1. community involvement
so many options!
sarah ziebell
information resource officer
u.s. embassy moscow
ziebellsj@state.gov
@sarahjziebell

2. formal volunteering
• clubs
• religious organizations
• schools
• service organizations
• government initiatives
– peace corps
– americorps
– teach for america

3. informal volunteering
• individual decision
• could involve anything from bringing an
elderly neighbor a hot meal to participating in
a disaster response effort online

4. community involvement – u.s.
• about 63 million adults volunteer each year
– 8.1 billion hours
– $173 billion
• new annual volunteer day: “giving tuesday” (tuesday after thanksgiving)
• most popular states for volunteering
– utah
– iowa
– minnesota
– nebraska
– south dakota

8. making a
difference

9. volunteer vacations
• disaster response (haiti, katrina)
• “missions”
• gap year

10. community involvement matters
to u.s. universities and employers
• “giving back” is very engrained in american
culture
• component of evaluation of suitability for
college, jobs
• leading a volunteer effort is especially notable

11. community service as
rehabilitation

12. virtual volunteering
• telementoring
• teletutoring
• virtual internships
• united nations online volunteering

13. online activism
• kony 2012
• one of the most-viewed videos of all time on youtube and vimeo
• 18-29 year-olds overwhelmingly more likely to have heard about kony than elders
and to have viewed video online
• 66% of twitter traffic from march 5-12 supported the anti-kony campaign
• stop online piracy act (sopa), 2011
• internet users and activists worked together to defeat sopa through internet
blackout, blogs, videos, discussions organized largely by youth.
• bank of america, 2011
• 75,000 people signed petition by 22-year-old on change.org to protest bank of
america’s $5 debit card fee, resulting in boa reversing its decision
• occupy movement, 2011
• raised us $454,000 during its first month of activity, mostly from online donors.