About

Thanks for stopping by! Please take the poll at the bottom of this page – we’d love to know who is reading! Thanks!

In the past, a person who wanted to serve their country could join ‘the Service’ — or the armed forces. Today in addition to military service, people have a wide array of citizen service corps to choose from — opportunities like AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and Teach For America — enabling them to serve their country and their community through a term of full-time service (usually lasting three to 27 months).

We aim to connect you to “the new Service,” and educate you about transitioning to a social-impact career when your term ends.

The New Service blog aims to catalyze citizen service by:

• introducing you to service programs,
• offering advice to propel you forward in your social-impact career and graduate education,
• keeping you up to date on service world news and trends, and
• letting you know about blogs, books, and other resources relevant for citizen service proponents.

The blog is especially dedicated to current or former term of service program participants, including AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps*VISTA, Peace Corps, City Year, Teach For America, HealthCorps, fellowships, faith-based programs, and many, many others. (See more Corps and Coalitions in the right-hand side bar of the blog.) We aim to offer resources useful to career counselors, service corps program staff, and future Corps members as well.

The New Service is a joint project between staff from Idealist.org and partners Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the National Service Inclusion Project, and Innovations in Civic Participation.

To follow the blog, subscribe to it in your favorite RSS reader (i.e., Google Reader).

You can also follow The New Service on Twitter, and email us at TheNewService [at] idealist.org. Get our widget for your blog or Google homepage.

Please comment on blog posts, and take this quick poll to let us know who’s reading: