by Amy Potthast

Mayor Bloomberg Appoints a City Year Staffer as NYC’s First Chief Service Officer

Photo by Ed Reed, Office of the Mayor

This week, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg announced that Diahann Billings-Burford will be New York’s first Chief Service Officer.

Billings-Burford — who’s coming from an external affairs role at City Year New York — will lead an innovative new municipal effort that Bloomberg launched earlier this year called NYC Service.

The initiative promotes volunteering and service, with the goals of making New York “the easiest place in the world to volunteer,” finding ways for volunteers to address the impacts of the economic downturn, and”setting a new standard for how cities can tap the power of their people to tackle our most pressing challenges.”

Billings-Burford’s work will include implementing the agenda spelled out in the NYC Service Report (PDF).

One new project — sponsored by Big Brothers Big Sisters — is a campaign to bring 2000 new mentors into 51 high needs middle schools through Middle School Mentors. Mentors would spend eight hours a month with a middle school student, “being their friend in Continue reading →

04.09.09

by Amy Potthast

New National Youth Service Programs to Launch in the Philippines

Riverman 72 - Flickr

Last week, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed an executive order to establish two branches of national youth service.

The programs will include the National Service Corps and the Youth Conservation Corps. Projects will include cleaning up the environment, planting trees, building parks, teaching, and establishing food banks, and more.

Both new programs will recruit people ages 18-24 to commit to two years of service in exchange for a chance to improve their communities, build skills, and earn modest pay.

The National Youth Corps is intended to offer “unemployed or underemployed skilled [Filipino] youth or college graduates a chance to contribute to education and community service programs.”

The Youth Conservation Corps is intended to connect “unskilled or less educated [Filipino] youth” with service Continue reading →

02.20.09

by Richard Melo

Rolling out stimulus AmeriCorps members

I listened to an open conference call hosted by Corporation for National and Community Service Chief of Program Operations Kristin McSwain. I am not going to post the more technical aspects of the call, but here are a few points I found interesting.

“Stimulus” members will serve alongside traditional members in existing programs (VISTA might be an exception). Stimulus members will address mostly these areas (though everything is still up in the air) :

1. Winterizing homes, housing access, keeping people in homes
2. Access to health care and providing health care
3. Nonprofit capacity building
4. Youth corps/development

Keep in mind, this is still separate from the Kennedy-Hatch “Serve America Act.”

Here’s the link to the page that will document the changes to national service through the Recovery Act. At the web site, you call a toll-free number to listen to a recording of the call.

02.19.09

by Richard Melo

Tracking upcoming national service moves

CNCS has a established an official page dedicated to how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will affect national service.

The plans are still a bit vague, but the dollars roll out quickly. I imagine existing programs will see an influx of members serving in economy-related areas pretty soon here.

For anyone with a keen interest in this, CNCS is hosting an open conference call on Friday, February 20. Anyone who misses the call will be able to hear a reply by dialing a toll-free number. All the details are on the web page.

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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