Nathan Moser and Alyssa Menard both grew up in rural areas and spent most of their childhoods outdoors. But until recently, their similarities ended there. Menard stayed close to home to attend college, where she never quite figured out what she wanted to pursue after graduation. And Moser joined the Marines, serving for a time overseas. Once both were finished — Menard with school and Moser with the armed forces — they found themselves wondering what to do next. In 2015, Menard began her first service year at Virginia’s Pocahontas State Park after applying to a number of AmeriCorps park programs. She also participated in Service Year Alliance’s career development program, which is designed to give its members the basis for finding employment in their chosen field. After Moser came back stateside, he began searching for a career path where he could work outdoors and as part of a team. Now he is completing his first service year at Pocahontas, where he’s worked closely with Menard and has come to view her as a mentor. For Menard’s part, she recognizes the drive and skills Moser brings to the table. “He is ready to do things,” Menard says. “He isn’t afraid to take the initiative, take the lead. He goes for it. And I like that because it helps get things done.” Watch the video above to follow along as Menard and Moser complete their training and prepare for jobs in the state park system.
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NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above and learn more about how a service year is truly for everyone. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
Bria Davis didn’t have the easiest time growing up. Her mother suffered from schizophrenia and her father wasn’t around. As a result, she was placed into the foster-care system, which meant changing schools every year. “Coming out of high school, I never was in a stable place,” Davis says. Davis’ freshman year at Miami Dade College in Florida was challenging, and she eventually sought help. Now a well-acclimated sophomore, Davis decided she was in a unique position to give back. So she joined the Changemaker Corps, a peer-to-peer mentoring program by and for students who are aging out of foster care. The service year program launched at Miami Dade in 2015 with support from Service Year Alliance and the nonprofit Educate Tomorrow. The idea behind Changemaker Corps is to encourage former foster-care students who have gotten help navigating college life to pass on that wisdom to struggling students from similar backgrounds. After all, no one is more qualified to understand the difficulties facing a student emerging from the foster system than a young person who has already lived through them. “The service year model is a way for college students to serve, actually mentoring and helping others succeed,” says Brett McNaught, CEO of Educate Tomorrow. The commitment to helping this student population succeed extends to Miami Dade College’s upper leadership. “More and more universities are understanding the importance of giving their students the opportunity to get involved in this work,” says Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College. “A service year should be part of every institution, where students have opportunities to help their school, their communities, and our nation.”
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NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above and ask Congress to support federal funding for national service. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
“A home, to me, is much more than four walls and a roof,” says Adam Hunt, a site supervisor for Habitat for Humanity in Charlotte, N.C. “I try to build homes — where you have Christmas and where you have birthdays, where you come home soaking wet after a rainy day, those kinds of things. That’s home.” As a child growing up in Lynn Haven, Fla., Hunt lived in a home built by Habitat for Humanity, an organization that constructs affordable housing and promotes home ownership for low-income families. While Hunt’s house was being built, he put in a 5-year-old’s version of “sweat equity” — picking up stray nails around the property — just like every other Habitat resident. In this episode of NationSwell’s eight-part mini documentary series on service years, watch how AmeriCorps service year corps members help increase Habitat’s ability to provide affordable housing in Charlotte. “[Habitat] meant a great deal of stability for myself and my family,” Hunt says. “I want to be able to give other families that same opportunity.” NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above and ask Congress to support federal funding for national service. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
Growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Edna McKay never expected she would one day have a full-time job in the sustainable energy industry. She lived in public housing where crime was very high…and opportunity very low. But now McKay has a full-time job installing free, energy-efficient light bulbs for Franklin Energy to people in her neighborhood. “With this position, I’m earning more money than I ever did in my life,” says McKay, who earns $17 an hour. In this episode of NationSwell’s 8-part mini documentary series on service years, watch how McKay transformed her future by participating in a program called Green City Force, which empowers young adults from New York City’s public housing developments with the highest crime rates. “We started Green City Force in 2009 with the idea of connecting the dots between two major issues, youth employment and the need to transition to sustainable cities,” says Lisbeth Shepherd, founder of the organization. The organization’s mission isn’t lost on McKay, who is now considering options that she previously viewed as unrealistic: “In the next few years, I would really love to earn a bachelor’s degree, because I feel like I’m capable of doing it,” she says. NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above. Ask Congress to support a service year. Do one yourself. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
LaBria Lane spends her days inside the greenhouses of Holmes STEM Academy, a middle school in Flint, Mich. She keeps her hair and nails short, ideal for gardening and teaching children the benefits of eating fresh produce. “Fruits and vegetables are important everywhere, but if you zoom down into Flint and talk about the lead crisis, vitamins in fruits and vegetables help to deter lead from storing in the bones,” says Lane. Lane is part of a group of service year corps members who began working in Flint in 2014 — the same time that the city’s lead situation was making headlines. Prior to the water crisis, four nonprofit organizations took a coordinated step: They worked together to recruit and host individuals to serve as AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA members. Their joint effort resulted in higher numbers than they would have been able to achieve working alone. In the span of just two years, the number of service year corps members rose from 30 to more than 200.
