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President Obama Signs Landmark National Service Bill

Act Launches New Era of Service at Time of Great Need; National Service CEO Named

Washington D.C. – President Obama delivered an early victory for a central cause of his Administration by signing into law a sweeping expansion of national service that will engage millions of Americans in addressing local needs through volunteer service.

The President signed the landmark Edward M. Kennedy Act today at a Washington DC elementary school, joined by Vice President Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr, Jill Biden, Members of Congress, former President Clinton, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter, and an audience of nonprofit leaders and national service volunteers. The President was introduced by the bill’s namesake and longtime service champion Senator Kennedy, who co-authored the legislation with Senator Orrin Hatch.

After signing the bill, the President, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, and former President Bill Clinton will plant trees and restore habitat in an environmental service project with AmeriCorps members and high school students at a local park.

The Serve America Act reauthorizes and expands national service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency created in 1993. The Corporation engages four million Americans in result-driven service each year, including 75,000 AmeriCorps members, 492,000 Senior Corps volunteers, 1.1 million Learn and Serve America students, and 2.2 million additional community volunteers mobilized and managed through the agency’s programs.

This bill had a fast bipartisan sprint through Congress. The President called on Congress to send him the Kennedy-Hatch national service legislation in his joint address on February 25. The bill was introduced on March 8 and passed the House on a 321 to 105 vote on March 18. The Senate followed suit one week later with a 79-19 vote, with final passage in the House on March 31, just 22 days after it was introduced.

“The broad bipartisan support for this legislation, and its remarkably swift journey through Congress, reflect the growing national consensus that service is a powerful response to the economic and social challenges facing America today,” said Corporation Board Chair Alan Solomont. “Across the country, people are looking for ways to help their neighbors and their communities. This bill will help us channel more of that energy into meeting local and national needs.”

Earlier today, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Maria Eitel to be CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Eitel is the President of the Nike Foundation and a Vice President of NIKE, Inc. As president of the Nike Foundation, she has led the Foundation’s work to increase opportunities for the world’s most disadvantaged girls. Prior to becoming the Foundation’s first president, Ms. Eitel served as Nike Inc.’s first vice president for corporate responsibility, leading the development and implementation of the company’s first corporate responsibility agenda.

President Obama said, “Maria brings a unique blend of skills and management experience that will help her successfully lead the Corporation during our Administration’s bold expansion of national service programs. Maria is genuinely passionate about the role of national and community service as a vehicle for engaging and mobilizing citizens in social change, and will bring new, creative thinking to the growth and mission of the Corporation.”

The legislation comes at a time of growing social need caused by the economic downturn and a corresponding “compassion surge” of Americans wanting to help those left vulnerable by its impact. The Corporation reported today that AmeriCorps received 17,038 online applications in March, nearly triple the 6,770 received in March of 2008. In the past five months, the agency received 48,520 online applications, up 234% over the 14,532 applications it received during the same five month period a year ago. Many volunteer centers and nonprofits groups are also reporting a recent increase in volunteers.

“The President’s call to service at a time of great need is striking a responsive chord with the American public, especially millennials and baby boomers,” said Acting CEO Nicola Goren. “In this economic downturn, we need service and volunteering more than ever, and this legislation expresses the country’s support for service when it’s needed most.”

The Serve America Act, which goes into effect on October 1, would increase and enhance opportunities for Americans of all ages to serve by increasing AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 positions over the next eight years, while increasing opportunities for students and older Americans to serve. It will strengthen America’s civic infrastructure through social innovation, volunteer mobilization, and building nonprofit capacity. The new law is also designed to strengthen the management, cost-effectiveness and accountability of national service programs by increasing flexibility, consolidating funding streams, and introducing more competition. For a bill summary, click here.

“This bill will help unleash a powerful new wave of service and civic action to help tackle our nation’s toughest challenges," said Solomont. “We are grateful to Representatives George Miller, Bud McKeon, Carolyn McCarthy, and Todd Platts and to Senator Kennedy, Senator Hatch, Senator Mikulski, and Senator Enzi and all those who worked on this historic bipartisan step for national service. We look forward to working with Congress and the White House to fund and implement this Act.”

The bill follows quickly on the heels of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided $200 million to support up to 13,000 AmeriCorps members serving in distressed communities. Acting CEO Goren will swear in the first 200 Recovery Act AmeriCorps members at a VISTA training this Friday in Albuquerque, putting “boots on the ground” to help citizens affected by the economic downturn.

