How You Can Participate in United We Serve This Summer

As I mentioned in my Monday post, First Lady Michelle Obama and United We Serve, June 22nd was the first day of United We Serve, the Obama Administration's nationwide summer of service initiative that will run until September 11th, which will be a National Day of Service and Remembrance.

While I was at the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service this week, I went to a session about United We Serve with Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director, White House Office of Public Engagement, and Carlos Monje, Senior Policy Advisor, White House Domestic Policy Counsel.

Wicks and Monje outlined the 3 goals of United We Serve:

• To bolster civic engagement nationwide.
• To better our communities in 4 priority issue areas: energy/environment, education, health care, and community renewal.
• To develop creative, sustainable partnerships with nonprofit organizations, faith-based groups, issue groups, labor unions, educational institutions, business corporations, foundations, and all levels of government.

They also talked about ways individuals and organizations can get involved with United We Serve:

1. Register your projects(s) on Serve.gov. You don't need to be an organization to do this. Any individuals/group/family can register their project. They have toolkits available, and will be building more, to help you create your project.
2. Find a volunteer opportunity on Serve.gov using the search engine powered by All For Good.
3. Share your story about your summer service project.
4. Email your email lists, listservs and social networks directing people to register and search for projects on Serve.gov
5. Link to Serve.gov on your blog or website (Digital badges are available here)
   
   
   
6. Think creatively about how to collaborate with other organizations, businesses, foundations, etc.
7. Contact the Corporation for National and Community Service about how to get engaged by emailing serviceinitiative@cns.gov.

I'm probably going to be spending my summer of service setting up a blog for a grassroots program in my neighborhood, called Reading Partners, that I volunteer with during the school year. What are you going to do?

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