We want to highlight your service-learning project!!
Send your photos/summary/stories/highlights to
Chad.Driscoll@iowa.gov
Chad.Driscoll@iowa.gov
What is Service-Learning?
Service-learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities (Service-Learning Clearinghouse).
GYSD 2013 Resources Available
Click to access ICVS's 2013 GYSD Handbook and YSA's Semester of Service Strategy Guide.
GYSD 2013
The Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service will serve as the Lead Agency in Iowa for Global Youth Service Day 2013. See the Google Map below for a geographic representation of projects throughout Iowa from GYSD 2010 - 2012. The 2013 Semester of Service Strategy Guide is available here.
View Global Youth Service Day in a larger map
Global Youth Service Day 2012 Final Report Survey
Please take the time to complete ICVS's survey. Data collected will be reported to Youth Service America. The survey can be accessed here.
The Great Hope of Meaningful Service Linked with Meaningful Learning
By Steven A. Culbertson
July 2011
The recent zeroing-out of Learn and Serve America from the Federal budget is both ironic and distressing, to say the least. Since 1994, Learn and Serve America, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), has been the largest funder for school-based service-learning programs in the nation. Although its budget was dwarfed by its two sister programs — AmeriCorps and Senior Corps — it consistently delivered the largest number of participants in the CNCS portfolio, engaging more than one million kindergarten through higher education students in service-learning annually.
The paradox of Learn and Serve America’s elimination from the Federal budget is that it comes at a time when service-learning is seeing a growth in popularity — particularly as a teaching and learning strategy in the school reform movement, as a significant antidote to the nation’s dropout crisis, and as an authentic way to show students how school helps them solve real and relevant personal, social, familial, economic and community problems.
The ECS National Center for Learning and Citizenship (NCLC) is just completing a scan of policy and legislation that is bursting with positive new statutes and code supporting service-learning. During the last scan in 2001, there was scarcely a mention of service-learning in legislation or in state departments of education. Thanks to the Internet and the unvarnished exposure it provides us to the world’s problems, it is not surprising that the states are supporting more human intervention, especially by youth, to improve the nation’s health, education, human services, human rights and the environment. The challenges facing the world have never been larger, and the energy, commitment, idealism and creativity of young people have never been needed more.
Despite the decision to drop Learn and Serve America, there remains strong political support for service-learning from both sides of the aisle. President Obama and the First Lady consistently talk about service-learning by name in their calls to service. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan points to the service-learning requirements in the Chicago Public Schools as one of his important legacies.
Republicans, led by co-sponsor Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), strongly supported the 2009 Kennedy Serve America Act, which referenced all kinds of innovative service-learning strategies, including Semester of Service, Summer of Service, Youth Engagement Zones and a Campus of Service program for college students.
In my own organization’s case, Youth Service America’s STEMester of Service program, funded by Learn and Serve America, is under intense evaluation and showing remarkable outcomes in STEM skills. For the past two years, teachers and students in 25 challenged middle schools around the country embraced service-learning, becoming engaged by their passion to make a difference in the environment in their communities, and ending up making a difference in their academic achievement, and in career and workforce readiness. Whether the setting is an urban school in inner city New York or Detroit, or in rural Arizona, Washington State or Illinois, once again this year the evaluation data shows significantly more positive outcomes for the STEMester students than for the comparison students. While many hope that the U.S. Government will find a way to continue supporting service-learning as a powerful education engagement strategy, it is significant that there is also strong funding and advocacy for the practice coming from some of America’s biggest corporations. Their support for service-learning is linked to corporate social responsibility agendas driving their commitment to build healthy communities where their employees live and work, and to improve their workforce through strengthening the quality of education in those communities.
At Youth Service America, such corporate partnerships include State Farm Insurance Companies. At the forefront of education reform, State Farm has invested millions of dollars in service-learning strategies, underwriting our State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grants available to every public school in the country. This year, these funds will target the nation’s lowest performing schools. UnitedHealthcare has made service-learning its primary strategy for reaching middle school students and engaging them with their peers to solve the problem of childhood obesity. Sodexo, a major global provider of food in schools, is attacking the significant problem of childhood hunger through its direct investment in service-learning. Disney is funding the engagement of students globally through its Friends for Change program, with specific focus on young people learning and serving in Latin America and Europe as well as in the United States.
Engaging students to solve the world’s problems— especially those that affect youth directly — is the great promise of service-learning. Youth are not the hope of tomorrow; they are the hope and the leaders of today. Global challenges such as malaria, water scarcity, access to education, economic disparity, environmental degradation and literacy all have enormous potential to be solved if we link authentic youth service with authentic learning, seeking outcomes that equally value student achievement and community well-being.
The world’s policy makers need to understand that if they don’t have a youth strategy, then they don’t have a strategy at all.
