What Presidential Candidates Are Saying About Service-Learning

Since the days when President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation and its people to “ask not,” national and/or community service has been included in every U.S. president’s domestic agenda. Our current presidential hopefuls are continuing this tradition.

The Iowa Caucuses kicked off the official electoral road to the White House. As voters gear up to take the polls on January 8th in New Hampshire, January 19th in Nevada, January 26th in South Carolina, and in 22 additional states on February 5th, we thought it might be interesting to explore how the candidates propose to engage younger Americans in meaningful service and civic action.

Only a few candidates have issued official policy proposals regarding national service for Americans of all ages. Of these plans, however, a few propose specific plans to engage young people in service-learning and school/campus-based service opportunities—including one very comprehensive proposal to expand service-learning by now former presidential candidate Senator Christopher Dodd.


Check out What the Presidential Candidates Are Saying, a non-partisan brief overview of these plans and proposals.

Let us know what you think. Post your comments or reactions.

Make It Your Own Grant Award Opportunity--Deadline August 8th

Do you have big dreams for your community? The Case Foundation is launching a pilot grants program that could turn these dreams into reality. This could be particularly helpful to those of us with "service-learning dreams" for our schools and community.

The Make It Your Own Awards™ , a new initiative from the Case Foundation, launching on June 26, 2007, is about giving grants, tools, and recognition to people who are coming together to discuss what matters, form solutions, and take action. Twenty semi-finalists will each receive $10,000 grants to start bringing their ideas to life. Four final grant recipients will then be chosen by the public using an online voting system. These finalists will each be awarded an additional $25,000 grant.

The Make It Your Own Awards came about in response to research showing that many people feel disconnected from public leaders and institutions and don’t believe they have the power to make a real difference in their community. These findings were the reason for a paper released by the Case Foundation last fall, Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement, suggesting that if people are actually going to become and stay engaged in their communities, one thing has to happen first: they must have more chances to connect with one another (including those with whom they might disagree), and figure out how they can work together for the common good.

This kind of “citizen-centered” approach represents a subtle, yet powerful, shift that encourages people to create new spaces where they can come together, become connected to each other, and make a difference as a community working toward a common vision and real action.

All applicants welcome, ages 14 and up.
Application deadline: August 8th.

Visit the Make It Your Own website to learn more and apply today!

The National Learn & Serve Challenge: Be a Solution ~ September 17-23, 2007

Mark Your Calendar. Start Planning Now

Our goal is to engage 5 million college students serving and to ensure 50 percent of Americas K-12 schools incorporate service-learning into their curricula by the year 2010.

Accept the Challenge. Join others from around the country in this week-long series of publicity events and community outreach activities designed to raise awareness and public support for service-learning. As people who care about the future of service-learning, let's show our support for Learn and Serve America, the only federal program dedicated to supporting service-learning in local schools, college/universities, and communities.

Start planning now! No idea is too big or too small. There are several ways you can get involved and make difference right in your own backyard.

• To learn more and to stay connected over the summer, email nslp@aed.org. Type "I Am a Solution" in the subject line.
• Visit the Learn & Serve Challenge online for suggested ways to get involved or design your own. Check out the website the week of July 16 to download free tools and resource materials to help you plan your own activity or event.
• Visit this blog for weekly updates about Challenge planning and activities

For more information, call (202) 884-8098 or email nslp@aed.org. Spread the word!

2007 Summer Service-Learning Trainings and Institutes

Are you looking to enhance or deepen your service-learning skills and knowledge over the summer? Well, check out the Summer Institute Listing to learn more about upcoming training and technical assistance opportunities.

If your organization is organizing a service-learning summer institute, conference, or workshop, send an email to nslp@aed.org. We'll add your professional development opportunity to the list to help spread the word to others in the service-learning community!

Are You Educating Students for Democracy?

Publicize your work and share ideas with other educators on Civic Learning Online, a free database of civic learning resources. We are currently gathering exemplars of classroom and community practice, as well as examples of whole schools, small learning communities, and whole districts which have embraced their civic mission with policies, practices, and supports to ensure that all students are prepared for active citizenship.

