Renewing community
Byron, William J.
NATIONAL SERVICE ACT RENEWING COMMUNITY WHEN CONGRESS DOES IT RIGHT he Congress of the United States is now on record as wanting to change the way Americans view community service. Without...
...regrettably, it will retain the name "community service...
...Hence, influential Democrats will have an ongoing interest in seeing how "their" program is doing, especially that portion that was "his" (Senators Kennedy, Nunn, and Dodd, for example) or "her" (Senator Mikulski) idea...
...Moreover, the fact that the service envisioned in this act is voluntary, or only modestly stipended, makes it all the more singular in the culture of greed that appears to be tightening its grip on the nation...
...Families, schools, religious and other institutions, not least among them the private job market, cannot look to this modest program and expect it to carry the freight of social recovery for troubled youth in a troubled nation...
...If they do, the nation can expect to see a continuum of service over the course of the lifetime of persons attracted to such service programs in their formative years...
...Did school-age participants stay in school...
...What are the results of the program for the persons being served...
...How many volunteers...
...But by enacting the National and Community Service Act of 1990, Congress has said it wants to "enhance" community service and "renew the ethic of civic responsibility in the United States...
...In thinking about evaluation, it occurred to me that one might look upon the various programs of this legislative venture much as one views the entries in a horse race...
...Consequently, the bill produced by a Democratic Congress, passed with bipartisan support, and signed by President George Bush, has identifiable Democratic parentage and pride of authorship...
...On the qualitative side, some sponsors of this legislation, notably Senators Mikulski and Kennedy, will want to know whether the programs do, in fact, foster a community-service ethic...
...Higher Education Innovative Projects ($5.6 million in FY'92 to encourage students to participate in community service activities while attending college...
...As various programs are funded, one might visualize the Kennedy horse, the Mikulski horse, the Dodd horse, and other entries with identifiable legislative "colors," breaking away from the starting gate and running for the results their sponsors had envisioned...
...It took years to get a national service bill through the Congress...
...Without intending it, judges have for many years been giving community service a bad name...
...True, community service could become part of a national job-training strategy...
...How many poor people were involved...
...I agree that service is a singular solution in this and in at least two other important ways...
...Perhaps a horse show would be a more useful analogy: The distinctive features of each could be ascertained, the potential Commonweal 24 April 1992: 7 for each program realizing its objectives estimated, and, one way or the other, the results finally measured and evaluated...
...In this case, Public Law 101610—November 16, 1990—provides funding for service activ6: 24 April 1992 Commonweal ities to be performed by school-aged children (K-12), by college and university students, by out-of-school youth, and by adults of all ages...
...Did the programs attract middle-class volunteers...
...Another consultant to the commission's committee on evaluation— Jerome Kolker, director of the Philadelphia-based Urban Corps Expansion Project of an organization called Public/Private Ventures—emphasized the importance of engaging young people in activities that meet genuine community needs while lifting their own self-esteem...
...Applications for funding are now being filed in each of the Act's four major categories and grants from the commission (529 14th Street, N.W., Suite 452, Washington, D.C...
...Were volunteers simply rearranged— i.e., was there a net increase in volunteer activity or did these new programs simply attract participants from preexisting volunteer programs...
...As funds move out from Washington and programs are initiated across the nation, legislators will want to evaluate the results...
...The "Higher Education Innovative Projects" section bears the imprint of Senators Kennedy and Claiborne Pell...
...Similarly, the legislators will want to know whether service experiences can actually change a poor youth's life...
...And the "Conservation and Youth Service Corps" ideas come chiefly from the legislative imagination of Senator Christopher Dodd...
...What are the cost-benefit ratios...
...8: 24 April 1992 Commonweal...
...When many persons freely choose to unite their efforts in service to others, they can make an enormous difference...
...Senator Edward M. Kennedy contributed "Serve-America" to this legislative amalgam...
