President Obama Encourages Summer Of Service

This Summer, President Obama is calling on all Americans to volunteer in local community service projects across the country. This new community service initiative called "United we Serve," officially kicks off June 22nd and ends on September 11th, the National Day of Service and Remembrance.

In the video below, Obama urges Americans to help their local communities by volunteering at a homeless shelter, reading to kids at a local library, or getting involved in other projects. "We can rebuild our schools, but we need people to be mentors and tutors in those schools," Obama said in the video. "We can modernize our health care system, but we need volunteers in our hospitals and communities to help care for the sick and help people lead healthier lives. We can invest in clean energy, but we need people to use energy-efficient products in their homes and train for the green jobs of the future."

Watch:

You can register your service project by going to Serve.gov. For community service opportunities in your neighborhood, checkout what Arianna Huffington calls a "craigslist for service" by going to AllForGood.org.

Comments

[kellypdx]

this is wonderful! in this desperate economy, money donations are down for so many necessary non-profits, so volunteering our time has never been more important.

i've always donated time and money, with 2 young kids (6 & 7) it became easier to donate money. but my budget is tight now, i'm strictly donating my time. i found a website that lists family-friendly volunteer opportunities in our area, and this weekend we packed 5-pound bags with potatos for our local food bank. there were 62 other volunteers, and we met some great people.

the kids created their own jobs since sitting on a chair filling bags with potatos lost its apeel (haha) very quickly! they did "rotten potato" duty, then ran around picking up the filled bags. it was WONDERFUL to see them initiating jobs, talking to people, being proud of themselves­... we are extremely fortunate that even with my hours cut back to 32/week we're still managing---and i feel gratitude for that as often as i can every single day.

obama can work on getting people paying jobs AND encourage everyone to help each other out. we're all feeling so down these days, and after an ugly administration that pitted americans against americans, it's AWESOME to have a white house promoting working together and helping each other out, we desperately need to stick together these days!!!

[jhNY]

With so many folks who have no work and no prospects,wouldn't it be even more swell and awesome if the president encouraged a summer of jobs that paid ? Or jobs that lasted longer than a season...

[amistad]

Tsk, tsk, tsk, such jealousy..­..

[Dupree]

The objective is to be productive and that believe it or not....is better than sitting at home being depressed about not having a job. Look, we are in a recession. It took years to make and it will take years to get out from under the debris of an economic avalanche of problems..­..in the mean time ...we can still live useful lives. There are some things that money can not buy and that is dignity and self respect...­and one thing about losing one job...one'­s dignity and self respect can be threatened­...so not only would one that volunteer be helping others...t­hey also will be helping themselves and keeping their skills sharp and the seed of good will be planted...­and it is just a matter of time before the harvest of jobs surface again.