Opportunity: Africa, as told through Twitter

Standing up for national and community service

Volunteering in service to our communities has been an American value for all of our history. Whenever people are in need, we always come together as communities and as a country to lend a hand. That is why Congress created a number of national service programs in 1993, through bipartisan legislation, under the aegis of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). These programs include AmeriCorps, VISTA, Learn and Serve America, Senior Corps, and others that enable Americans to engage in service to their communities.

Unfortunately, earlier this year House Republicans threatened to defund the CNCS and, with it, remove opportunities for Americans to engage in volunteerism in communities throughout the country.

On Monday, Senator Coons joined Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and twenty other Democratic senators in sending a letter to the Labor-Health and Human Service – Education Appropriations Subcommittee urging its leadership to support funding for the CNCS in next year’s budget. In the letter, Chris and his colleagues noted that these programs have a “multiplier effect, yielding much more in benefits than we put into it in dollars.”

“We strongly believe that whatever cuts are made to the budget will need to be paired with strategic, long-term investments in economic growth and middle class job creation. AmeriCorps’s contribution to public safety, education, and housing do much to advance this agenda,” the Senators wrote.

Since their creation, these programs have engaged millions of Americans in service. Senior Corps, with half a million volunteers each year, enables older Americans to serve as foster grandparents, to visit other seniors who are homebound, to participate in neighborhood safety patrols, and to work on local environmental preservation projects. Learn and Serve America provides grants to state education agencies, schools, and non-profit organizations to engage students in service activities that connect to academics. AmeriCorps provides opportunities to over 85,000 Americans each year to work full-time in service to their communities in a range of ways. VISTA, one well-known AmeriCorps program, helps over 7,000 Americans each year work full time at non-profits or local government agencies to help fight poverty, teach reading skills, combat homelessness, expand employment opportunities, and improve public health.

Chris co-founded one of the first AmeriCorps-supported programs in Delaware in the early 1990s, which helped mentor students participating in the “I Have a Dream” Foundation’s college-attainment program. As New Castle County Executive in 2005, Chris helped create the New Castle County Emergency Services Corps (ESC), a partnership between AmeriCorps, county government, the Volunteer Firefighters’ Association, and the YMCA Resource Center of Delaware. The ESC was created to recruit more people into the county’s volunteer fire companies, but its members also provide a host of important benefits to the community, including CPR and First Aid training and other outreach activities to promote safety. Over the past six years, ESC members have provided over 108,000 hours of service to their communities and saved County taxpayers money that would otherwise have been spent on providing these services directly.

The Emergency Services Corps is just one of so many examples of community service programs supported by AmeriCorps. All over Delaware and across America, communities are being strengthened by the hands of volunteers from AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and other CNCS programs.

To learn more about how you can volunteer in your community, visit www.nationalservice.gov. 

Video: Senator Coons at ONE forum on global poverty

Back in April, Senator Coons participated in a forum on global poverty hosted by the ONE Campaign at the University of Delaware. Below is a video produced by ONE at the event.

UD students discuss global poverty with Chris, ONE Campaign

NEWARK — A longtime anti-poverty advocate, Senator Coons participated in a panel discussion on global poverty and preventable diseases at the University of Delaware’s Newark campus Tuesday night.

More than 100 UD students attended the forum hosted by UD’s ONE chapter. Founded by U2 frontman Bono, ONE is an international, non-partisan grassroots anti-poverty campaign with more than two million members.

The conversation focused on global development issues, with an emphasis on International Affairs Budget and aid effectiveness. During a time when the budget is on the minds of many Americans, Chris stressed the importance international aid plays in America’s security.

As a country, it’s imperative that we make it a priority to provide assistance to developing nations. By providing basic resources like a quality education and healthcare, we decrease the likelihood of terrorist groups taking advantage of those in poor countries. 

Chris was joined at the forum by Dr. Gretchen Bauer, head of the Political Science and International Relations Department at the University of Delaware, and Erin Hohlfelder, Health Policy Manager at The ONE Campaign.

Conor Leary, a student at University of Delaware and the new president of UD’s ONE Student Chapter, moderated. 

Read more about it on the ONE Campaign's blog.

Senator Coons talks about faith and poverty

At a gathering of global aid activists, scholars, and clergy this evening, Senator Coons spoke about his travels in Africa as a youth and how the depth of poverty he witnessed on that continent affected him as a person of faith. The event was hosted by International Relief and Development and the Yale Divinity School, of which Chris is an alumnus, having earned his degree in ethics there in 1992.

Timed to coincide with the beginning of Lent, the event featured Chris discussing how faith can be a powerful catalyst for action to ease the suffering of others.  He drew on his own religious background as an ordained Presbyterian elder as well as lessons from other faith traditions, including Islam and Judaism, to explore the meaning of our connections to one another as people sharing this world.  Faith, he told those in attendance, has the power to motivate us to act – as individuals, as communities, and as a nation – to help feed the hungry, heal the sick, and shelter the homeless. 

Chris recalled some of his early experiences in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania as a student in college:

I’ll never forget walking through Nairobi’s Mathare Valley for the first time.  Its seemingly-endless slum fills the narrow space between the hills, a mess of corrugated metal, dirt roads, animals, and people.  It is difficult to imagine unless you have actually been there. 

While there is difficult poverty in every nation, including our own, the depth of poverty in the slums of the developing world is unmatched. 

Mathare today is home to nearly half a million Kenyans, and they live without running water, sewers, and access to basic health care, education, and adequate food.  Homes are constructed from garbage, and the stench of the slum is just unbearable to those who were not forced to grow up inside it.

…I saw something else in Mathare and in all the slums I visited that stood in striking contrast to their poverty.  I once attended a church service lasting over four hours, and the faith and hope and joy that overflowed from the worshippers was incredible. 

These people, so poor in wealth, were so abundant in their love for God and hope for the future.  Several of us who were there working on relief visited the home of a family who slaughtered their last goat in order to serve their guests an adequate meal.  We were as the three strangers arriving at Abraham’s tent. 

After returning to the United States, Chris worked with the South African Council of Churches against apartheid and later worked with the Coalition for the Homeless in five states. He noted how striking it was that, twenty-five years after that first experience in Nairobi, he has just recently been selected to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs. 

In his leadership of the Subcommittee, Chris looks forward to working with his colleagues, with the Administration, with our allies, and with aid groups – including faith-based organizations – to help Africans escape the painful cycles of poverty and work toward political freedom and economic developme