Submit your example of small learning communities, schools, districts or individual practice examples including:

• Instruction in government, history, law or democracy
• Guided discussion of current events
• Community service and/or service-learning
• Extracurricular activities to foster engagement with schools and communities
• Student participation in governance
• Simulations of democratic processes

Accepted submissions will be recognized as promising practices by the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, a coalition of over forty civic learning organizations. The submitting organization will receive a certificate of merit from the Campaign's National Advisory Council which can be posted online and in the classroom, schoolhouse, and community agency.

Peer-reviewed and up-to-date, Civic Learning Online equips teachers, administrators, and policymakers with the information they need to make civic learning an essential part of every child's education.

Please don't miss this opportunity to be part of the growing movement to restore the civic purpose to our nation's schools!

Visit Civic Learning Online and share your best practice today.

Case Foundation Study Offers "A New Approach to Civic Engagement"

[from the America's Promise Bulletin]

Getting citizens more involved in the civic life and health of their communities must begin with citizens themselves, according to a new study by The Case Foundation.

Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement offers specific recommendations for giving citizens the tools they need to identify problems and develop solutions, and warns against top-down solutions that require people to "plug into" existing programs or campaigns.

Authored by Dr. Cynthia Gibson, Citizens at the Center is based on interviews with scores of leaders in the service/civic engagement, political and marketing fields; the findings of scholarly research; and numerous mainstream articles, Web sites and publications. The report suggests that, while volunteering and voting are on the rise, especially among young people, many Americans feel powerless to do anything about the problems that affect them and that there is little connection between them and their public institutions and leaders.

Citizens at the Center also finds that many Americans have turned away from politics and political institutions for the same reasons they have turned away from other civic institutions. There is a sense that what they do matters little when it comes to the civic life and health of their communities or the country. Shifting to an approach that puts citizens at the center is a powerful way to help ordinary people take action on the problems that are most important to them, and in the ways they choose.

The report offers several steps the service and civic engagement field can take to advance "citizen-centered" approaches:

• Shift the focus. Instead of asking how to encourage civic engagement, consider the best ways to give people opportunities to define and solve problems themselves.
  
• Start young. Don't wait until high school to begin developing the basic skills that young people will need to be effective problem-solvers.
  
• Involve all community institutions. Engage faith-based organizations, schools, businesses, and government in providing public deliberation and problem-solving for all citizens.
  
• Use technology to create a new kind of "public commons." Leverage technology's power to encourage, facilitate, and increase citizen-centered dialogue, deliberation, organizing and action around a wide variety of issues.
  
• Explore and create new mechanisms. Don't assume that traditional venues like town hall meetings are sufficient to truly get different types of people to engage and share perspectives. Look at where people are already interacting (such as neighborhood organizations, schools and workplaces) and consider other approaches, structures and venues.
  
• Conduct rigorous research about what works and why. While considerable research has been conducted on the levels of volunteering, voting, community service and political participation, there is a need for more evaluation about the motivating forces behind such behaviors – and what approaches are effectively solving community problems.
  
• Encourage more funding for these approaches. Many funders may be reluctant to support long-term, local efforts, preferring to support bigger initiatives with a more immediate "payoff." Attracting more funding will require demonstrating the concrete results of local deliberation and action.
  
• Help communities move from deliberation to action. Deliberation should serve as a means to the end of communities being able to take action collectively in ways that reap results they can see and experience.
  

You can read more about new approaches to citizenship by visiting The Case Foundation's Spotlight page. Once there, you can download a pre-press-copy of Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement and listen to audio clips from some of the interviews that informed the report.

Rewarding Service-Learning

In a New York Times article, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg's administration plans to offer tax credits to impoverished families to offset child care costs and cash rewards to encourage poor people to stay in school and receive preventive medical care. Achieving high scores on standardized tests or enrolling in a service-learning program were listed as actions that might be rewarded.

Read the entire article.

If successful in New York, could this be a possibility in other states?

- Susan, National Service-Learning Partnership

Five Years after 9/11: Turning Tragedy into Good

The following letter is from the Corporation of National and Community Service's CEO David Eisner

---

Dear Colleagues,

Five years ago today, as the smoke was still pouring out of Manhattan, the Pentagon, and the crash site in Pennsylvania, President Bush said, "Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America.”

