“Where Will I Do My Service Year?”

Harris Wofford is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Change.org asked Mr Woffod to respond to questions to provide context for his work and the causes he supports.

Change.org: What cause or causes would you most like to promote?

Most immediately, passage of a health care bill that assures a quantum leap toward universal coverage and starts us on the road to reform of the financing and incentive system. Expanding Medicare and Medicaid would be good ways to go. Another model would be competitive options of the federal employees health insurance plan, which members of Congress and millions of other federal workers already enjoy. But we must not let this opportunity pass if the compromise bill coming out of the current collaboration of the Congress and the President falls short of our hopes. When the civil rights act of 1964 left out the crucial matter of voting rights in order for that vital bill to pass, the next year, after the Selma-Montgomery march, the votes were there to overcome a filibuster.

Another cause, also close to Ted Kennedy's heart, is the Serve America Act sponsored by Kennedy and Senator Hatch, and co-sponsored originally by Senators Obama and McCain. It passed with unusual bipartisan support in both Houses after President Obama asked Congress to put it on a fast track. That comprehensive expansion of national service and community volunteering, through many hundreds of non-profit organizations, authorizes AmeriCorps positions to grow from 75,000 to 250,000 a year. The President's nominee for CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Patrick Corvington, needs to be confirmed, and year-by-year Congress needs to be persuaded to appropriate the necessary funds to move toward the day when every American, when coming of age and at later ages, has an opportunity for an intense period of full-time work in the non-profit sector, helping to solve our most critical problems of education, health, energy, conservation, economic opportunity, and veterans.

The third cause I think should be on our public agenda is for the President and Congress and the private sector to seek a similar quantum leap in international volunteering and service. When he ran for President, Obama repeatedly called for the Peace Corps to be doubled (from its current size of about 8,000 Volunteers serving around the world), and get on the track President Kennedy had imagined, of 100,000 a year. Then, he said, before long there would be a million Americans, who had made significant contributions in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and with their first-hand experience they would form a constituency for a good foreign policy. A number of countries would like to have more Peace Corps Volunteers or to have them for the first time. But that two-year term of service, through the Corps, is not the only model for Americans to serve abroad. Many thousands now go and serve, often with shorter terms, through non-profit organizations working overseas. Along side the Serve America Act we need to ask Congress to enact a new International Service Act that will enable far more Americans, young and old, to offer their experience and skills to help meet the massive needs in education, health, and the environment.

Change.org: If you could ask one million people to do one thing to advance causes that matter to you, what would it be?

Of the above three causes, today I would say: write, call, or see your Representatives and Senators to support the best health care bill that can pass and put us on the path toward universal coverage. (Plus whatever pitch on particulars of the bill that seem most important to you.)

Once that bill is passed, I would say: write, call, or see them as advocates of an international volunteering and service bill that can make a vital and peaceful contribution to world security.

Change.org: When did you first know you wanted to dedicate your life to creating change and helping others?

The watchwords that stirred me most, as I grew older, were: "Follow the question where it leads." That was philosopher Scott Buchanan's summary of Socrates' advice. The questions I pursued through more than seven decades were broadly "America and the World"-fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and achieving a world organization with power to keep the peace and make a reality of One World.

I don't think I ever dedicated my life to "creating change and helping others", but at age ten in a Republican family in Scarsdale, New York, I declared myself for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 election and wouldn't ride to school in our car because it displayed an Alf Landon, Republican bumper sticker. Then after a six-month trip around the world with my grandmother in 1937-38, as a junior high school know-it-all foreign policy expert, I was an active organizer in opposing the isolationists and supporting US all-out involvement in the fight against Hitler (1939-41. In high school after Pearl Harbor I started what became a nation-wide organization, Student Federalists-for a Union of Democracies as a nucleus of a post-war world federation. While in the Army Air Corps in World War II, I wrote a book, It's Up to Us. After going with my wife to India on the trail of Gandhi and writing a book India Afire calling for large-scale aid to India - and for the American civil right movement to adopt or adapt the Gandhian strategy of constructive service and civil disodience. Coming home, I went to Howard University Law School to prepare for getting into action for civil rights.

So it began, and so it goes, however I got started on such an odd course. I do remember the first time a light-bulb went on in my head about the idea of universal voluntary citizen service. I was on a troop ship, made available to students who wanted to go to Europe in the summer of 1947, and a band of young men were singing night and day, and I asked one what they were all about. He explained as young Mormons when they came of age the question was not "Will I do a year of service?" but "Where will I do my service year?" I thought to myself: This is the kind of challenge and opportunity all young people should have. When I was in the Senate, that story pleased Mormon Senators Hatch and Bennett. Senator Hatch's own service background is no doubt one of the reasons has become such a strong advocate of AmeriCorps.

Change.org: If you could ask President Obama and the U.S. Congress to do one thing to advance your causes(s), what would it be?

In the 2008 election I did have the opportunity to work with his team on his comprehensive service platform, which he first presented during the Iowa caucuses.at Cornell College (where he gave me the privilege of introducing him). And he played a key role in persuading Congress to enact the bold and sweeping Kennedy Serve America Act.

While campaigning for Obama in ten states, I supported his health care platform, and I'm impressed with his steady, respectful leadership in moving Congress to act. One of the lessons conveyed to him on the subject (by me along with many others), was that a key factor that led to the failure of the effort to enact a universal health care plan in 1993-4, was that it was imposed by the White House, not developed through the arduous committee process of Congress. This time the President-and Congress-- did not make that mistake.

So the one thing now I would say is an international service and volunteering Act. It should build upon proposals Obama made in the election campaign and on the call he issued in his speech in Cairo. If we do it on a scale that seeks to match the human needs in the world, it would be an additional and truly American answer to the complex and hard challenge of terrorism. Such a new initiative, with new ideas that go beyond the expansion of the Peace Corps (about to celebrate its 50th anniversary), would be welcomed by people all over the world, and lift sights to the prospect of a world at peace.

Photo credit: Bhenak