by Amy Potthast

Global Citizen Year founder named Mind Trust Fellow

Last week The Mind Trust named Abigail Falik an Education Entrepreneur Fellow. She is the founder of Global Citizen Year.

The fellowship is a two-year “national incubator for transformative educational ventures.” Fellows earn a $90,000 annual salary plus health benefits during the fellowship term, and an additional $20,000 to spend on their work.

In the announcement, The Mind Trust explains Falik’s program — which will launch its first group next fall:

Ms. Abigail Falik was awarded The Mind Trust Fellowship to launch Global Citizen Year (GCY). GCY will engage thousands of diverse young Americans in a transformative “Bridge Year” of global service between high school and college. Falik, who won first prize at Harvard Business School’s 2008 Social Enterprise business pitch competition for GCY, is focused on America’s urgent need to prepare students for leadership in an increasingly globalized world.

To do this, GCY will recruit and train cohorts of high-potential high school students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds as GCY fellows; support fellows through apprenticeships throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America; and build a dynamic network of alumni who remain engaged in global issues during college and beyond. During the “Bridge Year,” students will receive intensive leadership and foreign language training, complete six-month international service projects, share their experiences virtually with K-12 classrooms in America, and, during their final month, lead activities about their experience in their home high schools and communities.

While GCY will prepare fellows to succeed in college, Falik also aims to use GCY to create incentives for students to graduate from high school, prepare K-12 teachers to more effectively teach about global issues, and ultimately to transform the global education landscape in the United States.

GCY’s advisory council includes the founders of Teach For America, City Year, Room to Read, Kiva.org, and Share Our Strength, the head of the National Peace Corps Association, and the Provost of the School for International Training. Falik holds a B.A. and M.Ed. from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Read the fellowship’s F.A.Q.

Global Citizen Year is also part of the Change.org Ideas to Change America contest.

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12.11.08

by Amy Potthast

Green Jobs and Infrastructure Act of 2008

Act introduced that proposes funding a new service corps for clean energy.

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has introduced a clean energy bill that includes a provision to fund the Clean Energy Service Corps, to fall under the work of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The Clean Energy Service Corps would be modeled on AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, and would focus on creating a diverse corps, and recruiting corps members who are economically disadvantage and need marketable job skills. From the Apollo Alliance, an organization that supported the creation of the act:

[From their article:] “The Clean Energy Service Corps (CESC) … would engage rural and urban young adults, students, and seniors, in a combined service, training, and job creation effort to build the green economy. Corpsmembers will earn a stipend while improving energy efficiency through large-scale greening projects, including construction of, and improvements to, low-income housing, public buildings, neighborhood parks, and public lands. Priority will be given to programs that enroll Corpsmembers who are economically disadvantaged and that provide those Corpsmembers with job training linked careers in the green economy. Older Americans and students will also engage in service as volunteers, sharing their skills and gaining experience while providing valuable service to their communities.”

[From the press release:] “The Clean Energy Service Corps will support the participation of 25,000 young adult corps members in its first year. An additional 200,000 seniors will mobilize as full- and part-time corps members and volunteers during the first year of the program. Finally, over 600,000 students will engage in community-based service learning, and volunteer projects coordinated by the CEC.”

One of the groups backing the bill is the The Corps Network, a group of conservation service corps working throughout the United States.

Read about The Corps Network’s green service corps in New Orleans.

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12.11.08

by Amy Potthast

Brookings calls for More Peace Corps

Coalition on international volunteering calls for support of the More Peace Corps petition.

The Building Bridges Coalition — a project of the Brookings Initiative on International Volunteering and Service —asks today that all U.S. citizens “who believe that Peace Corps is an important part of our outreach to the world” sign the petition urging President-Elect Barack Obama to double the number of Volunteers serving through Peace Corps, as well as to support Peace Corps in specific ways.

The petition will be presented to Obama in a little over a week. Sign it here.

According to National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) President Kevin Quigley:

More Peace Corps means having the resources to respond to the more than 20 countries that have requested programs for which Peace Corps has insufficient funds. It also means having the resources to give the many highly qualified Americans who would like to serve overseas the chance to do so.

More Peace Corps does not mean a simple expansion of the numbers of Peace Corps volunteers, although that is part of it.

More Peace Corps may mean revising the Peace Corps model in ways to take better advantage of the significant technological and demographic changes that have occurred in the 46 years since Peace Corps was launched.

