In his Inaugural Address, President Obama beckoned individuals to a call to national action. In late March, the Congress advanced this summons by enacting the Serve America Act of 2009, which was also renamed the “Senator Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act,” to commemorate the Senator’s dedication to national service.  Although the Act awaits President Obama’s signature, he has signaled his support.

Enactment of this sweeping legislation may hold opportunities for service organizations who already participate in programs such as AmeriCorps and VISTA, or which have considered launching such programs.

The Serve America Act covers a range of priorities ranging from service-learning programs for youth to support for older Americans. Programs established by the Act include energy conservation, emergency preparedness, expanding access to technology and mentoring. The AmeriCorps program has been organized around five focused corps covering education, energy conservation, healthy futures, veterans and an Opportunity Corps to improve literacy, build housing, increase job training and other services to economically disadvantaged individuals.

Eligibility for AmeriCorps and other national service programs has been reduced to 55 years of age and permits participants to collect stipends in addition to education credits. Education credits earned by older participants may be transferred to related children and grandchildren.

The law also creates the National Senior Service Corps, which includes Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, the Foster Grandparent Program and the Senior Companion Program. Increases in funding have been authorized to support these programs.

Final funding levels will be determined by appropriations approved later in the year by Congress, and regulations will be determined by respective Federal and state agencies.

For more information on national service programs, contact: The Corporation for National and Community Service at www.nationalservice.org.

Older men and women need to know how to communicate using computers to compete in the modern workplace. While computing and similar skills are second nature to younger generations, introductory classes are often too quick to cover use of the mouse, keyboard and computer basics for first-time learners or are simply not designed for older learners. As a consequence, many experience early frustration and lose motivation.

During the past five years, Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) and Executive Director Tom Kamber have successfully taught computer skills to more than 4,000 people ages 60 and up. “We have learned a few lessons along the way about what works and what doesn’t,” Kamber says. “For instance, older learners often take a week or two to get comfortable with the mouse and keyboard, so courses that start slowly with these skills are much more effective.  In addition, seniors often benefit from learning in a group setting where they can share their progress with peers and have some fun as well.”

For the hesitant, Kamber offers a few other tips for older beginners:

• Make a commitment to learning. Expect to spend 10 or 20 sessions at the keyboard to start developing confidence with new skills.
• Pace yourself.  Two or three brief sessions a week are much more useful than one marathon class.
• Use a senior-friendly curriculum.  OATS courses are designed specifically for older learners, and this really helps people learn.  If you’re learning at home, you might benefit from the user-friendly book, Is This Thing On?, by Abby Stokes.

OATS has provided trainings at over 30 locations across New York City, and they have found that virtually anyone who wants to take the time to learn a computer can succeed.

The next round of free classes starts in July, so call the enrollment hotline in June for a class near you: 718 502-9203. Or visit the Web site: www.oatsny.org

OATS gives sign-up preference to ReServists to support the program, so when you call, mention your connection to ReServe.

Gary Langley lists “event planner” among the various facets of his professional life.  He is, and has been, responsible for making special occasions, well, special. On Saturday, May 2, it is his job as logistics coordinator to make the Brooklyn Food Conference run as smooth as butter.

Langley has been tending to every detail since January to assure that the day will dawn with volunteers at their stations, guest speakers in place and printed programs at hand so visitors will be entertained, informed and well fed.

Nancy Romer, general coordinator says Langley is “a good match because he’s so skilled at exactly what we need, and he loves the goals of the project.”

The conference is the idea of volunteers at the Park Slope Food Cooperative, where Romer, a longtime social activist, is a member. The co-op, founded in 1973, now claims 15,000 members and is billed as the largest member-worker food coop in the country. The event is to be more than a day-long food festival for families. It is to be a call to area producers for healthful food at affordable prices, an appeal to limit the power of agribusiness and return farming to families, and a forum on how to free the world from the ravages of hunger and obesity.

“Food is a universal organizing issue because it has cultural and personal meaning to all,” Romer says. “Changing the food system is key to addressing climate change, the energy crisis, the health crisis, and poverty.”

