Community Involvement: So Many Options!

1. community involvement
so many options!
sarah ziebell
information resource officer
u.s. embassy moscow
[email protected]
@sarahjziebell

2. formal volunteering
•clubs
•religious organizations
•schools
•service organizations
•government initiatives
–peace corps
–americorps
–teach for america

3. informal volunteering
•individual decision
•could involve anything from bringing an
elderly neighbor a hot meal to participating in
a disaster response effort online

4. 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

8. making a
difference

9. volunteer vacations
•disaster response (haiti, katrina)
•“missions”
•gap year

10. 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

11. community service as
rehabilitation

12. virtual volunteering
•telementoring
•teletutoring
•virtual internships
•united nations online volunteering

13. 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.