The President signed the bill before an audience that included current participants in AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America, Members of Congress who worked on the Act, and leaders of national service and nonprofit organizations. The event took place at the SEED School, an innovative public boarding school that caters to underserved students who face challenges in school and at home. In addition to offering an academically rigorous, college prep education, the SEED School incorporates service-learning into the curriculum of all its students, supported by the Corporation’s Learn and Serve America program.

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Yes, we can.

Letting nature be the classroom

Yesterday 11 6th grade girls from Anaheim, CA asked me if they could stop and touch the small patch of snow left on the side of one of the trails. "It doesn't feel like it does in the movies!" one girl exclaimed. "It's so COLD," another yelled.

"Are those ALL stars, or are they airplanes?!" A shocked student exclaimed upon looking up during the night hike.

Let me just say that those comments alone are making the next 5 weeks here completely and totally worth every effort I could possibly put into this project.(Picture thanks to Katie Liberty)

To be able to share something as simple as nature, something that, luckily, has always been my backyard, with kids who have never spent a single night under the stars, never hugged a tree, never tripped over a rock or touched snow is a gift. I'm so honored to be able to spend the next 5 weeks here at Outdoor Science School. I know that we will have long days, I'll get exhausted and frustrated. But when I start feeling those ways, I'll just have to look at the stars and remind myself, they're not airplanes.

It's Earth day today, what can you do to preserve the few places left that look like where I live right now? How can you inspire someone from a younger generation to care for the planet we share and will continue to share for centuries to come? How can you reduce your carbon footprint and help others do the same?

Shutterfly!

Hey guys, I'm not sure if I've given you all this link before but, our team has a website where we upload our pictures to share with friends and family.. you can even print off of our Shutterfly if you really feel so inclined. Check it out, Katie just uploaded some beautiful pictures from a hike we went on on Friday!

And here's some musical genius to keep you entertained,


love from the mountains,
--Walker

Road Trip adventures, new project joys!

Greetings from 6,500 feet up! Yep, my team is now at Camp Cedar Crest in the San Bernardino mountains. We arrived on Wednesday evening and were immediately welcomed by a fantastic sign and warm smiles from the entire staff. Everyone has been incredibly helpful, welcoming and incredible since we've been here and I, for one, am absolutely psyched to work with these people for the next 5 weeks. But wait-- what took us so long to get here, you ask? Last time I wrote I was somewhere on the road from Baton Rouge to Sacramento and once we got to 'ole Sac-town we had some AmeriCorps business to take care of before we could head out.
We arrived at McClellan on a Friday night and had the whole weekend free, we then had our debrief for our Baton Rouge project. My teammate Sam is great with a video camera and so for both of our debriefs thus far he has made great movies capturing fantastic moments on our projects. I'm trying to figure out how I can share these videos with you-- they're really great! However due to their length and my lack of computer skills that might not happen so.. use your imaginations!
The last day of our transition before our spring break was 'Life After AmeriCorps Day' which consisted of several workshops on things like resume writing, interviewing tips as well as informational sessions on several organizations that our staff thought would spark our interest. One of the organizations I heard about was Bike and Build, something I'm seriously considering taking part in summer 2010, check it out, it seems like a really great way to support Habitat For Humanity, an organization that I obviously think is pretty great.
For my break (a.k.a-- long weekend) I headed south to San Francisco to check out some of my own 'Life After AmeriCorps' plans.. more on that later though, this update would last forever if I tried to explain my future plans at this moment. It was great, however, to get away from Ameri-life for a few days and get to see some family as well as friends. Sometimes I feel as though NCCC is this bubble in which I eat, sleep, breathe AmeriCorps. This life is such a strange way of living that it is nice to get out every once and a while and realize that people do still lead somewhat average lives outside of our 15 passenger van. I must say though, I do find myself excited to be back every time I return.
After break we had our briefing in which we were told that our project is great, basically. And then on Wednesday, we realized that it really, truly is. This week (Weds-Friday) we jumped in and helped out where we could but mostly just got to know the facilities as well as the staff and observed some of the really cool parts of the week. We spent two hours dancing to songs like YMCA, The Cupid Shuffle and Car Wash with the kids and staff on Thursday and I kept turning to my team mate Katie unable to say anything but, "This is our job". Next week we are shadowing an experienced counselor so that we can see them in action and learn on the job. The week after we'll be given our own group of 10-15 5th or 6th graders to lead and instruct for the week! I'll update more on our work next week when I'm more familiar with the program, right now we're just trying to get acclimated to the elevation!!
Since I haven't had time to upload pictures of the camp or the fantastic views yet I'll leave you with some pictures from the road trip we took from Baton Rouge to Sacramento. Just as a reminder our route was Baton Rouge,LA- San Antonio, TX- El Paso, TX- Flagstaff, AZ- Henderson, NV- Sacramento, CA.