Indeed, the heartfelt outpouring of compassion and concern that marked Americans’ response to 9/11 also seemed to strengthen something in our collective resolve to make our communities better, closer, and more resilient.

Since 9/11, the number of Americans who serve and volunteer in their communities has risen by more than 10 percent for the first time in more than a generation. Millions of Americans are answering the Call to Service that President Bush made in 2002, and USA Freedom Corps, the Corporation, and our vast network of service partners continue to work at building a lasting culture of service, responsibility, and citizenship.

The 9/11 attacks have changed the landscape of national service, ushering in new organizations, vital collaborations, and better ways of doing business. Every state has created a Citizen Corps Council to engage volunteers in homeland security, many led by our state service commissions. New partnerships have been formed with FEMA, VOADs, and State Emergency Management Agencies. More of our grants have gone to support disaster preparedness and recovery. The Corporation has been formally designated in the National Response Plan as a lead agency for volunteer and donation management in times of disaster, as have several service commissions in their respective states. And thousands of our volunteers, members, and alums have taken CERT and other disaster preparedness training to be ready in case tragedy strikes again.

Beyond these changes, 9/11 and the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 have helped build Americans’ understanding that service and volunteering aren’t just “nice” but are necessary parts of how our nation deals with its challenges. Not just the occasional challenges of a man-made or natural disaster, but the ongoing social and economic needs that are disasters in their own right: the 15 percent of American children who live below the poverty line; the 15 million children who need mentors, the millions of elderly people who need help living independently in their homes. Our bipartisan elected leaders, from the President and Congress to Governors and local officials, recognize more than ever before that national service and volunteering are cost-effective investments that improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster active citizenship.

Out of the evil of 9/11 has come an unmistakable good: a rise of volunteering and community involvement. National service should be proud of its role in fueling and supporting this civic awakening. But we have a long road ahead to tap the full potential of American compassion. We are grateful to the national service family – state commissions and offices, programs directors and staff, and most of all members and volunteers – for choosing this difficult but noble path. And we thank you for the uplifting service you give to your fellow Americans today and every day.


In Service,
David Eisner
CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service

Serve to Remember & Remember to Serve

[From the Corporation of National and Community Service and National Service-Learning Clearinghouse websites]

Hurricane Katrina revealed nature at its worst, destroying everything in its path along 90 miles of America's historic Gulf Coast. The breaching of the levees in New Orleans simultaneously created a national tragedy of epic proportions. And Hurricanes Rita and Wilma stretched the limits of America's already overtaxed ability to respond effectively—and also tested the emotional and spiritual fortitude of the survivors.

But like the horrors of September 11, 2001, the hurricanes of 2005 showed America at its best. Even before the storm made landfall, Americans opened their hearts - and their wallets - to help their fellow Americans in need. America's armies of compassion - individuals, church groups, schools, and nonprofit groups large and small - sprang to action, raising funds, conducting clothing and food drives, and organizing a myriad of other efforts to help.

On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's making landfall, the Corporation for National and Community Service - the federal agency that administers national service programs - has released several reports, fact sheets, videos, and other materials that document the contributions that national service participants and other volunteers have made to the recovery effort.

• Serve to Remember, Remember to Serve
• Serve to Remember project samples (Media Advisory)
• Hurricane Katrina Volunteer Support Fund
• Loss, Lessons & Hope for the Future "Voices from New Orleans
• A new report, National Service Responds: The Power of Help and Hope (3 MB PDF), documents national service’s role and impact in the Gulf to date, from support of first responders, to providing hands-on help to survivors and evacuees, to building capacity to enable more volunteers to serve in the region.
• A new fact sheet, Volunteers Respond (78 KB PDF), highlights the activities and accomplishments of more than 40 volunteer-driven national and Gulf-based organizations, who together have tapped the skills and talents of more than 550,000 volunteers from across the United States and around the world.
  
• New "Hope and Help in the Gulf" videos and PSAs show the power of national service in responding to the hurricanes and ask viewers to serve in the Gulf as volunteers and AmeriCorps members.
  
