Learn and Serve America

Learn and Serve America supports and encourages service-learning throughout the United States and enables over one million students to make meaningful contributions to their community while building their academic and civic skills.

Learn and Serve America provides direct and indirect support to K-12 schools, community groups and higher education institutions to facilitate service-learning projects by:

• Providing grant support for school-community partnerships and higher education institutions
• Providing training and technical assistance resources to teachers, administrators, parents, schools and community groups
• Collecting and disseminating research, effective practices, curricula, and program models

Learn and Serve America is a program of the Corporation for National and Community Service, an independent federal agency created to connect Americans of all ages and backgrounds with opportunities to give back to their communities and their nation.

NEW! Learn and Serve Sustainable Design Project Evaluation 2009-10 (PDF, 51 pages)
NEW! Learn and Serve Sustainable Design Project Evaluation 2010-11 (PDF, 60 pages)

Update: On April 15, 2011, the FY 2011 Continuing Appropriations Act was signed into law. Among other provisions, this legislation eliminated FY 2011 program funding for Learn and Serve America. Learn and Serve is still an authorized program without appropriations. The federal program will cease to be implemented until federal funding is reinstated. Service-learning will continue to be one of the strategies CNCS employs to improve educational outcomes for youth.

History, Legislation and Budget of the Learn and Serve America Program
Learn and Serve America has its roots in Serve America, a program created under the National and Community Service Act of 1990 to distribute grants in support of service-learning in order to simultaneously enrich the education of young people, demonstrate the value of youth as assets to their communities, and stimulate service-learning as a strategy to meet unmet community needs.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed legislation creating the Corporation for National and Community Service, bringing a full range of domestic community service programs under the umbrella of one central organization. Serve America was integrated into the new Corporation, along with AmeriCorps and Senior Corps, and is now known as Learn and Serve America.

View legislation governing the Corporation for National and Community Service and its programs:

• Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (H.R. 1388)
  Senate-passed as of March 26, 2009
• The National and Community Service Act of 1990 (PDF, 593 KB)
  As amended through December 17, 1999, P.L. 106-170
• The Domestic Volunteer Service Act (PDF, 80 KB)
  As amended by Public Law 106-170, approved December 17, 1999

The Corporation and Learn and Serve America are significant and valuable developments in our country's long history of encouraging and supporting civic engagement. It is a history that has long embraced public-private partnerships as essential elements of community’s efforts to improve and enhance community and neighborhood conditions. Learn more about the history of service-learning.