community involvement

so many options!

sarah ziebellinformation resource officeru.s. embassy moscowziebellsj@state.gov@sarahjziebell

formal volunteering

• clubs

• religious organizations

• schools

• service organizations

• government initiatives

– peace corps

– americorps

– teach for america

informal volunteering

• individual decision

• could involve anything from bringing

an elderly neighbor a hot meal to

participating in a disaster response

effort online

community involvement – u.s.• about 63 million adults volunteer each year

– 8.1 billion hours

– $173 billion

• new annual volunteer day: “giving tuesday” (tuesday after

thanksgiving)

• most popular states for volunteering

– utah

– iowa

– minnesota

– nebraska

– south dakota

making a difference

volunteer vacations

• disaster response (haiti, katrina)

• “missions”

• gap year

community involvement matters to u.s. universities

and employers• “giving back” is very engrained in

american culture

• component of evaluation of

suitability for college, jobs

• leading a volunteer effort is

especially notable

community service as rehabilitation

virtual volunteering

• telementoring

• teletutoring

• virtual internships

• united nations online volunteering

online activism• kony 2012

• one of the most-viewed videos of all time on youtube and vimeo

• 18-29 year-olds overwhelmingly more likely to have heard about kony than

elders and to have viewed video online

• 66% of twitter traffic from march 5-12 supported the anti-kony campaign

• stop online piracy act (sopa), 2011• internet users and activists worked together to defeat sopa through

internet blackout, blogs, videos, discussions organized largely by youth.

• bank of america, 2011• 75,000 people signed petition by 22-year-old on change.org to protest bank

of america’s $5 debit card fee, resulting in boa reversing its decision

• occupy movement, 2011• raised us $454,000 during its first month of activity, mostly from online

donors.