MLK Day - GYSD
A Broad-Based Effort to Involve
Every American Young Person
Ages 5-25
In a powerful
SEMESTER OF SERVICE
From MLK Day To GYSD
"Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
For the last 20 years, millions of American children and youth have participated in highly visible service and service-learning projects on Global Youth Service Day (The Largest Service Event in the World) and for the last 14 years on Martin Luther King Day (A Day On, Not A Day Off).
Make it a Semester of Service
"Martin Luther King was interested in big results not the short-term. So, the idea of King Day being the signal for a long-term commitment by millions of students over a semester would have warmed his heart...Martin always asked us to do more than we were doing because the road ahead was still so long... The Mountain to climb was still so tall. The Semester of Service is just that opportunity to do more."
Former Senator Harris Wofford
Colleague and Lawyer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 2008, Youth Service America and the Corporation for National and Community Service are encouraging students, ages 5-25, to link these two events by developing a semester long service-learning project that launches on Martin Luther King Day in January and culminates on Global Youth Service Day in April. The Semester of Service will link each program’s existing partnerships, create a quantum leap in the number of children and youth engaged in service, and advance bold quantitative goals that the Corporation and YSA have both set to expand the American youth service movement.
Projects will take place in classrooms as part of the academic curriculum; in schools as part of the extra-curricular activities of student councils, honor societies, student clubs, and sports teams; in congregations of faith; and in youth development groups in neighborhoods across the United States.
During these 12 weeks, young people from elementary schools to graduate research universities will identify a problem or unmet need that affects their community, the nation, or the world. They will prepare a plan, take action to implement their solution, reflect deeply on their progress and next steps, and celebrate their success.
Service-Learning and the Semester of Service
For teachers who join this initiative, they will bring new youth leadership into America’s classrooms, as their students discover how learning math can help stop global warming; how English can stop the spread of HIV and AIDS; how science can feed the hungry; how Spanish can help old people eat healthy meals; how Arabic can prevent conflict and combat terrorism; how computer science can help former prisoners find meaningful work; how social studies can help families prepare or mitigate natural disasters.
"Recent research has shown that projects must be of sufficient duration, typically at least a semester of 70 hours long to have an impact on students. Fewer hours simply do not give the students enough time to grapple with difficult issues or to have a deep enough experience to make the learning endure."
Dr. Shelley Billig
Unpacking What Works in Service Learning
During the Semester of Service, many young people will tackle large, strategic problems facing the world, linking their projects to efforts such as the Millennium Promise Campaign and One.org to support the Millennium Development goals; Malaria No More to eradicate this nefarious killer of children; Play Pumps to bring water to rural villages in Africa; or one of the five goals of America’s Promise.
A Call to Action
Young people are volunteering at record rates in America, more than any generation in history. The Semester of Service will tap into that amazing energy, idealism, creativity, and commitment over an extended period of time to address some of the most intractable problems facing our world.
To participate send an email to semester (at) ysa.org.