Administration Boosts Volunteerism In First Year

[babylonsister]

PROMISE AUDIT
Public Service

by Vincent Barranco
Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010


Percentage complete: 71*


Public service doesn’t command the kind of attention that health care reform, climate change, and other controversial issues receive, but it's the area in which Obama has been most successful at fulfilling his promises, primarily because of three bills that Congress passed in 2009.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated an extra $50 million to YouthBuild, a nonprofit dedicated to helping unemployed young people find work, and it included millions of dollars more for AmeriCorps and its VISTA program. An appropriations bill that Obama signed in December includes a 3 percent funding increase for Senior Corps and $50 million in seed money for the Social Innovation Fund, a program intended to identify and promote promising nonprofit projects.

But the biggest step forward came with bipartisan passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in April. The bill fulfilled promises to create a Clean Energy Service Corps and to empower the Corporation for National and Community Service to help encourage nonprofits. With the signing of the legislation, the administration launched serve.gov, fulfilling Obama’s campaign pledge to create an online destination for finding volunteer opportunities. The act also fulfilled a promise to enlarge AmeriCorps, which is slated to have 250,000 slots by 2017.

more...

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/no_20100106_8664.php

[jenmito]

1. K&R. More "indoctrination" into the "civilian army," no doubt.

:sarcasm:

[Kdillard]

2. lol. k and r