I currently serve as a Town Board member and applaud the individual who is working to steer his community toward a sustainable future. It is a daunting task and needs the engagement of us all.

Earlier in my public career, I received a grant to develop a curriculum for inclusion in high school government classes re participation in local government. It received an award from the NYS Dept of Ed, but I was stymied in my efforts to get it into more than my local high school. Anyone have any ideas how this could be advanced? The learning curve for local officials is huge and it should be something we are teaching our children from an early age.

I'd be greatful if anyone has any ideas.

As someone famously once said "a service is a service is a service"....it seems to me that being part of a service that is deemed important by local leaders and federal leaders adds to the value created and is more fulfilling....for example, i am the Chair of our Town's Energy Advisory Panel which is trying to navigate our transformation into a sustainable, green town.....very important, collaborative and complex......the "service" I am providing my community is built on 44 years of corporate life and mutaully satisfying

One of the other problems with community service beyond the youth factor is the negative connotations that service is a penalty for doing something wrong. Misdemeanors often receive a sentencing of so many days or hours or community service, for example.

Someone mentioned the negative perception of a year off doing service as something on a resume to have to be explained away, almost like a penalty for bad behavior.

How can we remove this stigma of service being what you do when something goes wrong in your life to a core part of career development, not to mention character development? This is something this administration could do that would really change the dynamics around giving service.

deb

Amy Potthast, who runs the very helpful blog The New Service, has a terrific post on why it's important to expand the perception (and reality!) of national service to include older adults.

She concludes: "People in the service community have to step up too, to broaden the call to serve to the rising generation, as well as to people who were around to answer President Kennedy’s call back in the early 60s, and everyone in between."

See: Why It¹s Wrong to Assume that All Service Participants are Young.

David Bank
Editor, Encore.org

Sue Schloth
Having changed careers several times in my life, I think that there has to be the assumption that there is a hard upward-climb for awhile, then with support from others like ENCORE, you soar like an eagle. Dan, may I suggest that you "take a chance" and not overwork this mentally for too long, dwelling on the potential unfairness , etc. Setting goals and finding support is the most important in this process as we age. Good Luck!

I am really excited by the nature of this discussion and by the attention now being given to eliminating a terrible waste in this country: the minds and experiences of those of us in our fifties and older. I left the corporate world 12 years ago, deterred by the profit maximizing dogma but paradoxically enriched enough by it to pursue other things such as a PhD. one of the most frustrating things i found was the lack of effective ways for me to give back, to do something productive and encorish, hence the PhD. So now i am thrilled that we see all kinds of avenues opening up. In addition to the PhD, i started a Not for Profit but my dissertation described the hybridization of for profit/not for profits into corporations that "Do Good and Make Money". Just this past week i have accepted the CEO, Chair of a small corporation, still in startup phase that i intend to move to serve as a model of the corporation for what i call the New Era. The corporation produces product and services to help kids and adults connect in a values-building exercise so we do good and make money but we also buy locally to create jobs, put a part of every revenue dollar into a foundation to further the efforts of values based initiatives.
To save our entitilement programs, Americans need to work. To create the climate and culture of service, responsibility innovation and engagement, we need to shift our values paradigm. To create a new economy, we need to all be in the game. At 58 i fully expect the next 12 years to be the richest and most rewarding of my life. Now the 12 years after that, I am just beginning to dream....

As a XPCV, I have been living a life of volunteerism for a long time. I was inspired in my late 1950's high school to look at the Peace Corps as a chance to give back to the community as well as exercise a considerable wanderlust and curiousity about the world. My bloodline seems to have community service imprinted in its DNA; both of my grandfathers ( both were immigrants ) were known in their day as ones who lead their communities in organizing what would be today called 'non-profit organizations". My maternal grandfather was famous in a previous generation for founding a major hospital especially to serve the immigrant population of Chicago. Somehow their drive to be supports for the internal health of their local communities has come down to me, and I can only acknowledge its living presence in my life
Now I am pondering the current stage of my life and what I can do to plan for the next stage, and it is very hard. IF I want to return to teaching, outside of the field for which I once received graduate degrees, I would have to go back as an undergraduate and earn a second BA, or so I have been lead to believe, and also sit through loads of fatuous "education courses". Nowhere there has appeared alternative paths to a teaching certification that would take into account individuality and seniority.
I would propose introducing an alternative teaching certification path specifically for male seniors wishing to embark on a teaching career. Some academic preparation would be involved but this program would also involve a period of student teaching in academic areas and regions where there is need.
After teacher certification is achieved, then the new teacher would have some experience in working in the field and contributing to national service
I would appreciate feedback on this program. Dan Koch