• A new fact sheet (48 KB PDF) compiles research that has been conducted on the effect of disasters on civic behaviors.
• Service-Learning Resources
• Hurricane Katrina Relief Service-Learning Resources and Tools
• Universities Rebuilding America Partnership (URAP):
  A Toolkit for Organizing Group Service Trips to the Gulf Coast to Help Communities Recover From the Hurricanes of 2005
• Use Service-Learning to Help in Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts [National Service-Learning Partnership]
  

Answer the call and let us know what you plan to do via the comments.

- Susan, National Service-Learning Partnership

No More Band-Aids

An article in today's Washington Post, Police Chiefs Cite Youths in Crime Rise, Call for More Federal Funds clearly indicates our nation's need to do more for our young people. The destructive path of life that many of today's youth are choosing validates the necessity to increase educational and social programs that can perhaps enable our young people to make better choices and instill in them a moral compass.

Rather than pour federal funds into increasing law enforcement, which personally I believe is a Band-Aid to this problem, we should try and prevent the bleeding from ever occurring. Let's start with providing our young people with the necessary education, tools, and programs conducive to becoming a productive member of society and an active citizen. A national study of Learn and Serve America programs suggests that effective service-learning programs improve grades, increase attendance in school, and develop students' personal and social responsibility.

Let's provide young people with learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom and help them to develop the skills to become a successful student, and more importantly, a better person. Today's article is strong motivation to continue the advocacy efforts for Learn and Serve America and service-learning. No more Band-Aids...let's stop the bleeding.

Colleges with a Conscience

As thousands of college students pack up their belongings and head back to their dorms for a new school year, what are some of the things they can look forward to this year? I am sure many of them are eager to see improvements made to their campuses over the summer or new technology offerings in their classrooms and definitely new and old friends. But another trend on the radar of students, families and academics is the extent to which students are looking forward to the service opportunities they will find on their campuses.

Record numbers of college students are engaged in civic life through voluteering, organizing and political activity. Colleges and universities have long been hubs for active and engaged citizens determined to make a contribution to their communities. Over the past two decades, these institutions of higher education have refocused on their civic mission by pioneering new strategies for creating more engaged citizens. Colleges are looking for more and unique ways to appeal to this interest among students. An expanded number of service-learning courses are being offered, better equipped offices of community service are opening, and some schools are even establishing service-learning communities in their dorms.

Service-learning and civic engagement opportunities have even become a factor for students to select their prospect schools. Recognizing this, the Princeton Review-most noted for their ranking of schools each year-published a book entitile Colleges with a Conscience. This book helps students research and select schools based on their committment to public service.

To identify the schools Princeton Review partnered with Campus Compact. Campus Compact is a coalition of more than 900 college and university presidents committed to supporting the public purposes of higher education. Through publications, training, networking, and resources provided through a national office and thirty state offices, Campus Compact helps schools that are committed to social responsibility improve the practice of civic engagement on their campuses. Campus Compact helps students have a meaningful experience once they get into college. All the schools profiled in this book are members of Campus Compact. Membership in Campus Compact shows a commitment to making community and public service part of campus life. To find out more about Campus Compact, including a complete list of member schools, see the Campus Compact website at www.compact.org.

For a listing of schools and more information about this study please go to http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/conscience/

~Jessica Bynoe, National Coordinator, Youth Innovation Fund

Service-Learning as a Boon to Student Achievement

Many of us know very well the myriad positive impacts service-learning has on its participants. As Shelley Billig of the RMC Research Corporation asserts in a 2004 research summary, “Service-learning, when implemented with high quality, yields statistically significant impacts on students’ academic achievement, civic engagement, acquisition of leadership skills, and personal/social development.”

But in the new educational and political environments shaped by No Child Left Behind, educators – and, importantly, legislators – are often first drawn to teaching methods that strengthen student achievement. Grades, standardized test scores, and truancy and dropout rates figure prominently in both programmatic and policy discussions surrounding education. Corporations and their charitable foundations, too, are increasing the emphasis on student achievement in their educational initiatives.

Consequently, it is increasingly important for service-learning advocates to stress these points when talking with colleagues and policymakers. Without this emphasis, sustaining the progress in the service-learning field and the funding level for Learn and Serve America may become progressively more difficult.


