Written by Tamara Evans, National Director for the Sierra Student Coalition
Our generation turned out in force in the historic November elections. We turned out by the thousands to Power Shift. Our representatives are taking notice that we are engaged and we aren’t going away. One of the early signs of this is that Wednesday March 18th, the House will debate the Generation Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (GIVE) which will create 175,000 new service opportunities by 2014 for young Americans.
Of importance to the youth climate change movement is that GIVE will create a Clean Energy Corps, broaden the scope of service efforts to include environmental and energy conservation, and create a fund for young people to apply for grants for social entrepreneurial programs that help meet their community’s challenges.
It is expected to be passed with bipartisan support in the next month in both the House and Senate putting it on track to be one of the next major initiatives President Obama signs into law. For more information about the bill, click here. Take some time to drop your congressperson an email, fax, or phone call (call the Capitol switchboard (202)224-3121 and ask for your member of Congress) and encourage their support for this bill. And be sure to follow up with them in April when you meet with them in-district!
Thanks for this important article Juliana. The GIVE Act did pass in the House by a wide margin this week, which is great news!
I wanted to add one minor correction: the GIVE Act creates a “Clean Energy Service Corps”, not a “Clean Energy Corps”. This is the service component of a broader legislative proposal to create a Clean Energy Corps, which includes job creation, job training, and service provisions. To read more about this proposal visit http://www.greenforall.org/clean-energy-corps. We still have one more big push to get us to this bold vision. But we’re rolling in the right direction.