By Joe Follman, Florida Learn and Serve
If we are going to garner strong support for service-learning, there are a couple of things we can do that we haven’t yet done successfully. We’ve got to win CNCS leaders (CEO, LSA Director, Board members, etc.) to service-learning and do it the old-fashioned way—by having our teachers and especially our students write to them, send them examples of the things they produced, and repeatedly invite them to visit their programs. We don’t have the PR people or connections to do it any other way. The CNCS leaders visit AmeriCorps sites with some frequency, and we have to get in on the action.
I like to tell the story of the former CNCS Chief Financial Officer, who visited two Learn & Serve sites in Florida that I was able to arrange when she and CEO David Eisner spent three full days touring Florida AmeriCorps sites. Ever after, she talked about how great those sites were whenever she spoke with Learn & Serve America grantees. She did not mention the Florida projects because they were better than LSA sites anywhere else, but because they were apparently the only LSA projects she had ever seen!
Over the years, I resisted asking sub-grantees to write directly to these folks because it somehow seemed like lobbying or put a bad taste in my mouth. That was a big mistake, and we now know more in terms of having sub-grants communicate with (“provide information to and educate”) the media and elected officials. Our new batch of 2010-11 sub-grants are just getting started, and I am going to press them to communicate with key CNCS folks and their members of Congress. I encourage you to do the same. Kids and teachers are our best (if not our only) ambassadors.
Our specific plan is to ask sub-grantees at every site (we have 66 for the 2010-11 school year) to send letters to the CNCS leadership, board members, the President, and their members of Congress and Senators to educate the officials about their local programs and to invite them to come and visit. The letters and materials are to be composed by students as a service-learning education project--teaching others about (1) the needs they are addressing in local communities, (2) the impacts that accrue for both local communities and the student servers, and (3) the method and program they are using—service-learning and the cost-effective Learn & Serve America program, which costs $30 per participating student a year in Florida.
We will sell this to our teachers and schools by noting that that such communication:
- Is educating and not lobbying
- Is additional service-learning
- Helps students develop skills in presenting, communication, marketing, teaching, writing, advocacy, technology, etc.
- Has potential to bring very high-profile leaders to their schools, with concomitant positive media coverage
- Will advance the cause of service-learning locally, statewide, and nationally—advancement means more support and more students being able to participate, which translates into expansion of the many benefits that accrue to students, schools, and the communities they serve
Our other sub-grantee recruitment imperative is to make it clear the unfortunate legacy of our field’s modesty, lack of PR and marketing, and general keeping of our light under a bushel: low funding, ignorance of the program by the President and members of Congress, lack of support for the program by elected officials, no champions at the national level, little media coverage, and over 97% of national service resources going to other programs that cost a lot more and have far fewer participants. I hope your state will join in these efforts. It’s time to let the world know how powerful service-learning is for our students as well as our communities.
