Board Hails Learn & Serve Challenge for Advancing Service-Learning

(Washington D.C.) - The board of the Corporation for National and Community Service today joined a growing chorus of governors, school superintendents, and national education and service groups in supporting the Learn & Serve Challenge, a week-long effort designed to raise awareness about the value and impact of service-learning.

The Board passed a resolution noting the benefits of service learning and thanking the organizers of the Challenge for helping advance the practice of service-learning. Hundreds of local events are taking place across the country to spotlight to highlight the powerful impact of service-learning in the lives of young people and their communities.

"Service-learning has an enduring positive impact on students' academic achievement, personal and social development, and civic engagement, particularly among students from disadvantaged backgrounds," the Board stated in the resolution. The board "recognizes Learn and Serve America for its pivotal role in advancing service-learning, and expresses its gratitude to the organizers of the Learn & Serve Challenge for their support for achieving our mutual goals for service-learning and engaging students in America."

In 2005, the Board adopted a five-year strategic plan that made engaging more students in service one of its strategic priorities and set a national goal to integrate service-learning into at least half of all elementary and secondary schools and to engage 5 million college students in service by the year 2010.

Currently the agency engages more than 1.4 million students in service-learning each year through grants to schools, community groups and higher education institutions through the Learn and Serve America program. The agency also supports service-learning through its other core programs and special initiatives, including the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse training and curriculum website, the President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll that recognizes outstanding colleges for their service commitments, and Bring Learning to Life, a television PSA campaign about service-learning that has aired more than 53,000 times on 600 stations since its launch two years ago.

Board Chair Stephen Goldsmith suggested that the substantial uptick in service participation by youth and college students is due partly to the growth of service-learning and said "the challenge now is to extend service-learning to more classrooms." Several speakers in the public comment period echoed his comments and thanked the board for challenging the field to reach bold national expansion targets.

Urban Service Learning