Tonight’s ServeNext Special Report, the first in a series during this convention season, comes from Mr. John Ray, an outgoingServeNext Summer Intern, who also interned for U.S. Senator John Kerry’s reelection campaign this summer.  He also grew up in Massachusetts, making him a lifelong constituent of U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.  Mr. Ray graciously agreed to help Team ServeNext with out Unconventional Convention Coverage over the next few weeks.  There’s nobody more qualified to get us started with our first ServeNext Special Report. 

The opinions shared below do not represent nor are they endorsed by ServeNext, but they do represent a man inspired by Senator Kennedy and his commitment public service.

When I interned with John Kerry’s Senate campaign this past summer, a couple of my peers attended the Massachusetts Democratic Convention, one of the first places Senator Ted Kennedy spoke publicly after his seizure this past May. They each came back with a particular item: a dark blue wristband that simply read, “TEDSTRONG.”

These particular wristbands were only available at the convention – and only to the staff or delegates (in fact, rumor had it that someone who tried to steal a box of them was, shall we say, physically prevented from so doing). I won’t tell you how much I ended up trying to offer these guys for one of those wristbands, but it was certainly more than you’d pay for any other, and it certainly helped me figure out just how much people treasure Ted Kennedy.

A popular term the media used to describe Senator Kennedy in the days after was “The Liberal Lion.” Ted Kennedy has always been a man of fightin’ words, of vigorously-defended moral principles. One of those moral principles was service.

Ted Kennedy’s career tells the story of national service itself. Picking up on his brother’s legacy, the Peace Corps, he expounded the moral imperative that justified the Peace Corps and carried it to America’s schools. Almost twenty years ago Kennedy wrote, “throughout history Americans have served the nation in times of crisis – in war, depression, or natural disaster. In quieter times, they have served their communities, helping a neighbor in need or a stranger in trouble.” Today in 2008, we see both a crisis that both imperils the nation and challenges every community individually: the dropout crisis. Fortunately, though he hoped that such crises could be solved during “quieter times,” Kennedy himself has never been a quiet man.

“An early advocate for service-learning,” Kennedy pushed for an education platform in his home state of Massachusetts that included expanding the role of community service in students’ lives, and for more afterschool and tutoring programs – improvements that, Kennedy predicted, would serve as models to address the dropout crisis. He couldn’t have been more right.

Two decades out from the early nineties, we know now that the crusade for which Kennedy has been a valiant vassal is in fact a ray of hope for the up to 30% of young people who are in danger of dropping out. A recent study found that “82 percent of students who participate in service-learning, and 80 percent of at-risk students not in service-learning programs, say their feelings about attending high school became or would become more positive as a result of service-learning.” In that study, two-thirds of students said that getting access to service-learning programs would strongly encourage them to stay in school.

In that same piece almost twenty years ago, Kennedy wrote that “by learning that they can make a difference in the lives of others, students discover their power to control their own lives.” In a report finished last year, the Corporation for National and Community Service found that “The effect of AmeriCorps participation in the AmeriCorps*State and National program is consistently positive across a majority of civic engagement, employment, and life skills outcomes.” The young community leaders of today are, as a matter of empirical fact, tomorrow’s national leaders.

(Just ask the current Democratic Presidential candidate!)

Kennedy couldn’t have been more right in helping to channel America’s immense and growing will to commit to service into service-learning education programs. Behind the lone figure on the stage of the Democratic National Convention are the shadows of 550,000 American volunteers, and the millions more whose lives are the better for them, and for Ted Kennedy.

The formation of the House and Senate National Service Caucus can be seen as the fulfillment of Ted Kennedy’s moral vision for America, beginning with the call to go forth and find what you can do for your country and continuing today. For the first time in perhaps four decades we can say that there is a national service “movement,” and now, alongside other leaders like John Tierney, Chris Shays, we can say that we have a champion in Ted Kennedy.