"As the government seeks to deal with the economic crisis and relieve the distress felt by millions of families, we should not overlook the great American tradition of service. More than 60 million citizens every year are providing service to their neighbors and their communities. Lawmakers who will soon consider a financial stimulus package should also consider a "service stimulus." Repairing the roads and bridges of our physical infrastructure is urgently needed, but we also need to expand our civic infrastructure dramatically. President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to make service a central cause of his presidency. In his call to service outlining plans for a large expansion of citizen service, he said he would reach out to Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, young and old, and ask all of us for our service and active citizenship. "We need your service, right now," he said." Former Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, was the Country Director of Ethiopia.
Harris Wofford writes: Americans should heed the call to serve
Americans should heed the call to serve
By STEVE GOLDSMITH • And HARRIS WOFFORD •
December 5, 2008
The start of the holiday season brings anguish for many families across the country. More Americans are struggling to make ends meet. They will be in need of support and services just at the time when the nonprofits who can help meet those needs are facing precipitous drops in giving.
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Food banks' supplies are set to reach new lows. Yet this year we will see millions of citizens reach out in record numbers to assist those in need — offering food, special care and compassion.
As the government seeks to deal with the economic crisis and relieve the distress felt by millions of families, we should not overlook the great American tradition of service. More than 60 million citizens every year are providing service to their neighbors and their communities.
Lawmakers who will soon consider a financial stimulus package should also consider a "service stimulus."
Repairing the roads and bridges of our physical infrastructure is urgently needed, but we also need to expand our civic infrastructure dramatically.
President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to make service a central cause of his presidency. In his call to service outlining plans for a large expansion of citizen service, he said he would reach out to Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, young and old, and ask all of us for our service and active citizenship. "We need your service, right now," he said.
Here are a few examples of what "We the People" can do right now and in the year ahead:
# We can help children in danger of dropping out of school by volunteering as tutors and mentors.
# Skilled professionals (lawyers, accountants, et al.) can go door to door in distressed communities to assist families facing mortgage foreclosure.
# Volunteers can support displaced families and children by helping them transition from homeless shelters to more permanent housing.
# Since financial stress and unemployment can lead to substance abuse, psychological despair and homelessness, community assistance centers and shelters will need many new volunteers and basic supplies.
As two who support national and community service from different sides of the political aisle, we look to President Obama and Congress to shore up the civic infrastructure in order to help meet some of the most pressing human needs, build common cause, and strengthen the union's civic purpose.
In each area of need, the limiting factor is not American goodwill but the ways and means of recruiting, training and deploying people who want to play a part in meeting critical community needs.
More than a million new mentors and tutors are needed to help young people succeed in school, gain admission to college, and find work.
Our new president demonstrated that millions of volunteers can be actively engaged in a political campaign.
Now is the time to show that a call to service from the president, using powerful new Internet means of communication, can engage millions Americans as active-duty citizens working together to meet the urgent needs of our communities.
This citizen service stimulus finds much common ground in the campaign pledges of Obama and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and most recently in the Serve America Act, introduced by Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that greatly increases the numbers of AmeriCorps members.
However any such new government resources should be viewed not as a jobs program but as assets and agents necessary to manage and train millions of volunteers. These new forces can be rapidly assigned to existing nonprofits to recruit and organize unpaid, shorter-term volunteers.
Last year 75,000 AmeriCorps members recruited more than 1.7 million local volunteers. One of the best examples of this is AmeriCorps' relationship with Habitat for Humanity, where members don't just build homes, but most of all recruit, train and manage the community volunteers on whom Habitat relies. AmeriCorps members serving with Habitat for Humanity helped mobilize 200,000 community volunteers to build 1,700 homes.
Of course federal efforts to build civic infrastructure need not only come from new federal funding. Our new president can take other significant steps, including requiring other federal grant programs to incorporate ways that volunteers could assist in accomplishing the grant's purpose.
In the can-docivic spirit that is the true strength of America, let's not wait for the Congress and the new president to strengthen our civic infrastructure.
In this holiday season, let's begin a new era by offering service on a scale not seen since World War II. And on Jan. 19, the day before the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, let's honor Martin Luther King's day — as Congress in 1994 directed us to do — not as a day off, but as a day-on for citizen service.
Goldsmith is the chairman of the board of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that administers AmeriCorps and other national service programs. From 1992 to 1999 he served as the Republican mayor of Indianapolis. Harris Wofford, D-Pa., was U.S. senator from 1991 to 1995; he was CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service from 1995 to 2001.
