Initiatives such as the European Union's Science in Society programme (see http://go.nature.com/MZdJua) spend millions on projects that aim to bring the scientific community closer to the public and the media. We believe it should be easier for young scientists in particular to contribute to such efforts.

To this end, we organized a symposium ('Scientist! Come out of your lab!') in April 2010. There it was apparent that our fellow PhD students were keen to be involved in social and educational projects, but were unclear about how to put their enthusiasm into practice.

One way would be for mentors of young scientists to encourage them to take 'societal breaks' to pursue such initiatives — similar to the 'innovation breaks' of Google's employees. Funding these small grassroots projects would be inexpensive for programmes run by the European Union and others.