Ross Wilson - Director, Government Relations, Youth Service America

Creating Schools and Communities Where Youth Can Soar

"Where youth soar." These words are more than the motto for Alternatives, Inc. As an organization working to ensure that service-learning is a core experience in the life and education of all young people, this is exactly what the National Service-Learning Partnership wants for all youth: schools and communities in which young people can soar as engaged students and active citizens.

Thanks to strong partnerships between young leaders, school and city officials along with support from organizations like Alternatives, young people in Hampton and Newport News, VA (often referred to as Hampton-Roads) participate in multiple opportunities for active learning and direct civic involvement, including service-learning; participation in governance at the school, district, community, and municipal government levels; youth philanthropy, youth-generated media, youth organizing and activism, and youth social entrepreneurship. The result: Generations of young people who are prepared for success in school and the workplace and who positively contribute to the life of their community.

This spring, the Partnership awarded Alternatives, Inc. with its second annual Talking Smart About Service-Learning Award. This award is presented to an individual, group, or organization for effectively communicating and building coalitions in support of service-learning. Alternatives is a community-based, nonprofit youth development agency dedicated to helping young people gain positive values and develop social and leadership skills to become actively engaged in the life of their communities.

Across the country, city officials, educators, nonprofit leaders, and youth workers are beginning to dialogue and explore the ways in which they can create a city-wide vision for youth civic engagement. These visions often include service-learning as part of a system approach to ensuring opportunities for young people to actively participate in and contribute to civic life.

Hampton-Roads is home to amazing examples of youth engagement that need to be shared and replicated by others across the country. This story—and others like it—must be told and its lessons must be shared so that we can create more spaces and places in which youth can soar.

- Nelda Brown, National Service-Learning Partnership

What We Remember When We Serve

As we are nearing the fifth anniversary of September 11th, I cannot help but reflect on my experiences on and since that day. That day, I was still a college student at NYU leaving my dorm in the financial district for a 9am class. I am sure you can piece together the timeline. However, it is not the events of the day I wish to share, but the events that transpired that night.

NYU mobilized faculty, staff and students in record time to offer food, shelter, counseling and any other assistance to the students and surrounding community affected by the day. That evening was surreal. It was before the ugly emotions of anger and fear took hold of so many people in this city and country. Instead, as I volunteered at the hub of NYU’s relief services – the gym – I witnessed people work through the night to offer assistance. People came to offer spare beds/rooms in their apartments for displaced students. Local stores donated food and supplies. There was more cots setup on the gym floor than there were people to fill them. Volunteers were on hand just to offer students new to the city directions to get “home”. There was an outpouring of support and services to ANYONE that needed them.

The days following 9/11, most of the volunteer work in New York centered on helping relief workers and victims’ families. New York City residents came out in droves to make sandwiches, donate money and goods or do whatever they could. However, by then there was a different feeling in the air. Fear and anger were infiltrating the city and slowly but surely many people let those feelings overwhelm them rather than the feelings of support and community that had at least changed my life on that first night.

As this year’s anniversary approaches, I urge myself and others to reclaim that sense of community. Organize or take part in a service-learning project this September to remember not the travesty that our country suffered, but the reawakening of public service, democratic debate and value of diverse, inclusive communities that surfaced in many of us that year. I further urge us to realize these values 9/11 may have reawakened are not the kind to take out only on anniversaries. Think about how this anniversary can be the impetus for long term service-learning work that focuses on our civic responsibility to be good and just citizens.

There are numerous efforts around the country to help you get involved or plan a service-learning project to remember 9/11. For more information read this message from the Corporation for National and Community Service:

From now through September 11th, we will be promoting a series of activities under the theme, "Serve to Remember. Remember to Serve." We encourage you to join in this national call to service by finding ways to tie planned activities and events to this theme. Download the "Serve to Remember" toolkit, which contains a variety of tips, ideas, and templates to help you generate awareness and media interest at the state and local level.

Below is a list of the activities taking place at the national level:

* Gulf Coast Tour, August 28-30: Members of the Corporation's Board of Directors, along with members of the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, will tour a series of national service projects in Louisiana and Mississippi to gain a better understanding of our programs' unique role and impact, and the continued need for volunteers in the region.

