Alan Khazei, City Year Co-Founder, Running for the Senate in Massachusetts — Election in Two Weeks

Update, Dec. 9: Although Alan Khazei gained the endorsements of many prominent people and even The Boston Globe, he was defeated at the polls during the Democratic primary Dec. 8th, by Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Attorney General. Khazei won 13 percent of the popular vote during yesterday’s election.

Among the hopefuls to fill Ted Kennedy’s long-held Senate seat is City Year founder Alan Khazei.

Alan Khazei, from his campaign website

Twenty years ago Alan Khazei and Michael Brown co-founded City Year, a national service corps that became a model for AmeriCorps in the early 90s. Today, Khazei is campaigning his heart out in Massachusetts to fill the Senate seat left empty on August 25th when Senator Ted Kennedy passed away from a brain tumor.

Khazei had worked closely with Senator Kennedy to create and garner Congressional support for several pieces of legislation for national service programs, including the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1990, AmeriCorps, Save AmeriCorps, and this year’s landmark Kennedy Serve America Act.

On other issues, Khazei stands with Kennedy’s positions as well, including his sense that No Child Left Behind — Continue reading

Service Nation Strategy Session in San Francisco as part of NCVS

Monday, Service Nation coalition members and others gathered for a luncheon at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, prior to the kick off of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

Overall the strategy luncheon was more luncheon than strategy, but I was glad to see an effort made to bring the Service Nation campaign spirit into the National Conference on Volunteering and Service gathering, which overall seeemed to involve more media attention and celebrity involvement this year than in the past.

Speakers included:

Alan Khaizei, founder of Be the Change, Inc, leader organizer of the Service Nation campaign, spoke—summarizing the Continue reading

New Podcast: Cross Sector Relationships, Corporate Responsibility and Citizen Service: An Interview with Alan Khazei and Shannon Schuyler

The New Service podcast from Idealist.org takes a look at a new national partnership.

Corporate social responsibility and citizen service are increasingly becoming two sides of the same coin, as more business-sectoemployees and clients demand opportunities to improve their communities as part of their workplace culture. Exemplifying the beneficial opportunities of cross-sector alliances is the new national partnership between the nonprofit Be The Change, Inc., and the business network Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC).

Alan Khazei

Alan Khazei

Today’s guests on The New Service podcast from Idealist.og are Be the Change, Inc’s Alan Khazei and PwC’s Shannon Schuyler. Link to the podcast.

Alan Khazei is the founder and CEO of Be the Change, Inc, the lead organizer of the Service Nation campaign that has galvanized support throughout the country for passage of the Kennedy Serve America Act. Alan is Co-Founder & former CEO of City Year, the youth service corps that helped to inspire the development of AmeriCorps.

Shannon Schuyler

Shannon Schuyler

Shannon Schuyler is the Managing Director responsible for PwC’s U.S. Corporate Responsibility. As such she is responsible for fostering meaningful partnerships with national non-profits, including a new national relationship with Be the Change, Inc.

The collaboration between Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Be the Change Inc is aimed at inspiring a new era of voluntary citizen service. PwC will also serve as a Lead Sponsor for ServiceNation’s participation in the upcoming National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

I spoke with Alan and Shannon about their evolving partnership, about how corporate responsibility strengthens communities, and about how groups can — and must — come together across sectors to solve our most pressing social problems.

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Update on Senate Discussion of the Serve America Act

Update, April 21, 2009: President Obama signs the Serve America Act into law. To take effect October 1, 2009.

In the Senate today, discussion got underway on the Serve America Act.

60 Senators are usually needed to vote “cloture” to allow discussion on a bill. According to Alan Khazei of Be The Change, Inc., and Service Nation, 74 Senators voted cloture, “an extremely strong bi-partisan vote, with 22 Republicans joining 50 Democrats and 2 Independents voting in favor.”

To find out if your Senators voted to allow the Serve America bill to proceed, check out this list of “Yea” voters: Continue reading

Alan Khazei on The Colbert Report – Wednesday 1/14

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Wednesday, January 14th, Alan Khazei is slated to guest on The Colbert Report.

Khazei is Be The Change, Inc‘s founder and CEO, the leader of the Service Nation movement, and co-founder of City Year.

Read more on the Service Nation blog, ChangeWire.

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