This approach is now known as the “Flint Model.”
Because of the established service year force on the ground, Flint was better prepared to respond to the water crisis. Without these individuals, much of the aid received by the city might not have been effectively distributed. “There are a lot of great people here who are actually here trying to help build the city up,” says Jessika Larkin, another service year corps member. In this episode of NationSwell’s eight-part mini-documentary series on service years, learn about the Flint Model and “Service Year Impact Communities.” NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above. Contact your elected officials and ask them to support national service. Do a service year yourself. Together, we can lead a movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country. MORE:Service Year: Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal
In this episode of NationSwell’s 8-part mini documentary series on service years, retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal shares his personal experience with service — both in and out of uniform.
“Over the past few decades, we’ve come to equate service with military service,” says McChrystal. “In reality, service is much broader: education, healthcare, conservation. I’d like to see us expand that term ‘service members’ or ‘people in service’ as people doing the complete spectrum.”
McChrystal is the chairperson of Service Year Alliance, which is partnering with NationSwell to make a national service year — a paid opportunity to develop real-world skills while solving some of the most pressing challenges facing local communities — a common opportunity for all young Americans.
Service year corps members, including Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and YouthBuild participants, earn modest stipends that are funded by public and private dollars. Occasionally, some members also receive money to pay for school or student loans.
As these programs face potential elimination under the current White House budget proposal, they continue to garner bipartisan support from voters and members of Congress. Local and national leaders, social entrepreneurs and members of the nonprofit and business communities are calling for service years to become a rite of passage for young Americans.
“Federal funding for national service is not where most of the funding comes from, but it’s essential. It is something that precipitates all of the programs moving forward, and so it’s a key part,” says McChrystal. “If the federal government won’t invest in young people — the most critical part of our nation — there’s no point in rebuilding our roads and bridges in America.”
At a time when our communities are deeply divided, studies show that service year alums are more civically engaged. They vote. They volunteer. And they purposely seek out friendships with people they didn’t know growing up.
“In communities across the nation and around the world, tens of thousands of service year corps members are already working to address local needs — making a huge impact on important issues such as education, inequality, opportunity youth, the environment and health,” says Shirley Sagawa, CEO of Service Year Alliance. “Imagine the impact if we unleash the energy and idealism of the next generation of young Americans through a service year.”
