Each year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day serves as a reminder of the great Dr. King's legacy of service. On this "day on, not a day off," Americans across the country come together in civic solidarity to serve our communities as part of something greater than ourselves.
In two weeks, American citizens will engage in another form of civic solidarity: beginning the voting process to select our next president. At this critical time for our country, rather than the preoccupation with the horse race and pundits debating daily who's attacking who, this election should be about Big Ideas that can fundamentally move our nation forward. One such Big Idea that deserves discussion is to establish a year of full-time national service as a common expectation and opportunity for all young Americans between the ages of 18-28.
The need for a renewed commitment to national service has never been greater. As a country, we continue to confront too many divisions across lines of class, race, religion, socioeconomic status and zip code. Despite economic recovery, 46 million people still live in poverty and the rate of inequality continues to soar. We are dealing with an education system that continues to see a million young people drop out of high school every year, college costs rising out of control and an economy that needs to provide more opportunities, particularly for young people. Today, 5.5 million young people are neither working nor in school.
Establishing a comprehensive system of national service can, in many ways, uniquely address each of these pressing challenges by uniting people in common purpose across lines of difference, enlisting the energy and idealism of our young people to tackle pressing challenges, providing college scholarships for those who serve, and most of all, by reminding us that we are all in this together and have a duty and responsibility to give back to our communities and country.
For as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve." We, as a nation, should commit to expanding Dr. King's legacy from a day to a year of service.
Challenging all those running for president in 2016 to present a bold vision for national service fits with a strong history of presidential leadership on this idea.
From FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, JFK's Peace Corps, Johnson's VISTA program, to Nixon's Senior Companion Program, the service movement has grown steadily over the years, championed by presidents of both parties. In fact, all four of our most recent presidents have laid an important foundation for the idea of national service such that the next president can finally take this idea to scale. President George H. W. Bush created the Points of Light Foundation, signed the National Community Service Act of 1990 and established the first Office of National Service in the White House. President Clinton created the Corporation for National and Community Service and established the AmeriCorps program. After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush launched the USA Freedom Corps and grew AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps by 50% each. President Obama created the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation and championed and signed the Serve America Act within the first 100 days of his Administration, authorizing the largest expansion of national service since the Great Depression, which unfortunately has not been funded.
Building on the momentum of this presidential leadership, the service movement has made considerable progress in the past three decades. Organizations such as Teach For America, YouthBuild and City Year have gone to scale and emerged as pillars of the service movement. Innovative programs including Food Corps, Green City Force, Global Health Corps and The Mission Continues present new models for engaging citizens in service. The new Service Year Exchange (www.serviceyr.org) funded by Cisco, Lumina and Joyce will create a dynamic online marketplace for service opportunities by bringing together young people seeking service positions, organizations seeking corps members and funders who want to support these efforts.
Since its founding, more than 1 million AmeriCorps members have contributed over 1.2 billion hours in service at over 25,000 AmeriCorps sites across the country. A study by Columbia University showed that every dollar invested in national service returns up to four dollars to society. Research shows that the Millennial generation is the most service-oriented since World War II.
We know national service works. We know it is needed. Now it is time to move national service from an opportunity that too few participate in, to a universal expectation.
As a concrete step, the next president should commit to a goal of 1 million people in full-time national service within the next decade.
Imagine an America where everyone had performed a year of service, and the first question people ask each other when they meet is "where did you serve?" Imagine if every year, we had an army of 1 million young people educating needy public school children, reclaiming our environment, performing critical disaster relief, attacking poverty and uplifting opportunity, and caring for and empowering our veterans. Imagine what our conversations around race, class and religion would be like if all Americans lived in a culture of solidarity and mutual responsibility, and worked together to tackle our greatest challenges. Imagine how young people would be viewed if they had abundant opportunities to serve as leaders in our communities.
There are many actions the next president could take to achieve these goals: fulfill the Serve America Act by expanding AmeriCorps to 250,000 positions; establish more federal agency corps such as FEMA Corps; call on cities and states to engage citizens in service on a local level; challenge universities to offer more service-learning programs such as those offered by Tufts, Drake, Miami-Dade, UMASS Dartmouth and others; challenge employers to reward people who have done a year of civilian service in their hiring practices, much as many do for veterans; champion the new Service Year Exchange and offer a base stipend and education award for all participants who sign up; double the education award for those who serve and make it tax-free so that a year of service can fund a full year of tuition, books and fees at a state university; support children's savings accounts tied to national service; and expand opportunities for veterans to transition home through civilian service.
We know what needs to be done. Now, we need the political leadership and will to make it happen.
On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as we honor his legacy through service, let us call upon our presidential candidates to commit to establishing a year of national service as a new rite of passage for all young Americans with, as Dr. King said, the "fierce urgency of now."