Civically Engaging Young People in the Middle East and North Africa

President Obama speaking in Cairo

In June 2009, President Obama gave a speech in Cairo emphasizing the potential of young people to effect change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and shining a light on increased youth engagement interest there.

In this speech he discussed the positive impact of interfaith service, his commitment to establishing a Business Volunteer Corps in the region and his goal of expanding partnerships and exchanges between the US and the Middle East:

“And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country — you, more than anyone, have the ability to re-imagine the world, to remake this world.”

Queen Rania of Jordan has also been discussing the role of young people in communities during many speeches over the past years. In March 2008, she spoke to the graduating class at the University of Jordan indicating her and King Abdullah’s belief in the impact of young people.

Funding the Kennedy Serve America Act: Appropriations Process Begins Soon in Congress

Obama signs the Serve America Act, 4/09

Beginning in early July, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will mark up the fiscal year 2010 Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education Appropriations bills.

The Kennedy Serve America Act, enacted in April, authorized the expansion of national service, but offered no promises in terms of how much funding Congress would give the Corporation for National and Community Service to implement the Act. According to the organization Voices For National Service, President Obama’s budget request for the Corporation for National and Community Service totaled $1.149 billion, including funding for:

AmeriCorps: to create 10,000 new AmeriCorps positions (the first step towards the Serve America Act’s goal of 250,000 annual members by the year 2017). Learn why funding these positions is important for local communities throughout the United States.

• $372.5 million for AmeriCorps State and National grants to support 74,861 members, $101 million or 37% increase over the FY09 enacted level.

NCVS Opening Plenary Monday Night

Michelle Obama speaking at NCVS 09

The launch of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service Monday night brought a huge crowd of people out to hear First Lady Michelle Obama speak, among other familiar faces.

When I arrived, the throngs of people waiting in line to go through security matched the throngs of people already inside the hall, and everyone was waiting for Michelle Obama. Helping the time fly was comic/emcee Wally Collins who made fun of individual audience members between introducing musical acts like Sondre Lerche and the Glide Ensemble. Also in the lead-in to the main event, Shawn Rubin accepted the Eli Segal Award from AmeriCorps Alums, Alan Khazei of Be the Change, Inc., spoke introducing corporate sponsor Shannon Schuyler of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

The highlight of the night didn’t come at the end, as I would have expected. Michelle Obama took the stage somewhere in the middle of the opening event, and everyone in the crowd cheered and stood if they could. Her words were inspiring of course, but I was more stunned by the simple fact of her presence—the President’s wife chose to spend time with us. She used to run a Public Allies AmeriCorps program—and said to start that she was with her people. What I liked the best about what she said was the reaction she and President Obama received when they each decided to forego lucrative careers for nonprofit jobs—Mrs. Obama at Public Allies and Pres. Obama at various nonprofits like the Developing Communities Project where he was a community organizer. She said, regarding people in our lives who dismiss our career choices: “But what these folks don’t understand is that the story of progress in this nation has always been the story of people who chose — in times of trial and struggle — to serve it.”

Mrs. Obama also announced the launch of the United We Serve summer of service initiative, which will last through Sept. 11th of this year, which will make community service easy to do for anyone, and focus on health care, energy

Launching Today: YouTube’s Video Volunteers

Originally posted on today’s Idealist homepage blog by Julia Smith.

President Obama has asked everyone in the United States to heed the call of service – to pitch in and make their communities a better place. YouTube is stepping up to provide a very “21st century” way of doing just that: a new program called YouTube’s Video Volunteers.

The mission of YouTube’s Video Volunteers platform is to connect nonprofit organizations with skilled video makers who can help them broadcast their causes through video, reaching new audiences online and driving action around issues and projects that matter to them.

The Video Volunteers page shows video-related volunteer opportunities that have been posted to Allforgood.org (which includes listings from Idealist.org and VolunteerMatch). As a result, a YouTuber eager to help out might find a listing like this (“Afro Diaspora Music Video Website” in New York City) or this (“Promotional Video for the GO-Science Challenger Learning Center” in Greenville, NC).

Do you work at a nonprofit that needs help making a video? From now on, when you post a volunteer opportunity on Idealist, make sure to use the words Video Volunteer in your posting. That way, it will show up in the AllforGood feed – and as a result, on the YouTube Video Volunteers page.

To learn more, visit youtube.com/videovolunteers.

