Americorps promises to strengthen the simple spirit of community.
For over 25 years, the Peace Corps has been sending young American volunteers to towns and villages all over the world to assist people in accomplishing what they want -- whether this means digging a well or learning to read and write. Americorps, which was launched last week, is an inspired translation of the Peace Corps idea into domestic terms.
Americorps, will send recent high school graduates -- 20,000 of them next year - to perform community service in cities, towns and rural areas all over the country. The young people will hook up with established local organizations and programs doing everything from building low-cost housing to helping disadvantaged children get ready for school. Volunteers will work in these programs for a year or two, and in return they will get about $5,000 a year in vouchers to help them with their future education or training.
One of Americorps' strengths is its recognition that the solutions to national problems are often local. We can talk about a national crime problem, but if we want to stop crime at its source, we have to get down to the streets of our towns and cities and help individual kids stay in high school and out of trouble. So Americorps will not set up a distant bureaucracy to direct what should be done; it will support local programs serving local needs.
In other words, the program is practical. Its director, Eli Segal, says that Americorps is about "getting things done" -- achieving concrete results that meet environmental, educational, public safety and health and human needs. National service reflects lofty ideals, but Segal emphasizes the practical results that taxpayers have a right to expect.
Americorps is also a way of recognizing and encouraging the best in our young people. We hear a lot today about "Generation X" -- young people who are concerned only with themselves and have no larger interest than getting in as much TV time as possible. Perhaps this is a good description of some young people, but there are many who want to contribute to their communities. Throughout the 1980's, the number of young people engaged in community service increased dramatically, and today more than one-half of all college students participate in some sort of community service. Americorps encourages and rewards those kids who have been turned on by a weekly tutoring session or shift on a hotline and want to offer a big commitment of time and energy.
What exactly will Americorps volunteers be doing? Here are a few examples of the 350 programs they will be participating in:
• The Cleveland, Ohio, public schools are joining with a network of 22 neighborhood centers, Case Western University and BP America to operate a "school-success-program" at five inner-city schools. Two shifts of Americorps members will work with the children from these schools: One shift will provide in-class tutoring, and a second will operate after-school community centers that include study groups to help discourage the kids from going with gangs.
• In Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio, volunteers will participate in a program that helps young children in low-income, inner-city and rural schools develop the reading, writing and math skills they will need form future school success. Volunteers will also help families learn how to support their children's efforts in school, and they will serve as links between the youngsters and school and community resources.
• In California, Texas and New Jersey, a coalition of more than 400 community child-care resource and referral organizations will put Americorps members to work expanding and improving child care in those states. Members will help expand the number of child care slots and improve existing ones, and they will provide resource materials to parents so they can locate the care their children need.
There is a lot of emphasis now on "family values," and that's a good thing. But there are "community values" that we should also be paying attention to -- I mean the values that lead us to take dinner to a sick neighbor, attend PTA meetings, work at a local homeless shelter or participate in a neighborhood clean-up project. These values have made our communities good places to live and our society relatively stable, but they have suffered in recent decades. There are political leaders in both parties who act as though these values don't matter. And social service agencies sometimes give us the same message by encouraging the idea that government can solve all of a community's problems while citizens stand passively by.
Americorps promises to strengthen the simple spirit of community --of taking responsibility for our neighbors, our schools, our streets and our country. The young people who serve as Americorps volunteers will get a lesson in community values that they will take back to their own communities. In the long run, that could be the program's most important legacy.