Category Archives: Service News

03.05.09
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Why It’s Wrong to Assume that All Service Participants are Young

How branding national service as an opportunity only for young people does more harm to the movement than good.

Christian Witkin for TIME Magazine

Christian Witkin for TIME Magazine

While many service corps do have upper age limits — City Year, AmeriCorps*NCCC, Public Allies, and many other team-based programs — most programs do not have an upper age limit.

In fact, several programs specifically recruit professionals — Experience Corps, Atlas Corps, CUSO-VSO (the Canadian VSO), Volunteers for Prosperity, and United Nations Volunteers just to name a few. Others like Peace Corps and AmeriCorps*VISTA recruit almost entirely college graduates because of the skill required in carrying out service.

And yet when people speak of service they almost always describe it as an opportunity for young people to give back, receive scholarship money, develop leadership skills, and go an an adventure before settling down with a real job.

What difference does it make if most people think of national or international service as a pursuit for the young?

Here are some reasons:

Recruitment:

If we assume only young people will enlist in a citizen service corps, we won’t recruit new corps members as creatively Continue reading →

02.24.09
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Service For All

RPCV Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) have introduced four bills that, taken together, emphasize access to service for people of all ages.

The legislators have called their initiative the Service for All Ages Initiative and it includes:

The Summer of Service Act would offer students making the transition from middle to high school an opportunity to participate in a structured community service program over the summer months. 100 hours of service would earn Continue reading →

02.20.09
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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
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Service symposium

This blog goes out to reader all over the country (and way beyond borders) so I don’t usually post items that are local. But I would like to take a moment to showcase a contest and event coming up in Portland, OR this May. It’s open to national service participants from Oregon and Washington although it draws interest nationally.

It’s called the Northwest National Service Symposium, and the idea is to encourage service participants to reflect on their experiences and create literary, visual, and/or performing arts from them. Projects are first submitted in a contest setting, and then gathered and shared at the event in May. First-year national service alums are also encouraged to participate.

This year, more that ever, we are diving into Web 2.0 resources to get the word out. These include:

  • A symposium blog
  • A Youtube channel
  • A Facebook group
  • And of course, an official page with contest rules

    • Amy wrote one of the winning papers a few years back, and I submitted a project to the first symposium back in 1996 and have been on the coordinating team since 2002.

    If you have any questions or thoughts on the symposium, drop me a line. There are any number of ways to reach me, including through The New Service blog, but you can always try servicesymposium at gmail dot com.

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    02.19.09
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    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.