* National Service Anniversary Report: On Monday, August 28, the Corporation will release its one-year report on the contributions of national service programs to relief and recovery efforts. To date, more than 36,000 national service participants have contributed more than 1.6 million hours of service to relief and recovery efforts, and leveraged an additional 92,000 community volunteers.

* Media Outreach: The Office of Public Affairs is reaching out to national print and broadcast media to help ensure that the "volunteer story" is told within the media coverage of these two anniversaries. To help garner coverage, we are promoting the following:

* Service Projects - Through our earlier request for information, we have identified nearly 100 service projects or commemorative events that you have planned around the Katrina or 9/11 anniversary. We have been promoting these events through media advisories as part of a nationwide serve-a-thon that pays tribute to the compassionate response that took place in the wake of both Katrina and 9/11. You can promote your local service project as part of this
national effort.

* Research - Several pieces of research examine the effects disasters have on Americans' civic behaviors. A compendium of related research is included in the toolkit mentioned above.

* Compelling Stories of Service - Through your earlier submissions, we have been identifying unique perspectives and spokespeople to help demonstrate national services' role in disaster response and community rebuilding. While we have identified several volunteer stories related to Katrina, we are still looking for stories related to 9/11. If you know of an individual who decided to volunteer or join a national service program as a result or 9/11, please send their name, contact information, and a brief description of their compelling story to smaynard@cns.gov.

If you have specific questions related to these "Serve to Remember" ideas, please feel free to contact one of the following Corporation staff:

* Siobhan Dugan at sdugan@cns.gov
* Sandy Scott at sscott@cns.gov
* Shannon Maynard at smaynard@cns.gov

~Jessica Bynoe, National Coordinator, Youth Innovation Fund

Looking for Effective Out-of-School Service-Learning Models?

There seems to be a never-ending search for working and effective models of service-learning. As service-learning spreads from classroom to classroom, school to school, and community to community nation- and world-wide, the focus is ever more on the quality of service-learning that is occurring. Educators are looking for ideas, inspiration, and/or an existing model to adapt for their students; administrators are seeking initiatives which improve the overall quality and achievement in their schools and districts; communities want to see responsible and active youth making a positive difference in their neighborhoods; and youth are ready to dive into anything which can offer a sense of purpose into their lives.

There are successful service-learning initiatives and many folks searching for them. The challenge has been to package the lessons learned and infrastructure of successful projects in a way that can be immediately useful for anyone that is at the beginning of the implementation process.

The National Collaboration for Youth's (NCY) member organizations have been providing high-quality out-of-school-time programming to youth for more than 100 years. They too sense that most policy-makers, administrators in local youth organizations, and frontline youth workers, but especially the average American, are largely unaware of the programs and their impact. Without this knowledge, successes are overlooked, programs are not supported by future funding, and more time and energy is spent on reinventing the wheel. To address these issues, NCY applied for and received funding from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to research and disseminate -- in a user-friendly format-- data and lessons learned from 10 model programs that are making a difference in the lives of youth. The intent is not to present an exhaustive collection of programs, but rather to illustrate the scope and impact of programming being offered by NCY member organizations and their partners in local communities throughout the nation.

Each of the 10 case studies profiles an out-of-school-time program in action. Discover how the programs are making a difference, through individual stories and quotes from youth, parents, program, implementers, program developers, and researchers.

The 10 models include:

• Across Ages
• Communities and Schools For Career Success (CS²)
• Families and Schools Together (FAST)
• Health Adventures
• Jump-Start
• Living Interactive Family Education (L.I.F.E.)
• Project Anti-Violence Education (P.A.V.E. the Way)
• Project Learn
• Seeds to Success: Youth Farmstand Program
• Will Power/Won't Power

The website also includes recommendations for conducting program evaluations.

If you are not working in an out-of-school setting, there are many examples of in-school service-learning available at the National Service-Learning Partnership's website.

In the spirit of bringing to light and sharing successful service-learning initiatives, please forward information about any program we may have missed via the comments or by emailing the Partnership.

- Susan, National Service-Learning Partnership