Please take the time to complete ICVS's survey. Data collected will be reported to Youth Service America. The survey can be accessed here.

Global Youth Service Day, the largest service event in the world, is coming up on April 20th-22nd. ICVS is the Lead Agency for Global Youth Service Day and we’re trying to make this year even better than last year. If you have a youth-led project in the works please register it at www.gysd.org/register.  Many helpful resources are available from Youth Service America (http://gysd.org/resources).  If you need assistance developing or registering an Iowa project, please contact Mike Henneberry at 800-308-5987 or michael.henneberry@iowa.gov.

The YSA List will recognize 25 young people (ages 5 – 25) around the world that have made significant, large-scale change in five categories – Health, Education, Human Service, Human Rights, and the Environment.   We will announce the YSA List on Global Youth Service Day 2012 (April 20-22), the largest service event in the world celebrated in more than 100 countries, and the only one dedicated to children and youth.

The 25 winners will receive:

• $1,000 awards to support their ongoing efforts to change the world  
• Worldwide recognition through the Global Youth Service Day international media campaign, which garners millions of media impressions each year.   
• Platforms to share their successes with other young people and youth leaders through YSA’s annual Youth Service Institute, 25th Anniversary Webinars, Speakers Series and more.
• Opportunities to collaborate with members of YSA’s Global Youth Service Network around issues of mutual interest.

The nomination deadline is January 31, 2012. To nominate a young person, please complete the nomination form here.

The Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service has released a PowerPoint presentation on Global Youth Service Day. It includes a history of GYSD, information on service-learning, and important information regarding the mini-grant process. The PowerPoint presentation can be found here.

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

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).