Shirley Sagawa, left, spoke with me, right.
Want to hear insight from the “founding mother of the modern service movement”? You’re in luck: our newest podcast is up now!
For National Volunteer Week, I interviewed Shirley Sagawa, author of The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers and Transforming America. During the first Clinton administration, Shirley drafted the legislation that created AmeriCorps and the Corporation for National Service.
In his 1995 book, How a Bill Becomes a Law, Steve Waldman compared national service—full-time stipended volunteering like AmeriCorps and VISTA—to a Swiss Army Knife, “performing numerous useful functions in one affordable package.” In today’s show, Shirley revisits the Swiss Army Knife analogy with some timely new insights that she also shares in her book.
The New Service 