The following are some resources and readings that inspire participation in service and call for America to become a nation of service. You might want to share these with family and friends, or hand out copies at your Day of Action event.
Speeches:
- Bill Clinton’s remarks on signing the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=47092
- Bill Clinton’s speech on the swearing in of new AmeriCorps members: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=49067
- Alan Khazei's Speech to City Year: http://www.cityyear.org/media/pdf/AlanSpeech0806NoCovers.pdf
- John McCain's Address to the Naval Academy, "Service to America": http://www.johnmccain.com/informing/News/Speeches/9ab40f08-d2ce-46c4-bae4-18e65994927c.htm
- Barack Obama's Commencement Address to Weslyan University: http://www.wesleyan.edu/newsrel/announcements/rc_2008/obama_speech.html
Readings:
-Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2000.
- Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, 1998.
- Kim Bobo, J. Kendall and S. Max, Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, 2001.
- Richard Stengel: Time Magazine Cover Article—A Call to Service: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1657256_1657317,00.html
- Caroline Kennedy: Making a Difference At Home: http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1657256_1657317_1657423,00.html
- The American Interest Magazine: A Call to National Service: http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=372&MId=17
- A timeline with important dates in the history of the Service Movement: http://nationalserviceresources.org/files/legacy/filemanager/download/ed_awards/Sect6-3b.doc
- Many more readings can be found at our blog: http://www.bethechangeinc.org/changewire
The Issue
- Nine-year-olds growing up in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in high-income communities.
- Only 31% of fourth graders are proficient in reading. Low-income students do half as well.
- As many as fifteen million students have no place to go after school.
- Teens who do not participate in after school programs are nearly three times more likely to skip classes or use marijuana or other drugs, drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
- The hours between 3-6 p.m. on school days (referred to by law enforcement officials as a "danger zone") are the prime time for violent juvenile crime.
- More than 1.2 million children drop out of school each year. The cost is more than $312 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetime.
- Only 70% of students in the U.S graduate from high school. In the nation’s urban schools, the dropout rate is fifteen percentage points lower. Those who do graduate high school will, on average, read and do math at the level of eighth graders in high-income communities.
- Only 1 in 10 students in low-income communities will graduate from college.
The Service Solution
- Since its founding, 17,000 people have participated as Teach For America corps members, teaching and affecting over 2.5 million public school students.
- Since its founding in 1988, City Year’s 10,400 corps members have served 1,060,000 children, completed 16 million hours of service, and engaged more than 1,015,000 citizens in service.
- According to a study by The Urban Institute, high school students taught by TFA corps members on average performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors.
- A study by Mathematica Policy Research in 2004 randomly assigned students within the same schools to teachers both from TFA and traditional certification programs. It found that students taught by TFA teachers performed better in math and science as those taught by non-TFA novice teachers.
- One study shows that first-, second- and third-graders tutored by AmeriCorps members gained seven to fourteen percentile points in reading scores compared to their peers.
- AmeriCorps members in Education Works help inspire students to improve attendance, helping low-income schools to keep students coming to class for an average of 20 more days per year than other neighborhood schools.
- By focusing its efforts on standardized test preparation, the AmeriCorps program Admission Possible helped students raise their ACT scores by an average of sixteen percent.
- AmeriCorps members working for College Summit help low-income students apply to and enroll in college. One study found that 80% of College Summit students got into college, compared to less than 50% of their peers.
- National service programs give students who did not complete high school a chance to finish their education. Since 2002, almost 5,000 AmeriCorps members in the program YouthBuild USA have earned their GED. Many of these GED recipients were previously incarcerated.
Source: Brown et al. “A Call to Service.” American Interest. http://www.the-american-interest. com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=372&MId=17; The United Way, www.liveunited.org/education .
- Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty.
- As many as one-third of working Americans do not earn enough money to meet their basic needs.
- There is not a single county in the United States where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford even a one-bedroom apartment at what the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development determines to be the Fair Market Rent.
- The Census Bureau reports a consistent trend in which less than 10% of Caucasians live in poverty, compared to 24% of African-Americans and 20% of Hispanics. America remains segregated, not by law but by opportunity.
- About 95 million people, one third of the nation, have housing problems including a high-cost burden, overcrowding, poor quality shelter and homelessness.
- One in three American households spend more than 30% of income on housing, and one in seven spends more than 50%.
- Housing deprivation leads to an average of 25 percent greater risk of disability or severe ill health across a person’s lifespan. Those who suffer housing deprivation as children are more likely to suffer ill health in adulthood, even if they live in non-deprived conditions later in life.
