Author Archives: Richard Melo

11.24.08
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Changes at change.gov

The America Serves section of the presidential transition Change.gov website contains some new information.

There are short descriptions of Classroom Corps, Health Corps, and Clean Energy Corps. These programs are pretty much as you would expect. My big question had to do with Veterans Corps, as I wasn’t sure if this program would be made up of veterans or provide services to veterans. From the website, it appears to be the latter.

Another big development: According to the website, “…college students who engage in 100 hours of community service [are] to receive a fully-refundable tax credit of $4,000 for their education.” That’s pretty cool. One-hundred hours is easy enough for most students to be able to accomplish that goal, and $4,000 is enough to buy a good chunk of school (more than half of a full year’s tuition at most state schools).

I’m looking forward to hearing more!

Update 12/10: Change.gov is now Open for Questions! Vote on issues most pressing for you and your family; submit questions of your own.

11.21.08
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Do volunteers make a difference in kids’ lives?

The impact of service on the person who serves may be immediate, but a volunteer might never see the impact he had on the community. I found a story in the NY Daily News about a VISTA from the late 60s named Michael Gaines who has returned to the site where he served to see if he can learn anything about the lives of the children he served. The story has no closure yet, but I will keep my eyes peeled for developments.

11.07.08
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Michelle Obama talks about AmeriCorps

In a post-election interview with Newsweek, Michelle Obama talks about potential expansion to AmeriCorps and national service, as well as her association with Public Allies. Again, with the economy such an issue, it’s great to see that national service isn’t getting placed on the back burner!

(See also this post about Public Allies press coverage since the election.)

11.06.08
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goodreads

Aside from serving with AmeriCorps for two years and nearly ten more in other capacities, I am also into the book scene. I started an account for The New Service blog with a service called Goodreads. There seem to be any number of sites like that that let you list books you like and make theme lists, and admittedly I chose Goodreads because it seemed to have the most users and the least advertising.

I am starting to make lists of books related to the same topics you’d see here, such as nonprofit careers. If you have a moment and the interest, check out the list I made on that topic. If you sign up for Goodreads, you can vote for which books you like best and add additional titles to the list. You can also add The New Service WordPress to your Goodreads friends list. If you’re not signed up, it’s free and relatively easy.

11.06.08
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Change.gov

I checked out the presidential transition Change.gov website today to see if I could find much about national service. Yikes, it’s a high enough priority that it even gets its own tab (“America Serves”) across the top of the page! There isn’t that much content yet (but that might change by the time you click your way there. I am hopeful that national service will be less of a White House pet project than one of the primary solutions to the many problems affecting the country.

To read more about Obama’s service initiatives, check out his pre-election stance. To read more about service programs currently available, including teaching corps, conservation corps, etc., check out our side bar — “corps and coalition,” categories, and tag cloud.