Demand, idealism and presidential impact are leading American volunteerism to its third and most important stage - the movement of service to a central role in our national priorities. Boomers and teens are leading a record surge in overall volunteering even as millions of Americans are unemployed, homeless or hungry, and longer-term economic and social challenges mount.
On Friday, President Obama will visit former President George H.W. Bush in Texas to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Bush's Points of Light movement. Obama will thank Bush for launching the current era of service that has laid the foundation for Obama's own service agenda.
In the sweep of Presidential enthusiasm for service, the Points of Light initiative was a turning point. FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and JFK's Peace Corps attracted Americans to federal service. Bush's Points of Light brought individual citizens together in their own organizations to solve problems in their own communities. Bush also created the Commission on National and Community Service as part of his Domestic Policy Council to support his service agenda. These advances have endured and grown in the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush '43 and now Obama, firmly establishing service as bipartisan.
President Obama, with Congress's strongest bipartisan support, signed the late Senator Kennedy's Serve America Act into law, boosted the budget for AmeriCorps and the Corporation for National and Community Service, funded social innovation and volunteer infrastructure initiatives, launched the United We Serve campaign, and made civic engagement central to his presidency.
Today, 20 years after Bush switched on the Thousand Points of Light at his inauguration, the movement, led by Points of Light Institute, has endured and grown with great impact. Since 1989, we've seen:
Just as importantly, we now understand the best practices that make service impactful for the beneficiary, meaningful for the participant and transformative for the community.
The Points of Light Institute with its HandsOn Network has been an important caretaker for President Bush's call. We equip people to create effective responses to community needs and mobilize others to serve. Our 250 action centers across the U.S. constitute the largest volunteer service organization in the country. In 2008, the network mobilized more than 1.2 million people to serve more than 30 million hours worth roughly $615 million dollars in time alone, plus the extraordinary benefits they deliver.
President Bush built a powerful legacy around making service central to people's lives. The next step in the service movement is to make service central to our nation's priorities. This aligns perfectly with President Obama's focus on impact. With challenges like unemployment, the drop-out crisis, prisoner reentry and environmental degradation looming across our communities, the call to citizens to step up and make a difference has never been more important.
Stage One: service through government. Stage Two: service through community. And now Stage Three: Service central to our national priorities.
Twenty years after Bush's Points of Light, Obama's call to service comes not a moment too soon.
I want to see Bill Gates give a free speech or Bush or Clinton!
Stage Two: service through community; never seen any evidence of it, but then again, this is less a city than it is a refugee camp.
And now Stage Three: Service central to our national priorities. I have to wonder just what that means. Unless and until you get something like "two years" mandatory national service, you'll never be able to separate the wealthy white and middle class whites from their positions of undeserved priviledge. With mandatory national service not of the individuals choosing you can disease the priviledged, subject them to traumatizing inner city violence, disfigurement, dismemberment or even death and best of all you can press them into service in the meat grinder of compulsory military service in places like Afghanistan. Now that's egalitarianism at it's progressive best!
So let's not forget that the current darling of the Republican Party was making fun of service to others.
Those who benefit astronomically from society owe society an astronomical debt for it enabled their wealth & position.
A systemic need for charity & volunteerism points to a failed societal structure.
A more egalitarian system that promoted the public good, served we the people, and provided a social safety net for all- is one deserving of our spare time & efforts.
What this voluntary service agenda smacks of is another, thoroughly distasteful attempt at pushing 'personal responsibility' on the poor and dispossessed. In other words, give them the blame and give them a good kicking while you're at it. That is exactly what the plutocracy, revelling in its tax-payer funded, lifestyle enhancement, wants to see.
Exactly. Thanks.