President Obama and President George H.W. Bush present the 5,000th Daily Points of Light award to Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton, a retired couple from Iowa who founded a nonprofit that has delivered more than 232 million free meals to children around the world.
A lot of really good people are helping Americans in need via the Corporation for National and Community Service. It's a "private-public partnership," meaning that people in business, government, and the nonprofit sector work together with citizens to get results.
That includes a lot of good work by AmeriCorps, which engages 80,000 Americans in results-driven service to meet local needs. In the last year AmeriCorps has teamed up with other agencies to launch:
Lots more needs to get done, and to that effect, the President just signed an official memorandum on expanding national service.
Basically, it tells federal agencies to work together in a task force to expand national service in six areas: emergency and disaster services; economic opportunity; education; environmental stewardship; healthy futures; and veterans and military families. It also encourages more partnerships with the private sector to unleash the energy of citizens to get things done.
This is a big deal; there's still a lot of suffering out there best address by a combination of public and private efforts.
There are a lot of people out there who could use an extra hand, even right in your own neighborhood. Help out if you can.