Letters.

Citizen Service With Just One Click

Dear Editor:

Despite busy schedules and the daily demands of juggling work and family, many people are looking for ways, to connect with volunteer opportunities in response to President George W Bush's call to perform two years--or the equivalent of 4,000 hours--of their lifetimes in citizen service.

He issued this challenge during his State of the Union Address while announcing the creation of the USA Freedom Corps, the cabinet-level council he chairs to promote that call to service. Both the president and the many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, who see the potential society-changing impact of greater citizen service, deserve our enthusiastic support.

In asking young people to serve, the president said, "America needs more than voters and taxpayers. America needs full-time citizens. America needs men and women who respond to the call of duty, who stand up for the weak, who speak up for their beliefs, who sacrifice for a greater good."

Many readers may not know that, as part of this presidential initiative; there is now a breakthrough technology to help all Americans become active-duty citizens with the click of a mouse. In an unprecedented collaboration, the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network; Youth Service America; MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership, VolunteerMatch; United Way of America; and America's Promise--The Alliance for Youth have joined with the USA Freedom Corps to help all Americans answer the President's call.

John Bridgeland, who directs the USA Freedom Corps, made it clear that the president does not want to reinvent the wheel in building the nation's volunteer capacity. In this case there were existing "wheels" that needed to be better aligned. The result is a new online USA Freedom Corps Volunteer Network that brings together the resources of some of the largest nonprofit and volunteer databases and clearinghouses in the country.

Just one click on www.usafreedomcorps.gov and anyone, anywhere, will find volunteer opportunities near their office, home, or overseas. Our six organizations are collaborating to connect potential volunteers to more than 50,000 organizations worldwide, and millions of volunteer service opportunities.

This new private-public partnership with an e-government initiative is a comprehensive, effective step in strengthening our homeland communities and extending Americans' compassion around the world. This new combined clearinghouse lets us recognize technologically that solving social problems is not just the responsibility of the government, or the business community, or the nonprofit sector, or of the citizenry, but calls for a great collaboration of all sectors.

Americans of all ages have a vital role to play in meeting unmet community needs, and service organizations need new and effective ways to communicate available service opportunities to citizen-volunteers. That's what we are endeavoring to do. The six original groups in this endeavor bring distinctive areas of expertise to achieve the common goal of engaging more people, more effectively in citizen service.

These six nonprofit partners are: the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network, which engages millions of people each year to help solve serious social problems; MENTOR's crusade to bring quality mentoring to 17 million young people; Youth Service America's championing of service-learning and youth service through SERVEnet.org and National Service Day; the VolunteerMatch online program that connects volunteers and service organizations; the United Way of America, which is one of the nation's leading community impact organizations through its 1,400 community-based United Ways across the country; and the hundreds of Communities of Promise of the America's Promise campaign for children and youth.

Each of us is striving to increase the quality and quantity of opportunities for Americans to serve locally, nationally or globally. Working together as partners in the USA Freedom Corps Volunteer Network we can do more.

It's been tried and proven: Volunteers can introduce hope into the lives of millions and help meet the critical needs of our communities. As the president says, many are already volunteering, and others are looking for ways to serve or serve more. And now, citizen service can start for millions more with one click!

Harris Wofford 

Chairman

America's Promise--The Alliance for Youth