My friend Chris Golden and I are excited to begin keeping you up to date about our personal preparations and experiences surrounding the ServiceNation summit. We are two of the 100 young leaders who will gather in New York City for a summit and experience of a lifetime in roughly two weeks. Chris and I became friends while freshmen at American University. We’re both really interested in current events, politics (even though we’re near polar opposites on the political spectrum), and citizen service.

Yesterday we finished up a press release about our plans to attend the ServiceNation summit, and it was sent back to our hometowns and college campuses. It was important to us to get the word out, especially to our peers, about ServiceNation and the grassroots effort to improve our country that will follow. It was also important to demonstrate the involvement of young people in this movement. I think it is great the organizers of the summit made such a deliberate attempt to engage and reach out to young people, the future of our country.

More than any other recent generation, my generation, the Millennials as we like to say, have a desire to serve their country and give back. Perhaps it’s because we found working outside what we perceive to be a broken political system is more effective. Perhaps it’s because we are defined by the 2001 terrorist attacks and are inspired by the subsequent showing of national unity and call to service. Whatever the reason, young people are becoming more engaged and our communities and country stands to benefit immensely because of that.

For example:
This week I have had several friends attend the Democratic National Convention, as many more prepare to fly out to the Republican National Convention next week (one as a delegate, one as a journalist, and one as a page). I have a high school friend who, in his junior year of college, is running for state senate in Rhode Island. I’ve met teenage school board members, leaders of civic movements like 18in08, and non-profit leaders, such as where I work at Mobilize.org. The power of our generation is enormous, and it is reassuring that ServiceNation recognizes this and wants to tap that potential in this movement going forward.

I look forward to meeting other young leaders across the country and hearing their stories. We have so much to learn from each other. And while we are still two weeks out, we’re not wasting any time. Thank you, Facebook. More on that tomorrow.

Time to start thinking about the weekend, and this week Nikki Goberdhan–a BU student who has been doing plenty to keep the Be the Change, Inc. Boston office sane and running–is going to take you out. Nikki is working on a Change Agent slide show that celebrates the incredible group of 30 Change Agents who are now in the field busily organizing for ServiceNation. To make her slide show really sing, Nikki is turning to Kanye West (”Stronger”) and John Mayer (”Waiting On The World To Change”). So here they are. Enjoy, and have a great weekend.

Our friends over at Voices For National Service just sent aroound the following call for action. It’s a worthwhile call, so please, umm, act (and forward the alert):

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) Announces AmeriCorps Act of 2008
Help Secure CoSponsors and Support National Service

On Friday, May 16, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) will introduce the AmeriCorps Act of 2008, legislation which will:

–Raise the education award to $6,185,  the average annual cost of tuition andfees for an instate student at a four year public university;

–Make the education award tax exempt;

–Restore the Corporation’s previous authority to partner with other Federalagencies to use national service as a strategy to carry out Departments’ priorities;

–and,  Promote the Corporation for National and Community Service to Cabinet level status.

Voices for National Service strongly supports this effort to recognize the importance of service and to promote access to education by increasing the value of the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award. Since inception in 1994, more than 540,000 citizens have served through AmeriCorps to address the unmet needs of our nation. These citizens have given over 700,000,000 hours toward improving the lives of other Americans.

Click here to read the bill language.

You can build support for national service by encouraging your Senators to join as original cosponsors of the bill.  Call today; the deadline for cosponsors is Thursday, May 15th at 4:00pm.

Action Steps for the AmeriCorps Act of 2008:

1. Call the Capitol operator at (202) 224-3121 to be connected to your Senator.
2. Ask your elected official to be an original cosponsor of the AmeriCorps Act of 2008.
3. To cosponsor, interested offices should contact Mary Ellen McGuire with Senator Dodd’s office by email: MaryEllen_McGuire@help.senate.gov. Deadline for cosponsors is Thursday, May 15th at 4pm.

But they are hilarious (campaign slogan: “Whatever). And that counts for a lot.

Entrepreneur magazine names Ashoka’s Bill Drayton to its list of “25 people, trends and events you can’t afford to ignore” (along with “Oil Dependence,” the “Declining Dollar” and the “Mortgage Crisis”). That’s rough company. But you can watch Drayton (”Our job is not to give people fish, it’s not to teach them how to fish, it’s to build new and better fishing industries”) explain it all here. 

“Of course, you have to hope people like fish…”

Emily Cherniack, our Director of Organizing at Be the Change, Inc., has been meeting with national service alums to figure out how we can inspire them to engage with our efforts to transform our politics and public policy. This week she had an epiphany that is well worth reading for anyone interested in the potential of national service alums to become the vanguard of a movement for social change. She didn’t stay up all night, like Tom Cruise, or publish it at Kinkos. But here it is:

hey guys,
so we had an interesting focus group tonight with TFA alums. It’s been fascinating for me, with every focus group we have, and every alum that i have spoken with over the past year because it confirms what I inherently have felt (as a service alum myself) about how we need to think about our Be the Change mobilization/organizing strategy. Through all the dialogues and discussion, the underlying connection and issue for our alums is this: service alums have separated themselves from the political process—-they have done this for many reasons, some valid, some not so valid. But they all have chosen service because it is impactful, transformative, and they get results. It also makes them feel powerful in a way that politics has not for them.

This service framework that they exist in, transfers directly into how they view what a political experience should be like. They want it to be transformative, impactful, and results oriented—like service. Unfortunately, policy and politics are just by nature, slower and not as tangible or transformative as quickly as service is. This lies our biggest challenge. We cannot put these alums into the existing political framework because they will not like it, engage in it, or want to become leaders in it. We have to think about how we change the framework, and how we change their interaction with politics, in general.

This means, to me, that we need to throw all the typical advocacy stuff out of the window. Including form letters to congress, form emails to politicians, e-newsletters that are impersonal, and anything that is your standard, typical advocacy tool…we just shouldn’t use it. i just don’t think it will work. What we have to do, is make politics personal, connective, and local…to them, their life, and their situation. it has to appeal to their values, their personal narrative of who they are, as alumni of service. it’s why i think a lot of alums are connected and inspired by obama’s campaign—the stories and the personal connection. the values align for them. and we have to transfer that to the policies we create and the campaigns we run. It has to come from them, to each other. through networks, local efforts.

We also have to ask them to make a sacrifice. I think it’s not enough to just get their email. They won’t buy into this movement if it is too little of an ask. I think we have to ask a lot, not too much so it’s overwhelming, but enough so in their mind, it’s worth it. These are people that gave up a least a year of their life for service. they did what most other people don’t do. I think we have to respect that, and figure out a way to tap into it.

I also think there are definitely online and offline advocacy tools we can use, but we really need to be deliberate making sure that through everything we do, it’s personal and relevant. it’s inspiring and transformative—making it as close to a service experience as possible. anyways, i have some more thoughts about it, but i’m super tired and need to leave the office. em “You are SO right, Emily!”

Shriver is one of America’s great idealists, a champion of civic action, and an inspiration to everyone here at Be the Change, Inc. A must-see documentary on his life, American Idealist, was recently released. Here’s a taste: Clip 1, Clip 2, Clip 3, Clip 4. But do yourself a huge favor and buy the DVD.