Faculty Opinion

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Whatever the question—disaster relief, education, health care, foreign policy—national and community service is an answer. Organizing a full-time civilian service corps—the civilian equivalent of a Marine Corps or Army Corps of Engineers —can help address urgent priorities that the public cares about and bring communities together for the common good. An early slogan for AmeriCorps, the lead program of America's Corporation for National and Community Service, was "getting things done."

YouthBuild USA, for example, contributes to environmentally sound reconstruction of decaying neighborhoods by training at-risk urban youth in construction and putting them in line for good jobs. City Year, an education-focused nonprofit on whose national board I serve, mobilizes young people to solve the high-school dropout problem by acting as "near-peers," helping kids to stay in school and on track. City Year was founded by Harvard Law School graduates Alan Khazei and Michael Brown with Jennifer Eplett Reilly (MBA 1990).

Similarly, health care could use paraprofessionals to bolster a stressed primary care system in a cost-effective way, contributing to both quality treatment and prevention. Young people joining a health corps for a year could be patient advocates, provide community health education, collect data, or prepare for health-care careers while observing needs on the ground.

In the United States, interest on the part of young people in dedicating a year to national service far outpaces the number of available slots. In 2009, Congress passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act to expand the opportunities provided through the federal agency that oversees Ameri-Corps, but then put funding for it right back on the chopping block. "We shouldn't pay volunteers" was one eternal argument. AmeriCorps members are volunteers only in the same sense that the military is "all-volunteer"—people are not drafted or conscripted; they sign on voluntarily. Once serving, they are trained professionals, earning a modest paycheck and, in many cases, an equally modest education award that can help make college more affordable.

Service is not just altruistic; it has an economic stimulus component. In an innovation economy, in which job growth comes from spotting new opportunities, service can be part of the mix. It takes potential entrepreneurs to places with unmet needs, where their imaginations can be stimulated to find new solutions—for example, the cloth incubators for premature babies who lack hospital access, developed by Embrace in San Francisco, or Khan Academy, which offers a massive online library of free educational videos. The line between business- oriented entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs is blurry and easily crossed. In fact, as I have seen in my research as part of the US Competitiveness Project at HBS, service is one way to enrich the business ecosystem that attracts talent and jobs to particular regions.

National and community service is more than a program. It is a mindset and a way to shift the culture. While sporadic service days are more symbolic than sustainable, they still pay tribute to values and call on people's better selves. Let's not forget those intangible benefits. Service reminds us that creating a great nation and great communities is a task for all of us, together. It reminds us that making a living is essential but not sufficient unless we also see ourselves making a difference.

—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Adminis-tration, is chair and director of the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. The preceding is adapted from a longer blog entry published by the Huffington Post.

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