America's Promise
MENTOR helping in President Obama's call to service
8/14/2009
MENTOR, a founding partner of America’s Promise Alliance, has joined with other national nonprofit organizations in aggregating volunteer service opportunities that will support the President and First Lady Obama's United We Serve campaign for volunteerism.
Launched in June, United We Serve encourages Americans to get involved this summer in volunteer activities that will make their communities better places to live. The campaign will culminate September 11, which has been designated as a National Day of Service and Remembrance, to commemorate victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
MENTOR's database of mentoring opportunities is being featured so that potential volunteers can find quality mentoring programs at www.serve.gov — the hub for United We Serve — in addition to visiting www.mentoring.org. Other nonprofits with volunteer databases that are being featured include the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Idealist, Network for Good, United Way and VolunteerMatch.
This wealth of information has been organized by the Corporation for National and Community Service, Google, Facebook and the Craigslist Foundation into a new online volunteer recruiting tool called All for Good. In addition, All for Good offers tool kits to help people organize projects, such as creating a community garden or conducting a home energy audit.
"We wanted to be part of the United We Serve effort so we can reach even more potential mentors," said MENTOR Chief Administrative Officer Tonya Wiley. "By being able to feature our database of quality mentoring programs with a wider audience, we may appeal to Americans who might not have visited our Web site. This will be a win for everyone involved, especially children and our communities."
To learn more about United We Serve, go to www.serve.gov. For more information about All for Good, go to www.allforgood.org. And, to learn more about mentoring, visit www.mentoring.org.
Nashville's Youth Opportunity Center
More than one million young people drop out of high school each year. That’s one every 26 seconds, or 7,000 every school day. Millions more graduate, but are unprepared for success as adults. We can and must do better.
Through the America’s Promise Alliance, more than 260 leading national organizations from all sectors are committed to helping more young people graduate from high school, ready for college, work, and life. We align our efforts at the national, state and local levels because we know that, together, we can achieve more than any one of us can working on our own.
We’re on a campaign to reach 15 million young people by 2012, particularly those who need us most, with more of the fundamental supports we call the “Five Promises” – caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, an effective education, and opportunities to help others. Research shows us that the more of these promises our young people receive, the greater their chances of success as adults. We can’t stop until all of our young people have what they need to graduate from high school, ready for college, work and life.
Thousands of organizations are advancing this work in a myriad of ways around this country. To maximize our impact, we have focused our efforts around a strategic set of big ideas, and increasingly, on tactical steps we can all take and practical tools we can all use to bring these ideas to life. On the following pages, we highlight our Alliance’s action agenda for 2009. We hope you will review the many ways you can get involved in this very important work, and be part of a national movement to provide young people with the supports they need to succeed.
It will take all of us — national organizations, state and community agencies, and individuals of all backgrounds — to finally turn the tide for young people and help them graduate from high school, prepared for success in higher education and the workforce. We hope you’ll become part of the Alliance’s growing network of people committed to working together to make young people our top national priority.
A Framework for Our Agenda
As partners, our work together can be summarized across four functions:
- Building a robust Alliance of organizations and individuals committed to better outcomes for young people
- Raising Awareness of the needs of young people and effective responses to meeting those needs
- Fostering strong Advocacy for making kids a priority through better policy and practice
- Driving strategic Action to get more promises to the kids who need them most.
View the Alliance in Action guide (Download PDF)
Thanks to President Barack Obama’s call to service, a record number of projects revitalized communities across the nation on January 19, 2009. According to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, nearly 13,000 service events took place since the President’s service initiative, Renew America Together, was announced.
Earlier this week, ServiceNation ascended on the District to bring the message of national service and volunteering to one of the most historic events in the country's history, the Presidential Inauguration.
During the morning of the 19th, ServiceNation welcomed more than 700 guests to DC’s Ballou Senior High School for a special MLK breakfast program. The program opened with a welcome from Martin Luther King, III, chairman and CEO of Realizing the Dream and engaged attendees with a message from the newly designated education secretary, Arne Duncan.
A panel discussion concerning a “New Era of Service” was moderated by Richard Stengel, managing editor of TIME Magazine and included California’s first lady, Maria Shriver and Congresswoman Doris Matsui, among others.
Attendees also heard from Congressman John Lewis and actor Tobey Maguire, the current chair of ServiceNation’s Ambassadors Council.
During the program, actress Demi Moore and actor Ashton Kutcher debuted their “presidential pledge” video. The video was created to encourage greater levels of service throughout the country. MySpace and Katalyst Media, a production company co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, teamed up with celebrities to record their personal pledges of service. The Web-based video illustrates how the celebrities will help make the nationwide change, inspired by
President Obama, a reality.
Following the breakfast program, ServiceNation, Heart of America Foundation, Alliance partner affiliate City Year DC, and DC Cares partnered in service to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Sponsored by Target, the service day brought together over 300 volunteers from across the country to transform Simon Elementary School in the Anacostia neighborhood of DC.
Alliance chair, Alma Powell, CEO Marguerite Kondracke, and members of the Alliance staff also volunteered at Simon Elementary School.
Volunteers spent the day painting classrooms and hallways, creating murals, and renovating the school library. Heart of America led the effort to renovate the school library, including restocking the bookshelves with new books for the students.
If your community, organization or school took part in a service project on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, send photos and a brief overview to apbeditor@americaspromise.org for possible inclusion in an upcoming web or APB article.
About Service Nation
ServiceNation is a national campaign to increase service opportunities, solve chronic social problems through service, and promote a culture of service in America. ServiceNation is a vision of a new America, an America where citizens unite to take responsibility for strengthening communities and building a better future, and where service is a core ideal of citizenship. The ultimate vision of ServiceNation is an America in which, by 2020, 100 million citizens will volunteer time in schools, workplaces, and faith-based and community institutions each and every year (up from 61 million today), and that increasing numbers of Americans annually will commit a year of their lives to national service. For more information, visit http://www.bethechangeinc.org/servicenation.
