by Amy Potthast

Help Atlas Corps win $20K

International exchange corps for nonprofit professionals stands to win $20K in Ideablob.com contest.

Sometimes identified as a two-way Peace Corps—because volunteers come to and from the United States—Atlas Corps “facilitates an international exchange of nonprofit leaders in which ideas and talent cross borders to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges such as HIV/AIDS, human trafficking, poverty, care for the elderly and disabled, and education of underprivileged youth.”

Ideablob.com allows nonprofit and business entrepreneurs to submit their good ideas and to earn $10,000 towards funding them.

Each month, readers vote for their favorite idea — the idea with the most votes two weeks in a row wins. Because Atlas Corps is an Advanta customer their prize will double, to $20K, if selected.

According to their entry on Ideablob:

Atlas Corps’s new model of international cooperation brings talented professionals from developing nations such as India and Colombia to the U.S. to volunteer for one year in established nonprofit host organizations. Host organizations receive an experienced mid-career professional with specialized knowledge and unique perspectives. Fellows learn best practices, impart their professional knowledge, and then return to strengthen the nonprofit sector in their home countries.

Last year, Colombian Maria Duenas was a Fellow at TechnoServe, a nonprofit in Washington, DC. She now heads up TechnoServe’s flagship project in Bogotá, Colombia, creating business solutions to rural poverty.

In Atlas Corps’s second year, the program has doubled with four Colombian Fellows and five Indian Fellows in Washington, DC, and three U.S. Fellows in Bogotá, Colombia. In the coming year, we plan to increase the number of Fellows again to increase our scale, impact and sustainability. To do so we need this money and we need your vote.

All [prize money] will go directly towards the placement of new Fellows, since Host organizations cover the administrative costs. This prize money will put us well on the way to achieving our goal of promoting international cooperation in the nonprofit sector in a unique and sustainable way. See www.atlascorps.org/2008-fellows.html.

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12.13.08

by Amy Potthast

Emerging: Financial Services Corps

Recognizing the broad need for financial education among low and middle income earners, the New America Foundation proposes a Financial Services Corps.

Proposed in March, the New America Foundation‘s Melissa Koide published a policy paper describing the need for a new domestic corps of financial advisors and educators to help regular families sort through the morass of complex issues involved in personal financial management.

According to Koide’s proposal:

The creation of a Financial Services Corps (FSC) would help these households address their personal finances and plan for their future by:

enlisting financial experts and advisors to deliver personalized financial counseling and planning to low to middle income households;

providing the tools, resources, support to local, regional, and workplace based initiatives to ensure these families are effectively reached;

collecting and analyze data to understand the short-, medium-, and long-term financial education, counseling, and planning needs of these households; and

exploring new strategies and approaches to financial education and advice through an innovations fund.

The Corps could be modeled after the Legal Services Corporation — the Congressionally-mandated entity that oversees legal aid organizations. In that model, “the FSC would provide the infrastructure, resources, and support to engage and connect financial experts with low and middle income households and communities.”

In a New York Times piece today, M.P. Dunleavy reports that the Corps was inspired by Peace Corps.

If the concept interests you, or someone you know, also check out the separate Financial Services Volunteer Corps (established in 1990). The program sends skilled volunteers overseas for one or two weeks to educate people in “emerging market countries” about financial systems. The program is a partner of Volunteers for Prosperity.

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12.11.08

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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The New Service

Catalyzing citizen service

Author Archives: Amy Potthast

Help Atlas Corps win $20K

Emerging: Financial Services Corps

Global Citizen Year founder named Mind Trust Fellow

Green Jobs and Infrastructure Act of 2008

Brookings calls for More Peace Corps

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