- Children who live in bad housing have lower educational attainment and a greater likelihood of being impoverished and unemployed as adults.
The Service Solution
• Since 1965, 170,000 VISTAs (Volunteers in Service to America, through AmeriCorps) have played a key role in establishing some of the best-known anti-poverty programs including Head Start and Upward Bound.
• 6,500 AmeriCorps members serve at 1,200 projects nationwide working to develop new programs, raise funds, manage projects, and build the capacity of non-profit organizations to become sustainable and build the capacity of families to break the cycle of poverty.
• Universal voluntary national service would create common bonds between Americans from dramatically different backgrounds in the same way that military service did for the Greatest Generation.
• National service is perhaps our best means to get Americans from all walks of life—inner city and suburban, African-American and Caucasian, college educated and GED recipient—to work together again for a common cause.
Sources: Habitat for Humanity; AmeriCorps (www.americorps.org ); “A Call to National Service.” The American Interest Magazine. http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=372&MId .
- Americans are 4% of the world’s population, but consume 25% of the world’s energy.
- The number of Americans who recycle grew only by 1-2% from 2000-2005 and did not grow at all in 2006.1
- 37% of the world’s cars are on American roads, something that could be combated with a strengthened public transportation system.
- The number of cars in Boston increased 38% from 1990-2005, while the population only increased 3.9%.
- In inner-city Philadelphia, there are 30-40,000 blighted urban lots.2
- In 2000, more than 50% of rivers were not up to an acceptable standard of cleanliness, and the number of sites cleaned up each year has dropped by almost 50%.3
The Service Solution:
• In 2007, National River Cleanup filled 100,980 bags of trash, removed 600 tons of trash and cleared 7,453 miles of river.
• In Philadelphia, Philadelphia Green turned 4,300 blighted urban lots into turf gardens.
• In March 2008, Habitat for Humanity International launched a new green building initiative, Partners in Sustainable Building, which will assist in making 5,000 homes built by Habitat affiliates more energy efficient.4
• According to Rick Stengel, TIME Magazine editor, a proposed new program called The Green Corps “could reclaim polluted streams and blighted urban lots; repair and rehabilitate railroad lines, ports, schools and hospitals; and build energy-efficient green housing for elderly and low-income people.”
1 Krebs, Kate M. “Expanding America’s recycling can play a big role in fighting global warming.” The Daily Camera. November 18, 2007.
2 Duffy, Marcia Passos. “Vacant Lots Grow Urban Solutions.” Turf.
3 Eckl, Eric. “Most Endangered Rivers of 2004 Announced.” American Rivers. www.americanrivers.org .
4 “Habitat for Humanity International and the Home Depot Announce National Green Building Effort.” March 28, 2008. http://www.habitat.org/newsroom/2008archive/03_21_08_Home_Depot.aspx
A New Generation of Volunteers:
• Of the 70 million Americans born between 1978 and 1996 and known as the Millennial Generation:
o 50 million of them will be voters in 2008.
o 65% of them are volunteering in high school, more than any previous generation.
o 58% volunteer at least monthly, if not more.
o 70% of 18-24 year olds believe that politics is relevant in their lives.
• We also currently have civic core of active citizen full and part time volunteers:
o 500,000 alumni of AmeriCorps
- 17,000 Teach For America alums
- 10,400 City Year alums
- 200,000 VISTA alums
o 200,000 alumni of the Peace Corps
o 26 million U.S. military veterans
The Impact of Service
• According to a study by The Urban Institute, on average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with more experience.
• One study shows that first, second and third graders tutored by AmeriCorps members gained 7 to 14 percentile points in reading scores compared to their peers.
• AmeriCorps members working for College Summit help low-income students apply to and enroll in college. One study found that 80% of College Summit students got into college, compared to less than 50% of their peers.
• AmeriCorps members in Education Works help inspire students to improve attendance, helping low-income schools to keep students coming to class for an average of 20 more days per year than other neighborhood schools.
• By focusing its efforts on standardized test preparation, the AmeriCorps program Admission Possible helped students raise their ACT scores by an average of 16 percent.
• National service programs give students who did not complete high school a chance to finish their education. Since 2002, almost 5,000 AmeriCorps members in the program YouthBuild USA have earned their GED. Many of these GED recipients were previously incarcerated.
Service can make a change and be the solution.
Contacting the Media and Officials
