Keep civic training ongoing

The Meaning of Service is a civic reflection program for AmeriCorps members developed by the Illinois Humanities Council in partnership with the Project on Civic Reflection, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Meaning of Service is now being offered to AmeriCorps members in many states.

East St. Louis AmeriCorps program uses a Meaning of Service program, Justice Talking, on a monthly basis with its members. They bring the members together for a two hour session. The members read the selected text aloud and then discuss the reading and apply it to their program or their lives. This series works well with multiple education levels. See how you can use the series to increase civic reflection in your program.

The Civically Engaged Reader, the anthology of readings used in the series, provides a text version of the reading, an introduction to the reading and some possible questions to stimulate discussion. You can find The Civically Engaged Reader at the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

This tip sheet was contributed by AmeriCorps/East St. Louis (East St. Louis, IL), an AmeriCorps*State program that focuses on reading, language skills development for low achieving students in grades 1-6.