DECEMBER 14, 2024 – Many editorials talk about the need for Americans to give back to their country, belong to something larger than themselves and contribute to the well-being of all Americans.
Joining the military is one way that Americans can contribute to the greater good, but not everyone wants to join the military. For those people there is AmeriCorps.
AmeriCorps is just what its name implies — a corps of young people who come together to help their fellow Americans in times of need.
The Defense Department and AmeriCorps are two organizations designed with the well-being of the American people as core tenets. These organizations signed a memorandum of agreement Dec. 12, 2024, to enable DOD to support AmeriCorps. “What the agreement facilitates, both figuratively and literally, is serving our fellow Americans is a team sport,” Shawn G. Skelly, the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness said. “AmeriCorps is all about teamwork. DOD is all about teamwork. This agreement can only redound to our mutual benefit with respect to our missions and with respect to the American people.”
The memo allows DOD to provide technical assistance, guidance and training to AmeriCorps. The two organizations had a similar agreement before, but it lapsed in 2013. It also means that Americans will receive information that there are multiple ways to serve the nation.
Air Force Col. Rebecca “BB” Lange is a living example of this synergy. Lange currently serves as the professor of Aerospace Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. In 1995, she was a member of the second class of young Americans selected for AmeriCorps.
She served at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. “Our teams worked hard, building houses, constructing trails, tutoring children — and each task was meant to make a tangible difference,” she said at the ceremony. “More than that, though, it was about becoming part of a team, united by a sense of purpose. AmeriCorps wasn’t just about serving: It was about learning the power of service to transform not only our communities, but ourselves.”
AmeriCorps members take an oath to make communities safer, smarter and healthier. Lange took another oath when she joined the Air Force ROTC and commissioned as a second lieutenant.
She said the heart of the oaths are not too different. “One pledges to strengthen communities, and the other pledges to support and to defend our Constitution and to protect those in the communities in which we are working,” she said. “One is on the front line of domestic issues, and the others on the front lines of freedom. It is as symbiotic and complementary as can be. At the heart of both of those organizations are teams of diverse Americans coming from all over to solve difficult problems for our nation.”
Some AmeriCorps teams were at the headquarters to see the memo signing. They were fresh from duty in North Carolina helping people recover from Hurricane Helene.
AmeriCorps has a number of ways for young people to serve their fellow Americans. For information go to the AmeriCorps website.
By Jim Garamone, DOD News