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the first word processer, the first smartphone, the first car, the first plane, it has this connotation of a breakthrough investigation that's in essence a quantum leap. and my book is about how we as a society need to be innovating more and how the really significant innovations that move the dial are these breakthrough zero to one companies. >> host: is silicon valley a zero to one, does that have a zero to one mindset? >> guest: there's, there's definitely silicon valley at this point is the center of innovation in the u.s., and i would argue the center of innovation globally. it's, there are certainly a number of companies that have

involved significant break throughs, i would say google, amazon, facebook are significant ones in recent years, apple with the iphone. there's always a bias to make things very incremental. successful companies in cig con valley are all -- silicon valley are all zero to one companies. most companies end up being much less valuable. the tenth solar panel company, that's not a zero to one, that's a one to end. that's copying other things and that, i think, moves the dial much less. >> host: peter thiel, how is your company, paypal, a zero to one company? >> guest: the first one to combine e-mail with money, and then it turned out that to make this product work, you had to solve some very tricky fraud issues so that people could transact in a way that was fast, easy and secure.

and it was definitely the first company of its kind. it grew very quickly, so it represented a real breakthrough in payment. it's often -- one sort of measure i often give for these companies are things where you have an order of magnitude improvement on some dimension. so amazon had more than ten times as many books as the next biggest bookstore. paypal, the alternative to paypal was to send checks to these ebay power sellers which took seven to ten days to clear. with paypal you got the money unstand town yously -- instantaneously. >> host: where did you come up with the idea about electronic payments? >> guest: it's often not that you come up with the whole idea in a single flash of inspiration. i was very interested in this question of digital currency, of all these ways, the nature of money, how could it be shifted, and so we were focused on this intersection of clipping cryptod

money. and in the course of the year with all these different challenges one struggles with, even if you can come up with a new technology, how will people adopt it? and then we stumbled onto this idea that e-mail was something everyone already had. i think the idea of these companies, the idea is not fully formed on day one, but it's a subject that people are extremely passionate about, and in the process of that you refine the business model and come up with a great strategy. >> host: and you write: when i was running paypal in late 999 -- 1999, i was scared out of my wits. not because i didn't believe in my company, but it seemed like everyone else in the valley was ready to believe anything at all. >> guest: well, certainly, there was an extraordinary bubble in the tech industry in the late '90s which in many ways we're still suffering from the

hangover of that. people are skeptical of the it technology, of silicon valley. but the bubble was driven by unrealistic expectations about growth, cash flows, and basically it ended up collapsing in the course of the next three years as the nasdaq went from 5,000 back to just over 1,000. people often ask whether we have a bubble today in silicon valley, and i don't think that's the case. i think these bubbles whether in tech stocks in the '90s or housing and finance in the last decade, these bubbles are psychosocial phenomena in which you need to get the public involved. you had somewhere on the order of 300 tech ipos a year. today 2013-2014, the public is far less involved, the ipos are happening much later. part of it is sarbanes-oxley, part of it is the tech companies themselves want to be able to build their businesses

privately, and because the public is not involved, i do not think we have a bubble this time around. i think what's actually happening this time is it's a long boom that i would expect to go on for many, many years to come. >> host: you further write that the overwhenning importance of future 3r069s is counterspewive even in silicon valley. for a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. >> guest: well, if you -- we did this exercise at paypal in march of 2001. we looked at our future discounted cash flows, and we concluded that about three-quarters of market capitalization, three-quarters of the value of paypal as of 2001 came from cash flows in the years 2011 and beyond. and that sort of math, i think, is true for almost all these high growth stocks. most of the value exists a decade or more in the future. investors and entrepreneurs tend to be very focused on the growth

variable because that's what we measure in the near term, how much did we grow over the last week, the last month, the last quarter. whereas the question will your company still be around in the next decade is more important, the durability, why do you have a permanent lead, why will your company be something of near permanent valuable is an extremely important one for entrepreneurs and investors to think about. >> host: peter thiel, what makes for a good, successful venture capitalist mindset? >> guest: well, i always have a somewhat, slightly contrarian approach to the conventional wisdom. i think the conventional wisdom is it's somewhat of a portfolio theory, invest in a lot of different companies, you sort of treat them as though they were lottery tickets of one sort or another. and i think it's a bad way to treat people. you never want to treat the entrepreneurs, the founders as lottery tickets, but it's also a

bad way to invest. when you think things are a lot i ticket -- lottery ticket, that you're multiplying small probability with a big payoff, you typically just end up with a small number. when you think in terms of lottery tickets, you've psyched yourself into losing. so instead what i've tried to do over the years is only invest in things where i have a very high level of conviction. it ends up being a somewhat more concentrated approach. and so instead of the rule don't put all your eggs in one basket, i think it's often a good idea to put your ideas that you understand really well and that you're going to guard really well. >> host: what made you, what convinced you to invest then early on in facebook? >> guest: well, facebook in 2004 was, it was something of a no-brainer. the site was alive at 20 colleges, they had 100,000 users, they only needed money to buy computers to go to more colleges.