The British Council Creates Global Connections and Impact Through Dialogue and Service

Professor Mike Hardy, Photo by Kate Anderson

Amy Potthast first wrote about the British Council’s event and because I live in the nation’s capital, where the event was held, I had the good fortune of attending.

Admittedly, I was still reeling from Michelle Obama’s visit to CNCS — so the British Council event was yet another highlight on my calendar which made that week unforgettable, to say the least.

An impressive crowd gathered—approximately 50 attendants—at the Rayburn House Office Building for what was absolutely a lovely affair.  Lovely is not a word I usually use to describe a professional engagement, but I think this word comes to mind because of my British, or as I say, Bree-teesh, bias. Yes, I’m a sap for their accents and covet their seemingly inborn urbane manner.

Prior to the event, I was only loosely familiar with the work of the British Council—the United Kingdom’s international

Business Professionals Forced to Wait Longer for Peace Corps Assignments

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the very tight funnel through which Peace Corps sends all applicants, for increasingly fewer Volunteer spots around the world. (It’s complicated — you might want to read that post.)

I wrote about the plight of generalists —the well-educated applicants who can learn to do different assignments well, but aren’t specialists in any fields currently requested by Peace Corps host countries — whose application numbers far exceed the number of open generalist Volunteer positions due to recent budget woes.

This past Monday, when next year’s Volunteer positions opened up for nomination, the problem wasn’t for the generalists. Most generalist openings have been delayed a couple more weeks.

The people who got shut out of Peace Corps this time around were the business professionals, in some cases people with 30 years of business experience. Peace Corps’s two assignments that require a background in business include:

• Business Advising — requiring either a Bachelors in a business-related discipline, or a high school diploma and four years of business management experience. These Volunteers help people in their communities plan and

The Peace Corps Lottery

This year, Obama’s words and actions have inspired many people to serve their country.  Every day a new article appears in the press about the surge in Peace Corps applications. But given budget constraints and the nomination system, who gets in and who doesn’t is a bit of a lottery. And not just because the applicant rolls are swelling.

J. Scholes and a little friend, Peace Corps Haiti

Peace Corps’s funding has been challenged in recent years due to the falling value of the dollar and rising expenses — so fewer Volunteers are invited. And the qualifications for Peace Corps assignments are narrowly drawn. The net effect is that “generalists” — well-educated people who could learn to do many things effectively — compete against each other for fewer and fewer Volunteer positions while demand for Volunteers is growing around the world.

Peace Corps assignments each have their own very specific qualifications attached. For any given assignment it’s all spelled out — the degree you need, level of language proficiency in specific foreign languages, amount of time in relevant volunteer or professional experience. The requirements are there because host countries invite Peace Corps, determine the mission of the program there, and request specific skill sets among incoming Volunteers.

In the past, if you were an accomplished college grad with varied volunteer experience and few medical complications, your chances of getting into the Peace Corps were solid and fair. You could vie for one of a few generalist assignments — Community Development, Health Extension, or English Teaching, for example. Once in-country you’d be trained with all the specific skills you’d need to complete your service effectively.

Problem is, Peace Corps wants to place all of its talented generalists in these same assignments. That’s because the

Obama’s Remarks on Signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Today, President Obama made the following remarks before signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.

The transcript was released by the Office of the White House Press Secretary. Re-play the signing and hear the speech for yourself on CSPAN.

Thank you.  Please be seated.  Thank you.  Well, what an extraordinary day.  It is good to be here with all of you.

I want to, first of all, thank President Bill Clinton for joining us here today — where’s President Clinton? — (applause) — for his lifetime of service to our country, but also the fact that he created AmeriCorps, and that not only made this day possible, it has directly enlisted more than half a million Americans in service to their country; service that has touched the lives of millions more.

Now, it just so happens that one of those people who have been touched by AmeriCorps was FLOTUS, otherwise known as First Lady of the United States — (laughter) — Michelle Obama, who ran a AmeriCorps-sponsored

The Signing of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Today President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law. It will take affect October 1 of this year. Read more about the Act.

During one of the most exciting National Volunteer Weeks in recent memory, President Obama and national service supporters gathered today at the SEED School in Washington, D.C., an academic and boarding charter school.

At the signing, Obama said, our “government cannot do everything alone,” but needs the help of citizens in local communities everywhere. And national service isn’t just for recent college graduates (watch news footage from AARP.) Sounding Whitman-esque, he called people every where to “Put your shoulder to the wheel” of service — and if you do, you can look back on the “moment when your own story and the American story converged.”

