David Eisner describes the mission and programs of the Corporation.

The Corporation for National and Community Service has a mission to improve life, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering.  We're a federal agency, even though we are called a corporation, and we receive about $900 million a year to pursue our mission.

We have lots of different service and volunteer programs that are woven into us.  Some of them started in the early 1960s, like Foster Grandparents, and some of them started only 10 years ago, like AmeriCorps.

In general, our programs fall into three buckets:

• We have the Senior Corps, which is 500,000 older Americans giving of their time in their communities, and including some incredible programs like Foster Grandparents where people spend 20 hours a week serving as mentors in schools and Senior Companions where people spend 20 hours a week helping the frail elderly stay independent.


• Then we have our Learn and Serve America programs, which foster service learning in both the K 12 environment and some colleges and have some programs in every state in the country.


• Then we have AmeriCorps, which has 75,000 members across the country doing intense service, and within AmeriCorps, we also have Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), about 7,000 people working full time on capacity building in the non profit sector and anti poverty issues, and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), which is sort of our elite green berets of national service, if you will.  They are a fully residential, full time service, and right now the vast majority of whom are down on the Gulf Coast helping overcome the ravages of Katrina.