More Peace Corps will consider how to make Peace Corps so much more
effective at addressing the problems of poverty. This will probably require
significant innovation and some risk.

The Building Bridges Coalition works to double the number of volunteers serving internationally by 2010 and includes groups such as Idealist.org and the NPCA (the independent group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers).

One of the Coalition’s policy recommendations is to double the number of Peace Corps Volunteers, something President-Elect Obama also included in his pre-election stance on service. (Their other policy recommendations include the Global Service Fellowship and permanent authorization of Volunteers for Prosperity.)

To learn more, check out the More Peace Corps website, and read Ten Times the Peace Corps, a paper by Quigley and Brooking’s Lex Rieffel.

To sign the petition, go here!

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12.10.08

by Amy Potthast

Human Rights Prize to Dorothy Stang, SND

On International Human Rights Day 2008, the United Nation honors several peace activists and groups, including Sr. Dorothy Stang, SND.

I want to highlight the work and courage of Dorothy Stang, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur — the same order of Catholic sisters who operate the AmeriCorps program in which my husband and I served — Notre Dame Mission Volunteers AmeriCorps.

Sr. Dorothy was born in the United States and became a naturalized citizen of Brazil. According to the U.N. announcement, “Despite numerous death threats Sister Dorothy had defended the rights of the poor, landless and indigenous populations of the Anapu region of Brazil for nearly forty years.”

Her brother David Stang published this story in Maryknoll magazine a few months after her death:

Dorothy was murdered for her outspoken defense of peasant farm families, who had moved into the rain forest region in a government-sponsored resettlement plan. Besides forming each settlement into small Christian communities that prayed and studied the Bible together, Dorothy established agricultural and rain forest preservation projects. Her initiatives outraged the big landowners who wanted the forest for logging and the land for cattle grazing.

The day before she died, Dorothy telephoned me. “Just hearing your voice,” she said, “makes me feel the cool fresh air of Palmer Lake (where I live in Colorado), even though it is so hot and humid here in Anapú (where she worked).” Then she told me, “I can’t talk long because there are people outside my door, asking me to go down the road with them to show support for several poor families who had their crops and houses burned down by hired hoodlums.”

Armed with her Bible and government documents granting peasants rights to the land, she accompanied the people to the Bõa Esperança Settlement near the rural town of Anapú in Pará State. Confronted by Dorothy, the pistoleros, backed off this time. When my sister returned the next day with clothes and food for the homeless families, the fatal confrontation took place.

See the trailer for the documentary They Killed Sister Dorothy:

Other Human Rights Prize honorees this year include Human Rights Watch and assassinated, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Read about others who’ve won the 2008 prize. Read more about the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Universal Human Rights and International Human Rights Day.

Notre Dame Mission AmeriCorps Volunteers is a national AmeriCorps program with service sites in 16 U.S. cities. My loving and amazing aunt Sr. Anne Colette, SND, introduced me to the program and sent me its newsletters, even as I was starting my term of Peace Corps service. I ultimately chose to apply for NDMVA — to work with immigrants and refugees in Lowell, MA — as a transition home from Peace Corps. Read more about the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

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12.10.08

by Amy Potthast

Wendy Kopp wins Presidential Citizens Medal

Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, was presented today with one of the highest honors a U.S. president can confer upon a citizen.

The Presidential Citizens Medal “recognizes U.S. citizens who have performed exemplary deeds of service for the nation.” According to the Whitehouse.gov statement:

Wendy Kopp is an education innovator who believes that every child can learn if given a chance. Through her determined efforts, she has created opportunities for new teachers to help disadvantaged children realize their potential. The United States honors Wendy Kopp for her strong leadership in ensuring a quality education for students across America.

To learn the story of TFA’s beginnings, read Kopp’s memoir “One Day All Children…” In it she describes her first star-eyed visit to the White House, during the Clinton Administration.

She may have a chance to spend a lot of time at the White House. A movement has sprung up to get President-Elect Obama to pick Kopp as his Secretary of Education. Others speculate the spot might go to TFA critic and Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond.

Update 12/16: Obama picks someone else for Secretary of Education, FYI.

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The New Service

Catalyzing citizen service

Monthly Archives: December 2008

Global Citizen Year founder named Mind Trust Fellow

Green Jobs and Infrastructure Act of 2008

Brookings calls for More Peace Corps

Human Rights Prize to Dorothy Stang, SND

Wendy Kopp wins Presidential Citizens Medal

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