This week marks an important milestone in the history of national service in our country and in my service year journey. On December 12, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson welcomed the first Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). In remarks shared at the occasion, the president stated, “You have come from every part of this country, from every age group, from every background…to open the door of American opportunity to all of our American people."
At a moment when it seems like there are more opportunities than ever to retreat into our respective bubbles, service years stand apart.
I answered the call to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA in 2008, and despite well-over one million Americans having served in national service programs like AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and YouthBuild, a lack of accessible pathways for young people to participate in service stifles their potential. Just imagine the transformative power if every high school graduate were not only aware of the benefits of a service year but also had access to one.
At Service Year Alliance, we’re dedicated to making this vision a reality. Throughout 2024, we redoubled our efforts to make service years more accessible through innovations tied to both the corps member and alumni experiences, and by unlocking additional federal and state resources to grow the number of positions available each year.
Here’s what our new strategy looked like in action:
Just days into the new year, we released “State Innovations in National Service & Volunteering. The report, co-authored with More Perfect and America’s Service Commissions, showcases the ways state leaders are thinking differently about how they can deploy service as a strategy to meet pressing needs in their communities. We also championed the efforts in Utah, Maryland, California, and New York to elevate service years as engines of transformation for communities across their states and for those who serve.
While consensus on any issue in 2024 was hard to find, we remained steadfast in our work to elevate the power of service years to bring people together across lines of difference. Through our Bridging Divides + National Service initiatives, we completed year-one of a multiyear effort to equip corps members with essential bridge building skills, and we significantly scaled-up our efforts through the next phase of this work.
At the crux of this initiative is a commitment to ensure even more corps members exit their service years with the skill and desire to bridge divides. And in September, we celebrated a special group of alums who did just that.
Jada’s service year was spent in the communities of northwest Indiana, and focused on mental health and suicide prevention. Through AmeriCorps, she organized and led workshops for a diverse range of participants, including community members and law enforcement officers. Her work fostered greater understanding about how to engage individuals experiencing a mental health crisis so that trainees would be better equipped to handle crises when they arose.
“When I first joined AmeriCorps, I had little knowledge of the world of mental health and only had preconceived notions of what I thought the word meant…To make a long story short, being in AmeriCorps profoundly changed my life for the better.” - Jada Edwards, AmeriCorps Alum
Our inaugural Service Year Alums Awards recognized 12 alums, including Jada, who exemplify the sense of collaboration, dedication to service, and leadership we need right now.
Throughout the year, we also continued our work to strengthen the pipeline from service year to career through our Climate and Workforce Development efforts.
Over the summer, we conducted new market research to better understand young peoples’ interest in climate-based service years and green sector careers. Encouragingly, the data shows that young Americans see service years as a preferred pathway to jumpstart a career and to help protect our environment for future generations.
There’s still significant work however to make this case to young people and employers. That’s why we launched a Green Employer Learning Cohort this fall. In addition, through our ongoing collaboration with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, our work is paving the way for new opportunities to showcase service year alums as a diverse and skilled talent pipeline for emerging workforce needs. We look forward to launching new resources in 2025 to support these initiatives.
As we look ahead to the new year, we’re incredibly grateful for the partners, funders, and supporters allied in pursuit of a more cohesive, vibrant, and resilient service year sector. You can count on Service Year Alliance in 2025 to be a voice for the profound impact of service.
The Service Year Alliance team at work in 2024 showcasing the future of service is bright.
The creation of VISTA 60 years ago, along with the Peace Corps, established just three years prior, ushered in a new era of national service, and provided young people, including me, with new ways to serve our country. It’s a legacy we must continue to cultivate and protect as we look to the next era of national service.
Thank you for your partnership and dedication to this mission. Together, we can ensure the future of service is bright.
Thank you and happy holidays,
Kristen Bennett
Chief Executive Officer