...The possibility of a social revolution is latent in the complicated provisions of this legislation...
...These senators and others (notably Democrats Pell, Robb, Graham, and Bumpers, and Republicans Hatch, Durenberger, and Jeffords) will be watching as money moves out ($73 million in FY '92) from the Commission on National and Community Service, a small new independent agency established by the 1990 Act...
...It will be a number of Junes, however, until we have a good idea of whether or not the worthy objectives of this welcome public policy initiative are being realized...
...Service, we may soon discover, can help reduce some of our national and personal discontent and may well assist significantly in the reduction of many of our vexing and persistent social problems...
...White-collar criminals and errant public officials have, in exchange for their venality or violations of the public trust, been sentenced to punitive doses of "community service" in lieu of spending time in jail...
...True, community service might be successful in attracting nontraditional volunteers—i.e., low-income people—into organized volunteer activity...
...In Danzig's view, there are three central criteria for measuring the success of these programs: recruiting, rewards, results...
...WILLIAM J. BYRON William J. Byron, S.J., is president of The Catholic University of America and a member of the board of directors of the Commission on National and Community Service...
...What effect did these programs have on military recruiting...
...Were paid workers displaced by volunteers...
...These two problems— unmet community needs and widespread deficits in selfesteem among the young—have one solution, he said, and that solution is service...
...How about the effect on student loan obligations...
...There is fear in the House of Representatives that they will compete with recruitment for the armed forces...
...20045) will be made by early June 1992...
...But even if the programs were sufficiently pure-bred to display distinctive legislative origins, it would not be possible to attribute success or failure on the basis of one short race, and probably not fair to run them head-to-head against each other...
...Lexington Books, 1986), advised the evaluation committee of the commission during a December 17, 1991 White House meeting, that the evaluative emphasis should be on the "first order" questions, not on the larger issues of societal change...
...They could open the way for us to become a nation that cares about service...
...and • National and Community Service ($22.5 million for persons seventeen years of age or older who would work for not less than three years on a part-time basis, or one year on a full-time basis, "to meet unmet educational, human, environmental, and public safety needs, especially those needs relating to poverty...
...Do postservice benefits like mortgage subsidies and education grants attract participants...
...But society's basic institutions have to do the foundational work required to produce enduring social change...
...Washington lawyer Richard Danzig, coauthor of National Service: W hat Is It...
...It is a responsibility to be met, not a punishment to be avoided...
...It looks to the individual: One person can make a difference...
...That kind of judicial sentence will, of course, not disappear...
...Are improved selfesteem and a sense of altruism among the rewards a participant gains from the service experience...
...In any case, government at local, state, and federal levels is expected now to foster service—voluntary and, if not altogether uncompensated, modestly stipended service—in local communities and the nation as a whole...
...As is often the case when a bill clears both houses of Congress, the final product represents an amalgam of legislative ideas compacted into a single law...
...It would be a mistake, however, to attempt to measure the success of these various initiatives primarily in terms of reduced rates of teen-age pregnancy, a decline in drug abuse, a drop in youth unemployment, or other positive social indicators...
...The last program can fairly be described as that segment of the program "belonging" to Senators Barbara Mikulski and Sam Nunn...
...Some of the results can be quantified with relative ease: How many programs...
...A large legislative bet has been placed on the potential of this act to have precisely that effect...
...Do the programs recruit a range of people...
...Over the years, the Senate was much more interested than the House in the notion of national service and Democrats were more willing than Republicans to discuss and debate the idea...
...Did participants gain genuine job skills...
...Community service is now to be encouraged as a matter of public policy...
...Conservation and Youth Service Corps ($22.5 million for youths age sixteen to twenty-five willing to commit themselves to up to twenty-four months of full-time service, for environmental or human needs...
...Funds will be awarded to the states, Indian tribes, and institutions of higher education for: • Serve-America ($16.9 million in FY '92 for statewide, school-aged service-learning programs...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