The Alamo in San Antonio, Tx! (A Texan friend of mine referred to it as, "his Texan pride
" okay..)














Some really cool trees somewhere between San Antonio and El Paso.


















A shot out the window in Arizona, which I've decided is one of the most beautiful states I've been to.













Highway 10.. we saw a lot of this on our road trip.





















More Arizona.. beautiful, wouldn't you agree?
















5 days in a van with 10 people and we go a little nuts sometimes.. poor Sarah fell asleep and just wanted to stretch out.. and poor Katie was sitting in front of her!












Here's my team mate Abe standing at the Grand Canyon.. he looks so small!
















And here I am at the Grand Canyon! And how excited I look to be there! Really though, this was such a breathtaking place to see.(155)








The Vegas Strip! We found it interesting that in the morning we stopped at one of the most incredible natural features on the continent and then spend the night in the biggest environmental freak show, the city that shouldn't exist, Las Vegas!(251)










Who knew the Hoover Dam was so small?!










That's all for now, take care and wish me luck on my first week working directly with kids all week!
--Walker

Photo update!

Hey everyone.. sorry for the incredibly long delay! I'm currently writing this from a hotel in Henderson, Nevada because, that's right, we're finished in Baton Rouge! Our last day of work was this past Saturday and left for California on Monday morning. The next few weeks are a bit crazy, our schedule looks like this:
March 30th- April 3rd: road trip back to Sacramento from Baton Rouge (with overnights in San Antonio, TX, El Paso, TX, Flagstaff, AZ and Henderson, NV)
April 6th-9th: Transition in Sacramento (including a day of Life After AmeriCorps workshops on things like resume building and job fairs)
April 10th- 13th: AmeriCorps NCCC Spring break! We get Friday and Monday off and I'll be spending my break in San Francisco visiting family, friends and a prospective school for next year. I'll also try and get some Independent Service Project hours out of the way on Monday.
April 14th: One last day of transition, consisting of briefings. Briefings are the meetings in which we, as a team, present what we know about our project and the community we'll be serving to some AmeriCorps NCCC staff members. This is so that they can see that we have prepared ourselves well and also so that they can answer any questions we might have.
And, finally, on April 15th Green 5 will depart from McClellan Air Force Base and head to southern California for our third project!
What are we doing in So-Cal, you ask? Well, we'll be working at camp Cedar Crest, an environmental education camp run by the Orange County school district. We'll be working with 5th and 6th graders as counselor/instructors. Our job will be to act as camp counselors to groups of students while, at the same time, teaching them a set science curriculum based on their age. A typical week's schedule will include several hikes (both day and night), skits and presentations on topics from astronomy to forest ecology. But more on that later, I have so much to update you about!



Here are myself and my teammate Katie working on siding at the Women's' Build. In Baton Rouge every measure is taken to ensure the safety of volunteers on the work site.












From back to front we have Abe, myself, Katie and Bailey on our first day at the Restore! We organized approximately a million (okay, maybe not) windows by size and then priced them by the square foot. It was really neat to see a section of the store that was so disorganized become so neat and easy to navigate after our hard work was complete. We also were able to help several customers find what they needed by pointing out our newly updated organization system.






These beautiful buildings are the University Presbyterian Church which was our home for eight fantastic weeks! We lived on the top floor of the building on the left, the one on the right was home to a day school for pre-school aged children.






For many people Tuesday, February 24th passed uneventfully, but not in the state of Louisiana, that's for sure! The 24th was Fat Tuesday, more commonly known as Mardi Gras. A few of my friends and I were able to make it down to New Orleans for the festivities, to the right is a photo of just one of the incredible floats we saw! I had always heard that Mardi Gras was a huge deal in the southern part of our country but I could have never understood just how huge without having been a part of it. Schools closed, buses run on different schedules and just about everyone walks around in a state of celebratory euphoria (be it alcohol or excitement
induced varies from person to person).



