Serve to Remember & Remember to Serve

[From the Corporation of National and Community Service and National Service-Learning Clearinghouse websites]

Hurricane Katrina revealed nature at its worst, destroying everything in its path along 90 miles of America's historic Gulf Coast. The breaching of the levees in New Orleans simultaneously created a national tragedy of epic proportions. And Hurricanes Rita and Wilma stretched the limits of America's already overtaxed ability to respond effectively—and also tested the emotional and spiritual fortitude of the survivors.

But like the horrors of September 11, 2001, the hurricanes of 2005 showed America at its best. Even before the storm made landfall, Americans opened their hearts - and their wallets - to help their fellow Americans in need. America's armies of compassion - individuals, church groups, schools, and nonprofit groups large and small - sprang to action, raising funds, conducting clothing and food drives, and organizing a myriad of other efforts to help.

On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's making landfall, the Corporation for National and Community Service - the federal agency that administers national service programs - has released several reports, fact sheets, videos, and other materials that document the contributions that national service participants and other volunteers have made to the recovery effort.

• Serve to Remember, Remember to Serve
• Serve to Remember project samples (Media Advisory)
• Hurricane Katrina Volunteer Support Fund
• Loss, Lessons & Hope for the Future "Voices from New Orleans
• A new report, National Service Responds: The Power of Help and Hope (3 MB PDF), documents national service’s role and impact in the Gulf to date, from support of first responders, to providing hands-on help to survivors and evacuees, to building capacity to enable more volunteers to serve in the region.
• A new fact sheet, Volunteers Respond (78 KB PDF), highlights the activities and accomplishments of more than 40 volunteer-driven national and Gulf-based organizations, who together have tapped the skills and talents of more than 550,000 volunteers from across the United States and around the world.
  
• New "Hope and Help in the Gulf" videos and PSAs show the power of national service in responding to the hurricanes and ask viewers to serve in the Gulf as volunteers and AmeriCorps members.
  
• A new fact sheet (48 KB PDF) compiles research that has been conducted on the effect of disasters on civic behaviors.
• Service-Learning Resources
• Hurricane Katrina Relief Service-Learning Resources and Tools
• Universities Rebuilding America Partnership (URAP):
  A Toolkit for Organizing Group Service Trips to the Gulf Coast to Help Communities Recover From the Hurricanes of 2005
• Use Service-Learning to Help in Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts [National Service-Learning Partnership]
  

Answer the call and let us know what you plan to do via the comments.

- Susan, National Service-Learning Partnership