August 25, 2008

McCain, Obama To Make Joint Appearance
For Volunteerism

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will discuss their views on national service and civic engagement in the post-9/11 world during a prime time forum on the evening of Sept. 11 in New York City.

ServiceNation, a coalition of 110 organizations that has a collective reach of some 100 million Americans, is staging the forum. It is dedicated to solving problems through civic engagement and service.

It will be the opening event of the bipartisan, Sept. 11-12, ServiceNation Summit, which will launch a one-year grassroots campaign to expand voluntary community and national service opportunities for all Americans; use proven service strategies to tackle some of America’s most chronic social challenges; and call on all Americans to make service a bedrock ideal in our democracy. The NonProfit Times is a media sponsor of the event.

At the forum, called “A Nation Of Service,” McCain and Obama will appear on stage separately to discuss their respective visions for the role of service in America’s future. Richard Stengel, managing editor of TIME, will moderate, and the event will be open to all broadcast networks.

“I look forward to participating in the 9/11 service forum,” said Obama said through a statement. “After September 11, Americans of every age, race, region and walk of life were ready to step up and answer a new call of service for their country. Making that call to service will be a central cause of my presidency, because we need the active citizenship of the American people to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

McCain also issued a statement: "I am pleased to be participating in the ServiceNation Summit in New York City. The Summit will be an important remembrance of those that made the ultimate sacrifice serving their country and others as we focus on how to inspire others to serve causes greater than their own self-interest through national and community service."

The forum audience will include 9/11 family members, young Americans, military veterans, and thought leaders, and questions can be submitted by the public at http://tinyurl.com/6jmhd5.

The ServiceNation Summit will convene more than 500 leaders from American business, government and leading nonprofit institutions to celebrate the ideal and power of service, and lay out a bold policy blueprint for addressing America’s greatest social challenges through expanded opportunities for voluntary community and national service.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will welcome attendees when the proceedings continue the morning following the candidates’ forum, on Sept. 12. The summit will conclude with a keynote address by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who earlier this year became the first governor to create a cabinet post dedicated to service and volunteering.

"Service is an idea whose time has come." said Alan Khazei, CEO of Be The Change, Inc. one of the four organizations--along with City Year, Civic Enterprises and Points of Light Institute--that are helping to coordinate the ServiceNation effort. "The entire Service Movement is energized by both Senators McCain and Obama making service a central theme of their respective visions for America.”

The ServiceNation Summit is being co-chaired by Caroline Kennedy; Alma Powell, Chair of America’s Promise Alliance; TIME’s Stengel; Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York; Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP; and Laysha Ward, President of Community Relations and the Target Foundation. It is convened and underwritten by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York and Presented by TIME, AARP and Target. The recording artist, Usher, serves as the Youth Chair for the Summit.

Following the summit, on Sept. 27, ServiceNation will organize a national Day of Action to engage tens of thousands of Americans in events across the country that will showcase the power, potential and impact of service. To date, 891 events have been created in 50 states. The public can sign up to host, or find events to attend, at http://events.servicenation.org.

The goal of ServiceNation (www.servicenation.org, is to mobilize a grassroots movement that will inspire America’s leaders to expand voluntary community and national service opportunities, target Americas greatest societal challenges with proven service strategies, and promote voluntary service as a core ideal in our democracy. Facebook is the lead social media partner to help ServiceNation achieve these goals. A full list of ServiceNation coalition members can be found at: http://www.bethechangeinc.org/servicenation/about_us/organizing.

In a parallel to the ServiceNation campaign, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Ma.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) are working on new bipartisan national and community service legislation designed to expand opportunities for voluntary community and national service. One of the key goals of the Service Nation campaign is to inspire the next president and Congress to enact this legislation by Sept. 11, 2009.

“Now is the time to unleash the energy and entrepreneurship of a new generation of social innovators, and ServiceNation will help bring about this transformational change by putting citizens at the center of community problem-solving,” said Michelle Nunn, CEO, of Points Of Light Institute in Atlanta.

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This article is from NPT Weekly, a publication of The NonProfit Times.

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