NCCC gives every member 3 personal days which can be taken at any point in the year as long as an absence won't drastically impact the work of the team. I took advantage of my days to fly home for a weekend in mid-March to see Anything Goes, the musical at my old high school in which my younger brother had a role and my younger sister stage managed. The afternoon before I left was a fantastic way to say goodbye to Louisiana for a few days! My team spent it at Alligator Bayou Tours in Baton Rouge. We were shown all sorts of gators as well as other native Bayou wildlife. Our tour guides were fantastic and told us all about how the levee system changed the natural landscape and environmental cycles in Louisiana as well as about how important it is to preserve the existing Bayou lands. Our team was also informed that they day after our tour the men who liquidated their million dollar roofing company to save the lands that they now give educational tours on were due in court to fight for the rights to continue to use their land for educational purposes. The history is quite complicated but, information about the case can be found here. And please, excuse the strange look on my face but.... give me some credit, will you? When was the last time you held a gator?


Whew. That was about the fastest recap of the past month and a half that I could have possibly done. Over the next few days I'll try to expand on a few of the subjects I touched on, including a reflection on the close of our second project which signifies the half-way point in my term of service as well as my last few days serving on the Gulf Coast. I also have lots of updating to do about our road trip! We were able to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk in San Antonio, the US-Mexico border in El Paso, the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam on the way to Nevada and, finally, the Vegas Strip and, on top of all that, some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen.

gators, mountains and love
--Walker

Just a typical week in the capital city

I’m almost positive that if asked, every one of my team mates would agree that the best thing about living and working in Baton Rouge is the variety of things we get to do. Sure, we love going to the Mardi Gras parades, running around the lakes and seeing live music but we also love the work variety that HFH GBR (Habitat for Humanity of Greater Baton Rouge) provides for us. Our week this past week looked like this:

Monday- Off! We work a Tuesday-Saturday work week here in the capital! We spent Monday grocery shopping and getting ready for our first full week with HFH GBR.

Tuesday- Our supervisor Ryan asked the girls on my team to help get the Women’s Build house moving along, Women’s build volunteers come on Wednesdays and Saturdays but they had us to some jobs that would help the house get ready for the next stages of building. Three of us were assigned to hang dead wood, which are pieces of wood that are nailed on top of the top plates on all of the walls running parallel to the roof trusses. This wood hangs off by just an inch or so to allow the drywall hangers to have something to screw the ceiling drywall into.

Wednesday- Women’s build! Although it was a frigid morning (say.. mid 30’s.. brrr…) there were about a dozen local women that came out to help install siding on the home they’ve been responsible for since it’s beginning. My female team mates and myself jumped right in to help siding, a skill we practiced many a times in Bay St. Louis.

Thursday- We spent Thursday in Rosewood, which I think I mentioned before—it is the Habitat neighborhood in which we’re helping HFH GBR prepare to blitz 5 more homes in March. In Bay St. Louis all the houses we built were on stilts due to their proximity to the Gulf here, however, the Habitat homes are all built on concrete slabs. We worked all day staking out where the ground needs to be cleared and leveled before the concrete can be poured. It was quite mathematical and we learned a lot about building lines and how far (due to city regulations) the houses have to be from the curb, power lines, water lines etc.

Friday- Whew. What a day. Many Habitat affiliates have a store in which they sell used and donated building materials at a low cost to the public as a way to help the community but also to fund some projects. The Restore became our work site this past Friday and will, theoretically, continue to be our work site every Friday until the end of March. I spent the day, along with 3 team mates, sorting windows by width and type. My goodness. We moved, measured, sorted and priced approximately 500 windows. It was an incredibly exhausting and tiring day but, it was incredibly rewarding at the end of the day to be able to look at how much better the area we were working in looked. I'm excited to get to do more organizing for the Restore staff, they have SO much stuff in the store and I think ten of us working can accomplish a whole lot for them.

Saturday- Normally, Saturdays are Women's Build days however, this past Saturday two of our team members were asked to accompany Erin, a HFH GBR staff member who works with family services, on home visits. We got to visit three prospective home owners who applied for a Habitat home and passed their financial review (homeowners have to make enough to be able to afford the mortgage paymets on a house but also can't make TOO much to not be eligible for a Habitat home). Once a family passes the financial review Habitat staff visits them at their home to discuss with them the ins and outs of being a Habitat homeowner from sweat equity to mortgage payments. They also do assessments of the family's current living situation to see if a housing need is really there. Maria and I were able to visit three families and to fill out assessments and get to know their stories. It was really great to see such a different side of this organization that we've invested so much time working with. I definately see this side of the orgaization as being something that interests me more than the construction side and I'm really glad that I got the opportunity to see it first hand!