He also recognized Bill Clinton for launching AmeriCorps during his administration, and the First Lady Michelle Obama who was the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago, a national service program.

Obama went on to talk about the long legacy of service contributed by the Kennedy family including Ted Kennedy, for whom the legislation is now named.

He also introduced Maria Eitel his nominee for the new chief executive post at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and Acting C.E.O. Nicola Goren.

The bill re-authorizes CNCS and its programs through 2014, and authorizes sweeping expansion of national service (with a nod

President Obama on the Serve America Act

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

This evening President Obama issued this statement in the hours after the Senate passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.

“I’m so pleased that the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act — legislation that will usher in a new era of service. I want to applaud all those who have worked so hard to see this bill through, and I am eager to sign it into law.

“This legislation will help create new opportunities for millions of Americans at all stages of their lives. From improving service learning in schools to creating an army of 250,000 volunteers a year dedicated to addressing our nation’s toughest problems. From connecting working Americans to a variety of part-time service opportunities to better utilizing the skills and experience of our retirees and baby boomers. This legislation will help tap the genius of our faith based and community organizations, and it will find the most innovative ideas for addressing our common challenges and helping those ideas grow.

“It is fitting that this legislation is named after Ted Kennedy, a person who has never stopped asking what he could do for his country. This legislation is not just a tribute to the service to which he has dedicated his life, it is a call to action for the rest of us. Our work is not finished when I sign this bill into law – it has just begun. While our government can provide every opportunity imaginable for us to serve our communities, it is up to each of us to seize those opportunities. To do our part to lift up our fellow Americans. To realize our own true potential. I call on all Americans to stand up and do what they can to serve their communities, shape our history and enrich both their own lives and the lives of others across this country.”

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President Obama’s Call to Service

In speech and action, the 44th President of the United States calls on us to serve.

In his career, his MLK Day volunteering, Inaugural address, and his National Day of Renewal and Reconciliaion 2009, Barack Obama has called on Americans to serve in their communities.

Excerpted from the Proclamation, signed shortly after taking office:

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright — it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

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Service Nation and MTV to Co-Host Inaugural Ball

Service Nation and MTV will co-host the Be The Change Inaugural Ball on January 20, 2009, the day President-Elect Barack Obama becomes president.

Service Nation, the campaign to increase support of national service, and MTV will partner to host a ball that celebrates the turnout of youth during the recent election. According to the MTV press release:

A record 24 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2008 presidential election, accounting for 18 percent of the 133.3 million voters who hit the polls. It marked the third major election in a row with increased youth-voter numbers, and for the first time in 20 years, the number of young voters surpassed the number of voters over the age of 65.

The event will take place in Washington, D.C.’s Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Guests will include celebrities, government leaders, and young volunteers. You’ll be able to watch the event on MTV.com.

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Obamas, Public Allies in the Spotlight

Service program receives more, positive, media attention while solving tough social problems for communities and offering professional growth for corps members.

Public Allies has received a lot of tough press among obscure blogs this year, but with established connections to the future President and First-Lady, the outlook in the media has just gotten brighter for the national, Milwaukee-based AmeriCorps program.

Here are just a couple news items involving Public Allies in the past week since the election:

The National Public Radio show Morning Edition mentioned Public Allies this morning in a discussion of Michelle Obama’s executive experience since graduating from law school. She was the founding Executive Director of Public Allies Chicago.

The San Francisco Chronicle published this article about social entrepreneurs’s hopes for the new administration. The New York Post ran an article on Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama chatted last week with a Newsweek journalist about her experience with Public Allies and the future of national service generally:

[Richard Wolffe:] You want to continue what you did with Public Allies (which trains young people to become leaders of community groups and nonprofits) as First Lady. What’s your thinking on how to go about that?

[Michelle Obama:] Barack is talking about a deeper investment in national service; that’s been part of his platform. He’s been meeting with some of the leadership of the AmeriCorps national-service movements—the Public Allies, the Teach for Americas, the City Years of the World—and figuring out how do we use that model, expand upon it, and help use that as a more creative way to defray the costs of college for young people and get all Americans really engaged. What AmeriCorps showed me, during the time that I worked on it, is that all these resources of young people, and not-so-young people, as I call them—because AmeriCorps is not just for young adults but people of all ages—you can fill a lot of gaps with the help of community-service hours. The young people in my program worked as program directors. They worked with kids and they worked in parks and they worked with nonprofit organizations that didn’t have the resources to bring people in full time. So this is one of those clear win-wins. You can help kids pay for school, you can get needed man-hours into really critical things like the environment, senior care, Head Start—a whole range of things. And you get the country more focused on giving back.

