*Ahead of many stronger and bigger economies
A worldwide study conducted by Gallup showed that Sri Lanka was among the top ten of the most civically engaged countries, perhaps doing better than the norm that suggests citizens of developed countries were more civically engaged than those from developing countries. According to the Gallup Global Civic Engagement report, people with high civic engagement are positive about the communities where they live and actively give back to them. Gallup measures civic engagement by assessing whether respondents have done any of the following in the past month: donated money to a charity, volunteered time to an organization, or helped a stranger or someone they didn’t know who needed help. In 127 out of 130 countries, people are much more likely to either say they have helped a stranger in need or donated money in the past month than they are to say they volunteered their time to an organization.
Gallup combines people’s responses to these three questions to create a Civic Engagement Index score for each country, with higher scores indicating a higher level of civic engagement.
It said that data from 130 countries showed that, in general, adults in developed countries are much more likely to be civically engaged than those in the developing world. But Sri Lankan’s citizens have shown that they were perhaps an exception.
United States scored the highest with an index score of 60, sharing the spot with Ireland. Sri Lanka is among the top ten most civically engaged countries with a score of 51 after Australia (59), New Zealand (57), UK (57), Netherlands (54) and Canada (54).
Sri Lanka has done better than most other countries that are way ahead as far as the economy is concerned: Hong Kong (49), Denmark (46), Germany (43), Austria (43), Malaysia (29), Singapore (29), Italy (26) and Japan (26).
According to the Gallup Global Civic Engagement report, Pakistanis (28) are more civically engaged than Indians (42).
Courtesy - The Island
