This blog post originally appeared on the Clinton Foundation’s blog. Erin O’Leary is an alum of the Clinton School.
I will get things done for America – to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.
I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.
Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity, I will persevere.
I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond.
I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done.
I first took this pledge almost exactly 10 years ago, as a brand new team member of AmeriCorps*NCCC. At the time, I was impressed with the pledge-knowing even then that it was imbued with meaning that would deepen over my term of service. Yet, never did I expect that I would be reciting it 10 years later with my former teammates at a 10-year reunion! In fact, just last weekend we pieced together the pledge back in Charleston, South Carolina, where we first met a decade ago.
Back then, I was a year out of college, wanting to contribute to the world, but unsure of how. I did know, however, that I was ready to get my hands dirty-both literally and figuratively. AmeriCorps*NCCC was the perfect fit, as I joined a team of other young people who were poised to put their energy and optimism into action. Ten years later, it is evident how our passion for service, fostered during our time in NCCC, has forever impacted the trajectory of each of our lives since then. While we have all dispersed across the country and across professions, we have all chosen careers founded upon an ethic of service.
Last weekend, I looked around at my teammates during our family dinners and felt a great sense of pride over how my team has spent the last decade. Our team now includes a City Year Director, a social worker, an Outward Bound program manager, a non-profit program manager in Africa, a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Leadership, an artist and educator with a master’s degree in environmental writing, and me, a lawyer – lucky enough to work in public service.
After law school, I had the privilege to enroll in the Clinton School of Public Service – the only other community I’ve never known that can match my team’s energy, optimism, and devotion to service. Just like AmeriCorps, the Clinton School capitalizes upon these qualities in its students and teaches and guides them on how to put their ideas and energy into action out in the world.
It is my firm conviction that AmeriCorps programs and the Clinton School of Public Service instill an ethic of service in their members and students that stay with us for life. This ethic changes how we see communities, because now every community is our community. This ethic heightens our expectations of ourselves and others because now we know how impactful we are together. This ethic propels us into careers of service, because we have experienced first-hand how incredibly rewarding, and what a privilege, it is to serve. This ethic colors our lives with deep and unwavering satisfaction, because we have learned how to build meaningful connections with people and places … and we do, wherever we go.
By continuing to fund and expand AmeriCorps and the Clinton School, we will continue to grow the next generations of public servants. The paths of service my teammates, classmates, and I have chosen are the direct result of these institutions and the ethic of service that they instilled in us. I hope that countless others continue to have the opportunity that my team and I did a decade ago, when we pledged: “I will get things done for America” and I am certain that they, too, will make good on their promise.
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