Earlier this year, Fast Company named Public Allies and its President and CEO Paul Schmitz one of the top 45 Social Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the World.

11/12/08 an article about Public Allies appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

11/13/08 in Canada’s National Post.

What is Public Allies?

Public Allies is a 10-month service and leadership program that serves in 15 cities across the United States.  Corps members — called “Allies” — serve with nonprofits and universities to “create, improve and expand services that address diverse issues, including youth development, education, public health, economic development and the environment.”

The monthly stipend (at $1300-$1800) is higher than many AmeriCorps programs, and Allies are eligible for the $4725 AmeriCorps education award at the end of the term. But the best benefit of the program may be its extraordinary training opportunities. This, from the Public Allies web site:

A rigorous leadership development curriculum delivered by community leaders, practitioners and educators, which includes:

• Intensive weekly skill training and leadership development seminars
• Critical feedback, reflection, and personal coaching toward individual performance and professional goals
• Community building and team projects with a diverse cohort of peers
• Presentations of learning at the end of the year to demonstrate how one met the learning outcomes of the program

Good news for Public Allies and for national service

Not only Public Allies stands to benefit from the media attention, but national service as a whole does as well, including efforts like Service Nation, the campaign for expanded funding for service.

Besides the media attention, no president has had as much direct experience with the challenges and opportunities of national service as President-Elect Obama, who was a founding board member of Public Allies Chicago. He stepped down from his board post before Michelle Obama joined as staff.

Read more

Read more about applying to Public Allies, its distinguished alumni network, hiring a graduating Ally for your organization, hosting an Ally at your organization, and the program’s legacy of achievement.

On Michelle Obama and Public Allies, check out the Public Allies factsheet, and look for this year’s Michelle: A Biography by Liza Mundy at your local library.

A Socially Networked Administration

Blogging for Mashable.com, Adam Ostrow offers several suggestions for how Obama’s administration can continue to use its well-established social networks during the next four years and beyond.

Most of his ideas include keeping Obama’s base civically engaged—educating them about legislation that needs congressional support, and calling citizens to service:

Obama has often talked about a call to service during his campaign – things like expanding the Peace Corps and offering tax credits in exchange for public service. Why not allow users of MyBarackObama to utilize the platform to organize community service projects? Use Twitter and SMS to alert people to opportunities to give back in their own communities or when national tragedy strikes. Utilize Facebook to get the word out about charitable events. The tools and the users are already in place.

Rather than requiring people to be so proactive about doing good, Obama’s social media reach allows them to be reactive – staying informed of things going on in their communities, organizing people that can help, and then pitching in – all from the comfort of their personal computer.

I feel old saying this, but there was a time not so long ago when presidents wouldn’t even appear on night-time talk shows. What do you think of a President who keeps a blog, whom you can support on Facebook and who can follow you on Twitter?

How else can we capture the energy left in the wake of the election, where Democrats and Republicans mobilized to the mantra of “change”?

See this post about Obama’s plans for his social network.

Also check out this article on the implications of Obama’s online campaign for the social sector, by Tom Watson, author of CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World and publisher of OnPhilanthropy.

RPCVs ask Obama for More Peace Corps

Today the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA) launches a petition to seek Peace Corps expansion under the new Obama administration.

The independent nonprofit group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers is asking supporters to sign a petition to advocate for the growth and strengthening of Peace Corps.

With the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, the National Peace Corps Association and its MorePeaceCorps campaign has launched an on-line petition urging support for a bigger, better and bolder Peace Corps.  The petition is addressed to President-elect Obama, and will be presented to the Obama transition team.  We also plan to use the petition as a way of showing critical state and congressional district support during meetings in the coming months with Capitol Hill lawmakers. Take action right now, right here.

Read more about Obama’s pre-election stance on service corps programs.

Read more about the MorePeaceCorps campaign. Read Barack Obama’s letter to RPCVs in the fall 2008 issue of World View Magazine.

Barack Obama is arguably one of the most internationalist presidents in U.S. history, his father having come from Kenya; some of his elementary school years spent in Jakarta.

Pres. Obama and Government Careers

With record numbers of first-time voters and young people backing Obama’s presidency, perhaps a new generation of government workers will not be so hard to recruit after all.