I hope that this gives you all a much better picture of what we're doing here in Baton Rouge and that, in general, our NCCC team is used for quite a variety of tasks here at HFH GBR! We enjoyed some 75 degree weather, complete with Louisiana humidity today, hope you're all doing well,
--Walker

ps.. I have pictures from all sorts of fun things like moving windows and Mardi Gras parades which I'll hopefully post sometime in the next week or so. But in the meantime, I can't believe that I've never given our this link. Our team has a Shutterfly account on which we can post pictures, all the ones on the website are from my team mates as I have been posting most my good pictures here and.. I'm far too lazy to upload them to the website:). But feel free to browse, they're all from Sacramento or Mississippi at this point.

Top 25 things!

Two updates in one week.. what has happened to me?! I thought of something cool to update about, that's what! Every month the Sacramento campus puts out a newsletter called the Common Ground with updates from each team so that we can all keep up to speed on what everyone else is doing even though we're spread from Miami (I know.. jealous..) to Idaho. My team last round made a list of the top 25 pieces of advice that we would give to the team coming to take over our project in Hancock County, MS. I think it gives a nice snapshot of what Green 5 life was like in Mississippi and will also, hopefully, be a supporting piece of evidence to prove that, although I might rave about the fantastic things I get to do in Baton Rouge (like see concerts on Wednesday nights and grocery shop at Whole Foods..) I DID love Mississippi. Note that some pieces of evidence are accompanied by pictures to help emphasize their meaning :)
Top 25 Pieces of Advice for The Next AmeriCorps NCCC team in Pearlington Mississippi:
Get in the shower quickly, or the mosquito swarm will notice you
When it rains, the front yard turns into a lake
Take advantage of Beth's and Larry's kindness. They will become your saviors in no time.
Be prepared to have 2-6 dogs follow you along any run.
Las Palmas restaurant = a diamond in the rough
Complaining about the water won't change it, shower with your mouth closed*
The dock has lovely photo opportunities
Vans get stuck in mud and fresh sod
Rent free movies at the library
Watch for the sand fleas, they burrow in leg hair
Hard hats make good leak catchers
Befriend the directs.. they have cars
Bleach kills mold, FYI
Learn to love scaffolding, splinters, and no-see-ums
Week night staples include: Beth and Larry's house, Clydes on Wednesday nights, and the mocking-bird Cafe on Thursday nights
PT on the beach is absolutely worthwhile
Slidell, LA has more to offer than you might imagine
New Orleans is 40 minutes away, take advantage of that fact
Sunflower seeds are the perfect on-site snack at any time of the day
Tan lines will happen, accept them, love them
Appreciate the relatively young, strangely attractive, and amazing habitat for humanity staff
"What Would Dan Reynold's Do?" may soon become your life motto.**
Gas station pizza... give it a chance
Stephen Scott only causes harm to himself, but remain cautious
In the Americorps Olympic Games, their is only 1 winner.. and 9 losers
Green Five says goodbye to Pearlington Mississippi we will miss you!


*The water in Pearlington was totally safe and completely clean, however, it smelled of something we had all hoped to leave behind in High School science classes.. sulfur. Apparently if you drank it it would help keep the gnats away.. none of us tested that theory..
**Dan Reynolds was one of our construction supervisors in Bay St. Louis and we became his biggest fans. So much so that we made these t-shirts with his likelihood
Also pictured here from Left to Right are Tom (peeking in just barely), Ryan and Ben. In the middle next to the man himself is Stephen. They were the most fantastic staff we could have asked for, and I think we will all continue to miss them for the remainder of our year. Missing here is Chris, one of our staff members who was sick on our last day :(. If you're a fan of the Dan Reynolds t-shirts (which feature the motto "what would Dan Reynolds do?" on the back) you can purchase one online at www.cafepress.com/wwdrd. Check out the website, it's pretty hilarious!


On another note, the concert I attended last night was pretty fantastic! One of the bands that opened for Red Jumpsuit was Tickle Me Pink from Colorado and I would recommend them to anyone looking for some new music. Not only did we enjoy their music but their performance was entertaining to say the least.


On a work related note; we've been preparing sites for a string of blitz builds coming up in March. Today we staked out the perimeter of where the concrete slab will be poured. The area we're building in is called Rosewood and is land that was donated to Habitat because it was no longer able to be farmed for sugar cane. The entire subdivision is made up of Habitat homes and we'll be building on 5 empty lots. Today while eating lunch one of my team mates looked over the sites and remarked about how strange it is that in just a few months these empty patches of grass will be the site of a family's home. It was one of those moments that made me realize what we're doing here and made me really appreciate the work that my team has done and will continue to do. Although construction is tiring and we're all going to be ready for a change of pace come our next project in April, it is most certainly one of the more rewarding and visible types of work we could be doing.

Peace, love and no more sulfur water,
Walker