people weren't focused on the college market, so it was a reasonable valuation for something that had tremendous momentum. i think in today's context i invested at a time when facebook was valued at about $5 million. in today's context a company with symmetrics would be valued easily at something like $100 million. so i think people were, in '04, simply were too pessimistic about the internet generally having an acute sense of this hangover from the '90s. the engineering team at facebook was already quite good, they were going to build a scaleable product. zuckerberg was extremely focused and extremely passionate about it and, you know, it turned out to be a great investment, much better than i would have even thought at the time. so i thought it was a good investment, never would have thought it would become the $200 billion company it's become today. >> host: peter thiel, from where did this book stem? you talk about a class you taught at stanford.

>> guest: well, the "zero to one" book came out of a class i taught at stanford in the spring of 2012. it was taught to, basically, i tried to convey everything i've learned about technology, business, start-ups in a single course. one of the students in the course, blake masters, took these notes, posted them on the internet. somewhere on the order of 300-400,000 people read these notes on the internet, and we thought it would be a great follow-up project to try to distill these notes, improve them and put them into this 2 00-page book which is what we ended up doing. >> host: on the first day of class, what did you want your students to know? >> guest: well, there's no single, there's probably no single lesson. i think there are many different lessons to teach people. but i would say the single, overarching theme of my class and of the book, "zero to one,"

is that people should rethink competition. most business books tell you how to compete more effectively. mine tells you perhaps you should not compete at all and that as a founder or entrepreneur, you should always aim for something like a monopoly, a zero to one company that's such a breakthrough that you have no competition at all. and i think we often appeal to do things that other people are doing. so the classic example of a bad business is to start a restaurant which is brutal competition, nobody ever makes any money. and then the great examples are these businesses that often no one's even thought of doing like google and search or facebook and social networking that when they work, end up being incredibly valuable. i try to get at this through these somewhat contrarian questions, like what great business is nobody building, or the intellectual version of this question which is like asking an

interview question. tell me something that's true that very few people agree with you on. and this turns out to be a shockingly hard interview question because in an interview people think you have to come up with something really brilliant. but even when people have answers, it's often uncomfortable to articulate these truths. and to me, i think some insight but also a great deal of courage to come up with these truths or to build some of these zero to one businesses. >> host: well, you ask that question, you return to it throughout "zero to one," and one of the example answers you give is that god does not exist or there is no god, and you say that is, a, a bad answer to that question. why is that? >> guest: well, because that's either the answer that god exists or does not exist is a bad answer because those are simply two different sides of a conventional debate. and there's a lot of people on

both sides of that debate. and so i think the, you know, so the interesting, the really interesting answers are things that very few people agree with you on but that are also true. it's not simply a matter of going against the conventional wisdom, it's equally important to come up with something that is true in one way or another. i give a whole set of my answers to these questions in the course of the book. i think, for example, a monopoly over competition question is one that's very underexplored. i think that we're in a world where people are very focused on globalization, and i'm copying things that work. e think that actually for those of us living in the united states or western europe the question of technology is more important than globalization. so i think there are sort of many answers to this question, but they're never trivial to find. >> host: the best start-ups, you write, might be considered slightly less extreme kind of

cults. the biggest difference is cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. >> guest: well, i think a great start-up is always united by a sense of mission, of what the company is going to do that nobody else in the world is doing. and my paypal colleague, elon musk, started spacex back in 2002, the goal was to be the first company to build rockets powerful enough to send human beings to mars. this was a very inspiring goal. nobody else in the world thought it was possible. most people wouldn't even think this made sense, but it's inspired a really talented group of rocket scientists to come together and help build that company over the last 12 years. so i think it's always this sense of if we did not do this, if we were not working on this, nobody else would. that's very powerful. and it is sort of like a cult in that you have, you have some privileged knowledge or you have some insight into the world

that's not shared by other people. but in a good start-up unlike in a bad cult, that knowledge turns out to be true, and you're working on something that's real or that becomes real in the course of working on it. >> host: peter thiel, what is the power law you write about? >> guest: well, the power law is this distribution of the sizes of these technology companies. and so if you look at the, if you look at the tech industry in the u.s., the top dozen tech companies have a market capitalization of about $2 trillion, and they're probably as big or bigger than all other tech companies combined. and so you end up with these radically unequal outcomes in terms of company size. sort of unlike the u.s. declaration of independence where all men are created equal, in the case of business, not all companies are created equal, and some end up being vastly more successful than others. as a venture capital investor, it's typically the case that

your single best investments end up being worth more than all the others combined. so this is a very strange dynamic, and it's worthying through a great deal. and sort of an application of the power law to entrepreneurs, to founders is that it's perhaps not always the right thing to start a company. you may be much better off joining a company that's going to be very successful. the 100th person at google, no matter what you did, was better off than the average founding ceo of the average venture-backed start-up in silicon valley. so we sometimes privilege founding companies too much, and we undervalue the potential scale. and so we overvalue founding undervalue scaling. so i think it's always worthying really hard about whether you'll be able to build a great company or whether you might be better off joining another company that's doing something truly great. >> host: you spend quite a bit of time in your book on the u.s.

