Category Archives: Resources

01.27.09
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Find Your Global Volunteer Gig!

picture-1Global do-gooders meet international volunteer organizations through Idealist.org’s Global Volunteering Fairs during the week of Feb. 1st.

So we agree: overseas service is more valuable now than ever before — to lend a hand where asked. To show a different face of the United States than what people can see in films and newspapers. To change yourself in permanent ways, to learn another language/life. Citizen diplomacy at its best.

However: finding a reliable global volunteer experience can be a challenge — a volunteer org you can trust, where you know what will happen when that plane touches down, overseas.

Challenges come from lack of access to organizations, headquartered in distant cities. Or from knowing that pretty websites can make any organization seem legitimate.

How can you know for sure what you are getting yourself into?

Next week, you can meet dozens of international volunteer organizations at once. Meet representatives face-to-face who coordinate a range of volunteer projects overseas in a variety of communities.

Idealist’s Erin Barnhart will launch the second season of Idealist.org Global Volunteering Fairs in the following cities:

The fairs will offer panel discussions and workshops on International  Volunteerism 101 and Affordable Volunteering Abroad.

If you are like me and you don’t live in Washington, New York, or Boston, please take advantage of Idealist’s international volunteerism resources online:

  • Resource center — which helps answer questions like, should you go it alone or with a group? and how do pay for it? and how do you translate your experience when you get home?
  • Discussion forum — where you can ask questions and find out about programs you hadn’t heard of
  • Opportunity search — local or international, for an hour or for a year

Next week The New Service will introduce a different international service corps each day in honor of the fairs, so check back for more.

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01.23.09
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Atlas Corps Scores Big in 2008 from On-line Contests

The exchange and service corps for international development leaders earned $100,000 in 2008 from online contests.

Scott Beale, Founder and Executive Director of Atlas Corps, thanks you — if you are among the thousands of people who supported Atlas Corps’s bids in tight online contests last year:

  • $33,000 raised from Americas Giving Challenge — a contest where participants use a widget to inspire donations from supporters; the contest was organized by the Case Foundation, Network for Good, Global Giving, and Parade Magazine.
  • $50,000 won from Americas Giving Challenge — because Atlas Corps was among the top eight fundraisers in the contest.
  • $20,000 won from Ideablob — a contest that allows supporters to vote for two weeks on a “business idea” to succeed. Normally the award is $10,000, but because Atlas Corps is a client of one of the contest sponsors, its award was doubled.

While some of the money was raised directly from donors to Atlas Corps, $70,000 of the total came in response to the huge turnout of support that Atlas Corps garnered. A great way to raise funds when people want to give, but may be limited in this economy.

Atlas Corps’ Scott Beale will be the guest in the February episode of The New Service podcast show, so stay tuned!

Check out Scott’s Ideablob announcement (and other Atlas Corps videos on its Youtube channel):

Read more about Atlas Corps’s bid in the Ideablob contest.

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01.21.09
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Returned Peace Corps Volunteers on the March!

RPCVs marching. Check out more photos on Flickr. Search "PeaceCorpsInauguration2009"

RPCVs marching. Check out more photos on Flickr. Search "PeaceCorpsInauguration2009"

Organized by the National Peace Corps Association (the independent group of Peace Corps alumni), the Peace Corps community participated in the Inaugural Parade for President Barack Obama, eliciting a huge smile from “the Service President.”

According to blogs posted on PeaceCorpsConnect.org:

Returned Volunteers, two currently serving Volunteers and current and former Peace Corps staff carried the flags of the 139 countries where Peace Corps Volunteers have served during the 48-year history of the agency. Many marchers are also wearing the national dress of those host countries.

Read more on the Peace Corps Polyglot blog!

You can see footage of the event on CSPAN — starting at 37 minutes, 40 seconds into the video. The Providence Journal blog offers this eye-witness account from 67-year-old Brazil RPCV Lucy Mueller.

And check out greetings from the gathered Returned Volunteers, speaking many different languages:

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01.20.09
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Free Drip Coffee in Exchange for Service

Hands On Network, the prominent volunteerism organization, partners with Starbucks to promote community service. Jan. 21 through 25, Starbucks offers you a free drip coffee if you pledge five hours of volunteer service.

In the wake of the most service-focused MLK Day ever (thanks to Barack Obama’s example, and the impetus of Service Nation), it seems everyone is getting into the  act of doing good. Hands On Network and Starbucks have come together to answer President Obama’s call to service.

On Starbuck’s Pledge 5 website, you can watch a counter add up all the hours pledged in exchange for a 12-ounce drip coffee. More importantly, you can search volunteer opportunities available through Hands On Network.

(You can also search volunteer and year of service opportunities on Idealist.org.)

Here’s the Starbucks ad:

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01.20.09
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President Obama’s Call to Service

picture-17In speech and action, the 44th President of the United States calls on us to serve.

In his career, his MLK Day volunteering, Inaugural address, and his National Day of Renewal and Reconciliaion 2009, Barack Obama has called on Americans to serve in their communities.

Excerpted from the Proclamation, signed shortly after taking office:

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright — it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

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