Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn: AmeriCorps During the Clinton Administration

The Clinton Presidency built on past national service programs when creating its own community service opportunities for Americans.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps to provide jobs in environmental conservation during the Great Depression.

The Civilian Conservation Corps symbolized Government’s effort to provide a nation in depression with the opportunity to work, to build the American community through service.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks by the President in National Service Address, March 1, 1993

President Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961 as an international volunteer organization offering the assistance of trained people in developing countries. Volunteers in Service to America or VISTA was officially created in 1964 to help communities combat poverty in the United States through education programs and vocational training.

Brave men and women in my own generation waged and won peaceful revolutions here at home for civil rights and human rights and began service around the world in the Peace Corps and here at home in VISTA.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks by the President in National Service Address, March 1, 1993

President George H.W. Bush launched the Points of Light volunteer movement and signed the 1990 National Service Act to start the modern era of national service. In 1992, the Bush administration created the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) program to help communities recover from disaster and assist with other critical needs.

There are many things that I, not only as President, but as a citizen, am grateful to George and Barbara Bush for. I'd like to just mention a few today. As President and afterward, he has worked to ensure that A Thousand Points of Light is not merely a striking image, but a lasting legacy. I thank him for that initiative and for co-chairing the President's Summit on Service.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks by President Clinton at the George Bush Presidential Library Dedication Ceremony, November 6, 1997

As Director of the White House Office of National Service, Eli Segal was a key architect of the 1993 national service legislation. Segal managed competing visions of national service to help gain passage of the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993.

During the George H.W. Bush administration, Shirley Sagawa was a primary author for the 1990 National and Community Service Act. As a Special Assistant during the Clinton administration, Sagawa worked with the Office of National Service in drafting the 1993 national service legislation. Sagawa then led the launch of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Already departments have enlisted young people and not so young people to do everything from flood cleanup to housing rehabilitation from being tour guides in our national parks to being teachers' aides in our schools. In the coming months we will also challenge States and nonprofit organizations to compete for AmeriCorps volunteers. We'll ask our friends in higher education and the foundation world and in business to continue their leadership in the growing movement of national service.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks by the President in the Signing Ceremony of the National Service Bill, September 21, 1993

During the Clinton administration, AmeriCorps brought together nearly 200,000 people of all ages, racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds to solve community problems and improve the lives of Americans. After a year of full-time public service, AmeriCorps members received education awards to help finance college or pay back student loans.

In 1994, President Clinton signed the King Holiday and Service Act. The act established the observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a national day of service aimed at bringing people of different races and backgrounds together through community service. As part of AmeriCorps, President Clinton and other volunteers celebrated the King Holiday as “a day on, not a day off.”

Today, all across America, members of AmeriCorps, our national service organization, are working with grassroots community volunteers to pull this country together, not to let it be divided. In Philadelphia, as we meet here, thousands of young people and their teachers are renovating homes for Habitat for Humanity, a project that started here in Georgia and has swept the whole world. In California, 2,300 young people are going to clean parks, remove graffiti, collect food and clothing for people who need it. And as we stand here and sit here, right here in Atlanta, members of the national service corps are joining forces with a coalition of citizens to honor the memory of Martin Luther King by painting classrooms, working at their food bank, renovating a homeless shelter.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks at the Martin Luther King Jr., Annual Commemorative Service, January 15, 1996

In 1996, the America Reads Initiative was launched. With this initiative, the Department of Education partnered with AmeriCorps to put trained college students in classrooms to address 3rd grade literacy.

Over a year ago, it [America Reads] began with a simple idea, that a well-trained, coordinated army of a million volunteers could be rallied to teach our children. I called on every sector of society to help us mobilize this citizen army, specifically challenging colleges and universities to use their new work-study slots to train tutors.

President Bill Clinton, Remarks on the America Reads Initiative, October 21, 1997

During the Clinton administration, nearly 200,000 AmeriCorps members served our nation by building homes, responding to natural disasters, helping to make our streets safer, and tutoring in schools. In addition, nearly 500,000 senior citizens provided community service through the Senior Corps. America Reads volunteers tutored nearly one million children and helped them improve their reading abilities.

AmeriCorps' first class of 20,000 in 1994 has since grown to over 200,000 AmeriCorps members and volunteers in 2023. After the Clinton Presidency, AmeriCorps continued to serve our nation during the devastations of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, economic downturn, the opioid crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.