The history, she says, is that agribusiness and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) together have bankrupted smaller farms in the United States, Mexico and Central America and made deep cuts in the supply of healthful and affordable food grown closer to home. NAFTA, she says, has allowed U.S. agribusiness to flourish elsewhere as well as undercutting local farmers, forcing farmers off their land in Mexico and Central America. Many of these farmers have fled north, leaving their home countries clueless of best practices regarding soil and climate.

The conference, free to all, is a project of the Brooklyn Food Coalition, an umbrella group of sponsors and partners. It will run along Seventh Avenue in Park Slope between John Jay High School and PS 321.

Featured speakers include Dan Barber, executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill Restaurant at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate; LaDonna Redmond, head of Chicago’s Institute of Community Resource Development; and authors Anna Lappe, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, and Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.

Other attractions along the avenue will include an inaugural New Orleans-style parade featuring huge puppets; 70 workshops on a wide range of topics; food demos; activities for children and teens, food and dance.

Sponsors are Brooklyn’s Bounty, Brooklyn Rescue Mission, Caribbean Women’s Health Association (CWHA), Park Slope Food Coop and World Hunger Year (WHY). More than 120 organizations are partners as diverse as the Center for the Urban Environment, Children’s Aid Society and United Food and Commercial Workers.

The Coalition hopes that everyone takes away something positive from the day, whether it is the opportunity to pet farm animals or churn butter, to learn how to shop and better feed a family, or to be inspired to take action as an individual, as a family, or as part of a group..

Langley is taking away memories of an engaging respite from retirement and of CWHA, his ReServe partner. And he learned that “a group of volunteers, when they get their heads together, can do anything.”

www.brooklynfoodconference.org

Manhattan Surrogate's Courthouse - 31 Chambers Street by Ralph Selitzer

Ralph Selitzer was a professional writer and editor who took photos to illustrate stories he wrote for various trade publications. But he never considered himself a photographer. Now retired from publishing and at age 72, he is a full-fledged cameraman, put in charge of updating photographs of New York City’s municipal buildings.

Selitzer and the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), the agency that manages the buildings, connected through ReServe. Without claim as a professional, his application listed photography among his skills. “I had to hold the camera,” he said later, “but I never considered myself a photographer.”

Selitzer’s work for DCAS appears on the DCAS Web site for historical and commercial purposes-of particular interest to location scouts seeking backgrounds for film and television shows. “Law and Order shoots extensively outside our buildings,”  Mark Daly, the agency’s communications director, says.

DCAS  had worked with  ReServists in the past-to help ensure compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rules, for example, and to help with professional development in various city agencies. So once again, it turned to ReServe, which tapped Selitzer.

Selitzer, a native New Yorker, had majored in journalism at New York University.  “I’m interested in how everything works,” he says, rationalizing why he became a reporter for a series of trade magazines that took him inside an array of industries. The magazines included Dairy & Ice Cream Field, Industrial Photography, and Progressive Grocer. The American Business Press awarded him the Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award for his editing at Apparel Manufacturer.

Because Selitzer could sell as well as write, he became editor and publisher of another apparel industry magazine, Private Label, and was the founder and publisher of Doctor’s Shopper, which reported on the business and lifestyle of New York doctors. As a spin-off from the magazine, he also ran Physician’s Expo, a biannual trade show.

But after 11 years, managed care had so altered the economics of doctors’ lives that the trade show and the magazine grew less successful, and Selitzer retired.  He was restless, however, and responded to a mailing from ReServe. Although he listed photography among his skills, he saw it as journalism, as amplification of his stories.

ReServe first asked Selitzer to photograph its staff for an annual report and to take photos of a media event. Then the NYC Department for the Aging assigned him to photograph 131 senior centers.  Then, Daly asked him to shoot 51 of the city’s 54 buildings, a crazy quilt of structures, large and small, new and old, sleek and ornate, chilly and warm, grandiose and self-effacing.

Daly introduced Selitzer to the project at the Brooklyn Civil Courthouse. He says he was struck by Selitzer’s instinct for finding just the right angle to capture the building’s power. Selitzer asked to return when the light and the traffic in front of the building would allow for a better image.

Next, they traveled to Brooklyn Family Courthouse where Selitzer pointed out that the best photographic angle would be from the roof of an adjacent building. “Ralph knew better than I did how to complete the assignment,”  he says. It was Selitzer’s first project shooting architecture, but Selitzer explains, “It’s journalism, not photography. It’s a way to communicate a concept, an idea.”

