Mar 9, 2016

Dear Friends and Followers,

Two major non-profit organizations have joined the growing coalition of organizational partners of the National Service Ride – the Service Year Alliance and GoodWorld.

The Service Year Alliance, under the aegis of the Aspen Institute’s Franklin Project, pulls together a powerful coalition of scores of community, public, and national service organizations headed up by the recently merged National Conference on Citizenship, ServiceNation, and Voices for National Service. Chaired by retired Army General Stan McChrystal, the Service Year Alliance envisions a future in which a year of full-time national service is a cultural expectation, a common opportunity, and a civic rite of passage for every young American. It is the leading effort in the United States to improve citizenship by giving every young person the opportunity to serve in one of an array of areas, including health, poverty, conservation, or education.

This is a monumental boost to the National Service Ride project. The intent of Ride fits perfectly with the intent of Service Year Alliance – to promote citizenship, service, and engagement in and beyond America. By encouraging young people to do good work and solve problems starting in their own communities, they also become better Americans and the whole country improves.”

GoodWorld, in turn, is a highly acclaimed crowdfunding initiative for non-profits that has gained the attention of the President of the United States and Forbes magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post. It’s unique social-media based platform allows individuals to make small donations to hundreds of non-profit charity and advocacy organizations of their choice, large and small, already registered with this micro-financing engine – by simply using the hash tag: #donate.

It’s a perfect way for enabling especially younger people to pick up on one of the Ride’s action points to support their favorite community, public, or national service organizations. Both the Service Year Alliance and GoodWorld provide clear pathways for young citizens to join or contribute to the Ride’s partner or other service organizations, but equally importantly, to take their own journey to find out who they are and what they’re about through service to others.

Open to anyone to join for as long as they like, the National Service Ride, from Cinco de Mayo to the 4th of July, follows a clockwise path around the U.S. At venues to be announced by early April, it features interactive discussions in schools and other places for Americans who have served and sacrificed in all walks of life to tell their stories, in order to promote a dialogue of national unity, as well as help pass the baton of generational leadership.

Find out more on the project website (www.nationalserviceride.net) and through associated social media – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest; hash tags: #TravelswithHarley and #NationalServiceRide.

Please spread the word, plug Travels with Harley (on Goodreads and elsewhere) so that I can fund this great project!

Thanks!

Best,

Chris