NationSwell asks you to join our partnership with Service Year Alliance. Watch the video above. Contact your elected officials and ask them to support a service year. Do one yourself. Together, we can lead a national movement to give young Americans the opportunity to help bridge the divides in our country.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the environmentalist Civilian Conservation Corps, one of America’s first experiments in public service (aside from the traditional routes of joining the military or running for office). Decades later, John F. Kennedy’s global Peace Corps and Lyndon B. Johnson’s domestic anti-poverty program, VISTA, followed. And later, Bill Clinton formed AmeriCorps to instill service as a core ideal. NationSwell Council member MacKenzie Moritz, chief of staff and head of partnerships at Service Year Alliance, believes that civic engagement is about to reach its apex, as more young people sign up for a year of service. NationSwell spoke to him by phone in Washington, D.C., about how 12 months of service could heal the country’s divides. What is a service year? Who can participate, and what do they do? A service year is an opportunity to do a year or two of full-time, paid service with a nonprofit, government or university, working to address an unmet societal need. Some of the best-known examples out there are things like the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps programs like Teach for America and City Year, and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Our focus is really on this idea of how to provide opportunities for people to act on the responsibilities of their citizenship. [With Service Year Alliance,] we primarily focus on recruiting 18-to-28-year-olds — whether after high school, during college or after — to have this opportunity really early in life, because we think it will unlock a next level of civic engagement for the rest of their lives. Of course, they’re certainly not limited to those ages; plenty of people decide to do a service year later in life. Why is a service year so important now? After two years in Philadelphia, where I taught ninth-grade world history, I ended up leading Teach for America’s national recruitment strategy and technology team. At that time, we were seeing 60,000 applicants every year for 6,000 positions. There was just a tremendous interest from young people to give back, to leave their mark on society. The vast majority of people that were raising their hand to volunteer were ultimately told they weren’t a good fit. They were being rejected, only to go home and read a newspaper article about how Millennials care only about themselves. With our politics, people aren’t feeling as connected to larger systems as they had historically, leading to declining rates of social trust. We need something new that restores the fabric of our country. What would you say to the person who thinks service years are well and good for others, but not for them? The Franklin Project got started at Aspen Ideas Festival a couple years back, when Gen. McChrystal was asked whether he believed in the draft. He said, “I think you’re asking the wrong question. The right question is, ‘Should every young American serve?’ I think the answer to that is yes. But does the military need everyone? I think the answer is no. We need to create a lot more pathways for young people to serve.”
He went on to say that citizenship is a membership. We spend a lot of time talking about its rights, and we spend very little time talking about its responsibilities. About only 1 percent of Americans serve in the military, and frequently those are folks who come from families that have a long history of serving in the military. It’s really dangerous for us, as a country, to get into the mindset of thinking that service is someone else’s job, that it’s not a shared responsibility across all of us. Service years involve exploring your identity as a citizen. During his time as a Teach For America Corps member, Moritz (left) brought students to a 2008 presidential debate in Philadelphia. The teens are pictured here with former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (right) Is there a book you’d recommend for someone who wants to understand your approach to public service? “Heart of the Nation: Volunteering and America’s Civic Spirit,” by John Bridgeland, chair of the domestic policy council in the Bush administration during 9/11, does a really good job of providing a history of service in America and outlining a future of where we could go. What do you wish someone had told you when you first took this role? If I had been holding myself to the expectations I had for myself as a college graduate at 21 years old, I would not be doing any of what I’m doing today. There’s so much out there that I didn’t know existed back then. There are a lot of different levers that exist out there for changing our society. It’s very easy to fall into focusing only on the ones you know. With how fast the world is changing, there’s a lot more that are being created all the time. I hope that, 10 years from now, I’m doing something that doesn’t exist today. What are you most proud of having accomplished? When I was a teacher back in Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to meet a lot of amazing young people. My male students, you’d ask them what they want to do, and they’d say [play in] the NBA or the NFL. In a moment of frustration, I ended up taking a trashcan and putting it on a stool. I said, “Alright, everyone get out a piece of paper. Crumple it up. On the count of three, shoot.” Ninety-five percent of them didn’t go in. “Okay,” I said, “We need a backup plan here.”
The funny thing is that one of the students ended up playing in the NBA, which makes me look foolish, but I was right for the rest of them. The students I’m most proud of are two of the students I taught as ninth graders, who, after college, did Teach for America back in Philadelphia and now, after completing that, are staying in the classroom. It’s been such a privilege to mentor them over the years, stay in touch with them and see the cycle go all the way around. There’s just so much talent and potential in all of America’s classrooms. I got to play a small role in helping people to realize that, and I’m excited to continue to help with that through all the work that I do. To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here. Note: Since the publication of this article, Service Year Alliance has become a NationSwell advertiser.
Curt Ellis’ favorite childhood memory is sitting with his father in the family’s garden, watering tomato plants. “There’s something really special that comes from getting your hands in the dirt and doing something that you know how to do,” says Ellis, who co-founded FoodCorps in 2009 with five like-minded friends to give kids across the country that same experience. FoodCorps deploys service members to work with local community organizations in cities and towns in 15 states. They spend a year teaching nutrition, starting school gardens and working with local farms to bring fresh food into school cafeterias. WATCH:Our Q&A with Curt Ellis and FoodCorps service member Meghan McDermott We’re partnering with NBCUniversal to support the greatest innovators who are tackling some of the nation’s most critical issues. Tell us who you think the next biggest changemaker in America is by nominating them to be a 2015 NationSwell AllStar.