There were a few moments of drama along the way. While Selitzer was photographing the Queens Family Courthouse, a police officer detained him and confiscated his camera. Selitzer asked the officer to call Daly, who persuaded him to free both the photographer and the camera. Daly then provided Selitzer with a DCAS identification card to forestall further hassles.

When the new photos were posted, Selitzer decided that the Web site’s text wasn’t much better than the old pictures, so he rewrote and edited it. In the end, Daly says, “The results exceeded our needs.”

Selitzer’s photos for DCAS are on the Web. The site, he says, “tells the public about the buildings you own.” He also has a Web site of his own, with prints for sale. “I don’t consider myself an artistic photographer,” he says, “but I’m starting a whole new life because of ReServe.”

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/resources/build_slideshow.shtml.

http://selitzerphotos.shutterbugstorefront.com/g/

In its latest survey of partner organizations, ReServe found organizations overwhelmingly satisfied with ReServists and that the services delivered by them helped to satisfy critical needs in their agencies.

According to 200 supervisors, over 98% said the contributions made by ReServists placed with them were good or excellent. The survey of ReServe partners was conducted in December 2008, and the overwhelming majority said that Reservists performed important functions at their organizations. 89% said that ReServists enhanced the mission of their organizations, while over two-thirds said their professionalism and expertise were “important contributions to their organizations.”

“ReServists served critical roles at times when we could not have afforded other staff, let alone people with the experience and expertise they brought to our organization,” one respondent commented. “We would have been crippled without them.”

ReServe has assisted over 300 nonprofit organizations, 27 government offices and 23 CUNY schools improve the services they provide to the public, with Reservists often taking on tasks that had been neglected or performed with limited capacity. At the cost of just $15 per hour, survey respondents said the work performed was “worth more to our organization,” than what was paid. Proving the success, 100% said they would recommend ReServe to other organizations.

ReServists handle a wide variety of tasks. In the survey, 45% of Reservists worked in professional management, 30% in administration, 25% in client services, and 20% as professional consultants. As one respondent described, “The entire relationship with ReServe has been an enriching experience for our organization. Thank you!”

Marilyn Shaw left the Brooklyn DA’s office at the end of March, but she didn’t go quietly. She ended her ReServist tenure with a party at Brooklyn’s historic Borough Hall for 31 Extraordinary Women of Brooklyn-one honoree for each day of Women’s History Month.

As event coordinator she fulfilled the project dear to DA Joe Hynes, now in its third year. Hynes noted that the honorees’  “generosity and unwavering dedication to the well-being of others exemplify the best that Brooklyn has to offer and have made our beloved borough a much better place to live.”

Among the 31 are attorneys, immigrants, religious leaders, a police officer, political activists and those who help small businesses, troubled families, children and the homeless.

Two honorees have connections to ReServe. Linda Blyer counts ReServe among her many volunteer efforts but was honored for the more that 20 years she served as Executive Director of Families First. The independent, nonprofit organization offers support groups, classes for children, workshops for parents and caregivers and a drop-in play space. Benita Miller, a ReServe sponsor, was honored for her work with pregnant and parenting teen-agers as founder and executive director of Brooklyn Young Mothers’ Collective.

Meanwhile, Marilyn Shaw plans to take time off to visit her son and then find her way back to ReServe for another assignment.

The Horticultural Society (HSNY) was founded in 1900 and has developed into a multi-service organization, with diverse programs bringing the vitality of urban horticulture to kids, adults and families throughout our city.  HSNY creates community gardens, urban farms and street trees all around New York, and provides mentoring and training in professional landscaping to at-risk youth, and to men and women who are in jail on Rikers Island or who have recently been released, providing them with the opportunity to build work skills, rejoin society and start a positive new life.  The organization gives city kids the chance to get their hands dirty in a garden and learn about science and botany through our education programs.  Among many resources are a library and a trained horticulturist, both of which are available for free to anyone, professional landscapers and novice gardeners alike.  The HSNY Exhibition program showcases bold contemporary art that explores the natural world.

To find out more about the programs or to become a member, visit the Horticultural Society of New York Web site at: www.hsny.org. Memberships benefit The Horticultural Society financially, and members come with benefits like invitations to public programs and more.