Shirley Sagawa - The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers Are Transforming America

Table of Contents

The stories of everyday people changing the nation through service come to life in this book. Shirley Sagawa has been at the center of service policy for two decades, and if we follow the blueprint she offers, together we can solve the pressing problems of our day.

Leaders agree: with the many challenges facing America, we are at a critical moment when real change is needed. Service can play a central role in that transformation, and this book spells out how everyone can participate.

Shirley Sagawa has written an invaluable how-to book for accomplishing nothing less than the transformation of our nation. Shirley was present at the creation of the Americas Promise Alliance in 1997 and, more significantly, guided its recent re-invention. If we are effective today, it is because we benefited from the lessons she brings to life in this book.

Through this important book, Sagawa offers a compelling case for the idea that citizen service is a critical strategy for solving the pressing problems of our time.

This book, written by one of the countrys most influential advocates for service, shows how we can improve the quality of life in Americas communities through policies that encourage a lifetime of service.

Stephen Goldsmith, chairman, Corporation for National and Community Service, and author of The Power of Social Innovation

Shirley Sagawa is the godmother of national service and volunteerism. In this book, she takes her ideas to the next level and outlines a new approach to national problem solvingone that asks each of us to help reshape America.

No one has a better sweep of the ways and means Americans can use their power to change the world than Shirley Sagawa. This book highlights some of the most innovative and successful programs of our time and should be read by any policymaker or active citizen who is looking for effective strategies to solve our most critical social problems.

Harris Wofford, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, author of Of Kennedys and Kings, and former CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service

Gone are the days of volunteers just stuffing fundraising envelopes. Sagawa vibrantly showcases our new opportunity to leverage civic energy to make a lasting impact. Policy makers, community leaders, and volunteers: this is your road map.

Americas vitality is rooted in the volunteer spirit. From the countrys founding through every significant chapter of its history, the imagination and energy of our citizens have written our narrative of change. From Ben Franklin to Martin Luther King Jr., volunteer leaders have shaped our nation. Volunteers built institutions such as the Sierra Club, United Way, Red Cross, and the Salvation Army and shifted the nations moral compass through the civil rights movement, the womens movement, the environmental movement, and every campaign for change that has transformed our nation and often the world.

Today we need this spirit more than ever. At this time of possibility and peril we must awaken the true power, potential, and will of the American people to imagine and then forge the change we need. This book, The American Way to Change, is a roadmap to guide policymakers and citizens on how to seize this moment.

Shirley Sagawa is singularly equipped to show us how to rebuild the nation through service. Shirley stands as the most thoughtful, well-versed student of the policy and legislative history of our national service agenda. As the author of the original national service legislation and a policy adviser to every administration over the past twenty years, she uniquely is both author and actor on the public stage. Most important, Shirley is an intellectual and a passionate change agentcombining research, data, storytelling, and analytical insight with a passion to equip our nation to solve its greatest problems.

While volunteering may be seen as something nice to do, it is not always understood as central to our history and our future. And yet, the enduring words of our nations greatest leaders were often centered on a call to what is best in all of usfrom Lincolns invocation of the better angels of our nature to Roosevelts declaration that this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny to President Kennedys mandate to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Indeed, the activation of our volunteers and citizen leaders is truly at the core of our nations story and a defining hallmark of presidential leadership.

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush invoked a Thousand Points of Light, which became not only a lasting metaphor in the publics mind but a touchstone for a presidential commitment to lift up volunteer service. With the passage of the National and Community Service Act of 1990, the president and Congress created a platform to power the twin engines of national service and community volunteerism. Over the next twenty years, each president extended this legacy of service. President Clinton gave life to the long-held dream of a national service program that would bring together young people across differences of race and socioeconomics to tackle the toughest problems in our communities and, in the process, to transform themselves. President George W. Bush embraced the call to service and extended both AmeriCorps and a broad mantle of service that included Citizens Corps and Volunteers for Prosperity to engage our nations human capital in the wake of 9/11, natural disasters, and the needs of the developing world.

It is notable that in two decades characterized by polarization and political defamation, the call to service has been a unifying rallying cry. U.S. presidents have joined together over the importance of citizen actionfrom the 1997 Americas Promise Summit to the pairing of former Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wakes of Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Indonesia. Over this time, we have seen remarkable progress. We have twenty-three million more volunteers serving annually today than we did when President Bush called for us to turn to the only resource that always grows in times of needthe goodness and the courage of the American people. We have gone from an idea about the power of young people joining hands to solve our nations problems to a corps of more than a half million, who have worked in thousands of programs across the country with measurable impact in lifting up test scores and graduation rates, conserving our resources, and restoring economic stability to families. Through this service, we are creating life-long habits of engagement, exposing a new generation of citizen leaders to the serious challenges of their day, and imbuing a sense of the patriotism that draws individuals into something larger than self.