In a heartening display of speed and preparedness, the Obama transition team rolled out Change.gov a day after the election. This is the kind of foresight that we need and was sorely missing over the last 8 years. It is a simple site for now that lays out the agenda for the incoming administration. Importantly though it already sounds a key theme of citizen responsibility and service.
President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.
We, the people, are the number 1 resource that the country has and getting everyone to contribute will be critical. It was great to hear that theme in Obama’s speech on the night of the election and to see it emerging now during the transition. Change.gov already has a section for citizens to share their stories and vision for the country. While cynics will surely decry this as a meaningles social media trick, I believe that giving folks a voice is an important step in turning fear and worry into engagement and action.
