960-527X

Cite:
Polovyk Svetlana (2025). “Volunteers in Service to America” as the Basis of the Domestic Political Program of the US President Lyndon Johnson. Academic Papers of V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine, (74) 245-255. (In Ukrainan). doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/np.74.245

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