President Obama and Governor Culver Launch New Service Campaigns
“United We Serve” and “Iowa Summer of Service”

June 22 - Sept. 11, 2009

This is an extraordinary moment in time. As Americans, we have a unique opportunity to come together and solve our nation's most vexing problems. In this spirit, President Obama has announced a nationwide service initiative, the beginning of a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to meet community needs and make service a way of life for all Americans – United We Serve.  Click Here to watch the President’s remarks online.  In response to this Initiative Governor Culver and Lt. Governor Judge have launched the Iowa Summer of Service Initiative to engage Iowans in their communities to meet Iowa’s biggest challenges.

The goals of the Summer of Service initiative are three-fold:

1. Bolster civic engagement in Iowa by connecting people from all walks of life with service opportunities and empowering them to develop their own opportunities to address unmet needs.
   
2. Better our communities in four national priority issue areas: energy and the environment; education; health care; and, community renewal.
   
3. Develop creative partnerships with nonprofit organizations, faith-based groups, issue groups, labor unions, educational institutions, businesses, corporations, foundations and all levels of government.
   

Purpose: A New Call to Service
The service initiative will take traditional calls to service further by:

• Putting volunteers on a path to sustained service.
  
• Asking volunteers to step up and become volunteer organizers by identifying unmet needs in their community, developing their own service projects, and engaging others who are interested in the same issue.
  
• Providing easy-to-use tools for volunteers to develop their own service projects, set outcome-oriented goals and track their community impact.
  
• Developing creative partnerships with a broad and diverse group of stakeholders.

The Challenge: Help Needed, Capacity Stretched
At a time when volunteers' help is most needed, the capacity of traditional service organizations to absorb volunteers has been stretched thin.  To help meet growing social needs resulting from the economic downturn, the service initiative aims to both engage new volunteers in expanding the impact of existing organizations and to encourage "do-it-yourself" projects.

Timeline
The service initiative - spanning 81 days, will officially kick off June 22 at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.  Now is the time for organizations to post opportunities and prepare to absorb new volunteers or plan new projects.  Organizations should register for an account, which will enable them to post volunteer opportunities on the new volunteeriowa.org portal or through their local volunteer center or United Way system.  Those volunteer opportunities will automatically appear on the new national portal, serve.gov.

The service initiative will culminate with a National Day of Service and Remembrance on Sept. 11, 2009, which will provide an opportunity to recognize the summer's accomplishments, honor those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, by serving in their memory, and encourage Americans to make an ongoing commitment to service.

What YOU can do:
● PLAN a project● FIND a Project/Opportunity ● POST your Project/Opportunity ●