With Baby Boomers retiring in droves over the next decade, fears have been widespread in public and nonprofit sectors that the United States will face a leadership shortage.

Not enough young people have shown an interest in government careers, and in-roads to government careers are not well known. Government has a reputation of being inefficient, less lucrative than business sector work, and very, very bureaucratic. People cite student loans that are just too high, and the need for better marketing of the compelling opportunities available in the government.

“This will not be a call issued in one speech or one program – this will be a central cause of my presidency. We will ask Americans to serve. We will create new opportunities for Americans to serve. And we will direct that service to our most pressing national challenges.”- U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama during a speech given at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs July 2, 2008.

John F. Kennedy inspired a generation of youth to serve through initiatives like Peace Corps. Will a new generation of people — young people and people who are recently discovering civic engagement — be inspired to join the ranks of an Obama-led federal government? What do you think?

If you are considering a career in government — whether you supported McCain or Obama during this election cycle — you should know about these resources:

• Obama’s transition site, Change.gov, offers an online form to apply for a non-career position within the Obama Administration.
• AmeriCorps*VISTA and Peace Corps both offer first-year alums noncompetitive eligibility for federal government jobs. That means these recent program grads can apply for jobs not open to the entire public.
• Many other service corps (see the side bar) have placements in local and state government agencies that give professionals a taste of that work environment and access to new, highly relevant networks for this work.
• The Partnership for Public Service has developed an array of resources on federal-government career paths, for people of varying educational backgrounds and skills. Note that federal jobs exist throughout the country, not just in Washington, D.C.
• Job sites like Hill Zoo and USA Jobs specialize in government-sector jobs.
• The U.S. Public Service Academy movement led by Echoing Green Fellow Chris Myers Asch (Teach For America alum) aims to make public sector careers as clear-cut and supported an option as military careers have been for centuries. Listen to this Idealist podcast episode featuring Myers Asch.
• Some help exists for student loan cancellation in exchange for (years of) public service employment.
• Read about Obama’s pre-election stance on national service.
• Today’s Chronicle of Philanthropy asks if Obama will inspire more minority leaders in the nonprofit sector, and posts thoughts about what others think may be his influence for the charity sector.
• Read Equal Justice Work’s blog post on Obama and public service expansion.

President-Elect Obama has been particularly clear that his administration will count on the help of people who have supported his candidacy and on those who didn’t. Young people may accept this invitation by entering the government workforce. If they do so with the enthusiasm and turn-out they have shown in his election bid, the looming leadership crisis may fail to materialize.

In New Orleans: Service by the People, for the People

Marginalized New Orleans Youth Strive for a Brighter, Greener Future

The Corps Network has recently launched a new service program in New Orleans. The Conservation Corps of Greater New Orleans (CCGNO) combines many goals:

• Engage local youth whom the schools have not reached, including formerly incarcerated and court-involved 16-24 year olds
• Prepare these youth with highly marketable and potentially lucrative green job skills
• Give them the chance to use sustainable practices to restore the environment and historic structures, conserve energy, and build community
• Revitalize New Orleans, a city still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina
• Innovate service learning practices by implementing them without the classroom
• Transform the public perception of marginalized youth by giving them a platform and a voice
• Instill in these youth the value of service to community at an early age

CCGNO leverages some investment from the Federal government, to not only transform the lives of its Corps members but also to rebuild and rejuvenate New Orleans infrastructure and community.

The program graduates its first class of Corps members this Friday through its Service Learning Showcase, where 100 Corps members will share their accomplishments from their three-month term of service.

During their term, Corps members visualized success, researched and assessed community needs, proposed and implemented sustainable projects, and finally evaluated their own outcomes. Corps members have served side by side with up to seven peers, plus professional mentors who have guided them. They have served in agencies throughout Greater New Orleans.

Recruited from the parishes of Greater New Orleans, the inaugural class of CCGNO show that quality service-learning comes through youth ownership. By mid-2009, CCGNO hopes to have graduated 800 Corps members.

While some service corps programs are hit-or-miss when it comes to career transitions, CCGNO is all about green workforce development, and commits to propelling its graduating Corps members towards green jobs and further education.

For further reading on bringing all voices to the environmental movement, check out GreenForAll.org. In November 2008, Green For All’s founder Van Jones published a book Green Collar Economy. Also read this New York Times blog post (from 11/10/08) about Van Jones and the Obama administration. Check out this interview with Van Jones, who explains more: