Kristen Bennett
Appearances
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
We're an organization that... is promoting a year of paid full-time service as an option for individuals. Whether you want to do it after high school, you want to do it after college, we do just want to see it become much more of the menu that is put in front of young people as they're growing up in our country and thinking about what they want to do next in life.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
I think we ask a lot in the just grow up and go to college narrative for a 17 or 18 year old to make a pretty big decision. And a year of service can be an opportunity for someone to gain professional skills, mature and learn more about themselves, learn about some real issues in their communities while being paid.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
getting health insurance, and at the end, getting an education award that will help them if they want to go on to a four-year university, a community college, a trade school, something else, but it gives them a leg up in that way.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
So we're wanting to put this out there as one of the many options that we are hoping that as individuals come to the end of high school, they are given and that they can consider.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
The majority of them are offered through AmeriCorps, which we kind of often refer to as kind of like the domestic Peace Corps. But whether you're interested in being in a school setting, like tutoring children or mentoring youth, Or if you want to be out in the wilderness helping to blaze trails and reduce wildfire challenges and brush, there's so many different ways you can do it.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
You commit a year, you go address a need by delivering service while being trained and gaining skills and getting a living stipend along the way so that you can support yourself.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
So usually there's the specific skills that you'll obtain that are tied to the service itself, right? So you might leave with some very hard skills, say, if you were focused on energy efficiency and part of what you learned to do was weatherize homes or install solar panels. So there's those types of opportunities. There's skills that you might learn if you want to pursue a career in education.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
Being in a school, learning how to work with children, learning how to deliver interventions in that sense. So there's very specifics depending on the service you choose and what you take on. And then there's more universal things. We have learned that people who do a year of service are more likely to stay civically engaged afterwards. So they're more likely to vote.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
They're more likely to volunteer ongoing. And even potentially more interesting, we've learned that they're also more inclined and interested in having conversations and working with people who they disagree with.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
This is a really important part of it. Most of these opportunities are public-private partnerships. So there's federal dollars from AmeriCorps that fund a lot of these. And then there's more than one-to-one match of funds that are coming from philanthropy or from school systems or other local sources that do go into paying each person.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
One of the reasons why we think it's important that there be really solid wraparound benefits and supports for someone in service is so that it can be something that regardless of your socioeconomic background or what kind of like financial safety net you might have, that you can do this.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
I think that John has great, great points and is thinking about this in... In a way that I can really relate to, there has not been a lot of political support in our country for mandatory service, like compulsory service. But at the same time, I don't think it needs to be mandatory for...
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
more people to be able to do it and for these types of experiences to exist at scale and to play a much bigger role in bringing people together. So one of the benefits I think to a year of service is the fact that someone chooses to do it. And that allows people to be motivated by so many different things to come to the table.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
Like we've heard this a lot from veterans, right, in the military space, that when you're out in the trenches together, it does not matter who you voted for, where you came from, or which God you may or may not pray to. At the end of the day, we're on a mission together, and that's like what we have to solve.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
And they leave those experiences with such strong connections to those people because of that common mission and common experience. That happens in service years as well.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
Amongst the 2008 recession, I did a year of AmeriCorps helping connect low-income families with resources that already existed. Tax credits, food stamps, job supports, different things like that in my hometown and was exposed to more need both from services needing to be delivered in communities to also peers around me that were trying to figure out what to do with their lives.
Today, Explained
What if college isn't for everyone?
So it's that vision that brings me to this every day and the hope that I can help other people have the experience that I was fortunate enough to have.