Steven A. Culbertson has been the President and CEO of Youth Service America since 1996. He can be reached at sculbertson@ysa.org. Follow him in Twitter at www.twitter.com/Culbs. Information on YSA’s programs can be found at www.YSA.org
http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/94/48/9448.pdf
July 2011
The recent zeroing-out of Learn and Serve America from the Federal budget is both ironic and distressing, to say the least. Since 1994, Learn and Serve America, a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), has been the largest funder for school-based service-learning programs in the nation. Although its budget was dwarfed by its two sister programs — AmeriCorps and Senior Corps — it consistently delivered the largest number of participants in the CNCS portfolio, engaging more than one million kindergarten through higher education students in service-learning annually.
The paradox of Learn and Serve America’s elimination from the Federal budget is that it comes at a time when service-learning is seeing a growth in popularity — particularly as a teaching and learning strategy in the school reform movement, as a significant antidote to the nation’s dropout crisis, and as an authentic way to show students how school helps them solve real and relevant personal, social, familial, economic and community problems.
The ECS National Center for Learning and Citizenship (NCLC) is just completing a scan of policy and legislation that is bursting with positive new statutes and code supporting service-learning. During the last scan in 2001, there was scarcely a mention of service-learning in legislation or in state departments of education. Thanks to the Internet and the unvarnished exposure it provides us to the world’s problems, it is not surprising that the states are supporting more human intervention, especially by youth, to improve the nation’s health, education, human services, human rights and the environment. The challenges facing the world have never been larger, and the energy, commitment, idealism and creativity of young people have never been needed more.
Despite the decision to drop Learn and Serve America, there remains strong political support for service-learning from both sides of the aisle. President Obama and the First Lady consistently talk about service-learning by name in their calls to service. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan points to the service-learning requirements in the Chicago Public Schools as one of his important legacies.
Republicans, led by co-sponsor Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), strongly supported the 2009 Kennedy Serve America Act, which referenced all kinds of innovative service-learning strategies, including Semester of Service, Summer of Service, Youth Engagement Zones and a Campus of Service program for college students.
In my own organization’s case, Youth Service America’s STEMester of Service program, funded by Learn and Serve America, is under intense evaluation and showing remarkable outcomes in STEM skills. For the past two years, teachers and students in 25 challenged middle schools around the country embraced service-learning, becoming engaged by their passion to make a difference in the environment in their communities, and ending up making a difference in their academic achievement, and in career and workforce readiness. Whether the setting is an urban school in inner city New York or Detroit, or in rural Arizona, Washington State or Illinois, once again this year the evaluation data shows significantly more positive outcomes for the STEMester students than for the comparison students. While many hope that the U.S. Government will find a way to continue supporting service-learning as a powerful education engagement strategy, it is significant that there is also strong funding and advocacy for the practice coming from some of America’s biggest corporations. Their support for service-learning is linked to corporate social responsibility agendas driving their commitment to build healthy communities where their employees live and work, and to improve their workforce through strengthening the quality of education in those communities.
At Youth Service America, such corporate partnerships include State Farm Insurance Companies. At the forefront of education reform, State Farm has invested millions of dollars in service-learning strategies, underwriting our State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grants available to every public school in the country. This year, these funds will target the nation’s lowest performing schools. UnitedHealthcare has made service-learning its primary strategy for reaching middle school students and engaging them with their peers to solve the problem of childhood obesity. Sodexo, a major global provider of food in schools, is attacking the significant problem of childhood hunger through its direct investment in service-learning. Disney is funding the engagement of students globally through its Friends for Change program, with specific focus on young people learning and serving in Latin America and Europe as well as in the United States.
Engaging students to solve the world’s problems— especially those that affect youth directly — is the great promise of service-learning. Youth are not the hope of tomorrow; they are the hope and the leaders of today. Global challenges such as malaria, water scarcity, access to education, economic disparity, environmental degradation and literacy all have enormous potential to be solved if we link authentic youth service with authentic learning, seeking outcomes that equally value student achievement and community well-being.
The world’s policy makers need to understand that if they don’t have a youth strategy, then they don’t have a strategy at all.
Steven A. Culbertson has been the President and CEO of Youth Service America since 1996. He can be reached at sculbertson@ysa.org. Follow him in Twitter at www.twitter.com/Culbs. Information on YSA’s programs can be found at www.YSA.org
http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/94/48/9448.pdf
IowaServiceLearning.org is a resource for the state of Iowa to access best practices, view examples in the state, learn about professional development, and contact experts in the field around service-learning.
This site provides resources and features community-based, higher education, and PreK-12 service-learning in the state of Iowa.
This site provides resources and features community-based, higher education, and PreK-12 service-learning in the state of Iowa.
IowaServiceLearning.org is a partnership between Iowa Campus Compact, the Iowa Department of Education,
and the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service.
and the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service.