educational system. is it assisting, is it promoting this type of entrepreneurship? >> guest: well, i've been a big critic of the u.s. education system, focus a lot on higher education where you have this runaway student debt. we now have over a trillion dollars of student debt. i think we have a bubble in higher education, and i think that it is -- i do not think that it is actually helping people do more entrepreneurial or more risk taking things. when you graduate from college with $100,000 of debt, you will take a safe, reasonably well paying job to pay off your debt, and you will be much less likely to do something entrepreneurial or creative or artistic which may pay less but ultimately create more value. and so i do think, i do think that there's a big problem with the debt, and there's a big problem with the way education generally is somewhat overvalued. the analogy that i've given is

that the colleges today are many a crisis -- in a crisis similar to the crisis the catholic church faced at the start of the 16th century. they're charging more and more, you have this priestly or prof sor y'all class that's extracting a lot of the rent just like the catholic church had in the early 1500s. and we're told that the only way to go, you go to yale or you go to jail, that basically if you do not get a diploma, if you get a diploma, you will be saved, if you do not, you will go to hell or something the secular modern equivalent of that. and i think that's very wrong. and we need to find a wider range of different things for people to do. i think the posteducation bubble world will be a world in which there's not a single track, a suckle path, but there are -- single path, but there are many different things people will be able to do. >> host: what did we learn, how

significant was the tech bubble of the late '90s, early '00s? >> guest: it was, well, it was, it was extremely big, it was extremely distorting. you know, i think, i think as so often happens with these things, people learn a lot of things, but they often learn very much the wrong lessons. i think the main lessons people learn in the immediate aftermath was to be less ambitious with, to try less big projects to get to profitability immediately. and so the aftermath of the tech bubble was to push us even more towards incrementalism. it was, of course, to discourage a lot of people from going into technology at all. you had business to consumer, business to business were these buzz words in the '90s, b to c, b to b, in the 2000s they were jokingly referred to b to b was back to banking. so the aftermath of the tech bubble was that people, basically, went away from tech. and so we had this enormous

misallocation of resources into tech and then out of tech. i think we would have been better off with much less volatility on the upside and the downside. >> back to your stand farred class, was -- stanford class, was that done in the computer science d., economics department? which department? >> guest: we did it through the computer science department. we thought this would be the best way to reach a lot of these people starting these companies. there was a strong bias toward engineering, product. at the core of these tech companies, it was really open to people across the board in the university and got a lot of attention far beyond the campus. >> host: peter thiel, you're quoted in several different places as saying we wanted flying cars, we got 140 characters. what does that mean? >> guest: well, it's a tag line on our venture capital web site, and it's basically that we, you

know, if you sort of think about the promises of the jet softens of the '50z, '60s, all these fantastic ideas people had about technology, and there is a sense that something like twitter is not enough to take our civilization to the next level. so i've had this view more generally that we are living in an era of relative technological stagnation. we've had a lot of innovation in the world of bits, computers, internet, mobile internet, all those sorts of things. we've had much less innovation in the word of atoms whether it's energy, food production, underwater cities, flying cars, supersonic aircraft, all the kinds of things people would have talked about in the '50s and '60s. and this is reflected in the way the word "technology" today doesn't mean rockets or flying cars, it means just information technology. there's been a narrowing of focus. we've had this narrow cone of

innovation around this world of bits, but i think to really improve the quality of our society we need innovation, all these other dimensions as well. and the hope is that we will have some widening of this aperture in the decade ahead and we'll once again start innovating in many different areas. >> host: what's palin tier? >> guest: palin tier's a company i cofounded back in 2004. it's a data analytics company which enables people both in government, large corporations to analyze a lot of the data to find, you know, national security threats or criminal activity, fraud, it helps you with cybersecurity in some of the large corporate contexts. and it basically comes out of this idea we had at paypal that a lot of the problems in our world are not going to be solved by humans alone or by computers

alone. you have to figure out ways to get the division of labor to be right between the two of them. it's basically a way for human investigators, human analysts to work much more effectively with computers to analyze large amounts of data. and this is actually sort of a very underexplored paradigm, was the dominant -- because the dominant idea we have in the computer world is that computers are substitutes for people, that computers will replace people in one way or another. the palin tier platform is that humans are good at different types of things, and the key thing is not to figure out how do we replace people, but how do we get computers and people to work with together far more effectively. i think that's a general template that could be used in many different contexts. >> host: have you worked with the federal government on some of these issues such as

cybersecurity? >> guest: yeah. we've worked with in -- with a number of the three-letter agencies in d.c., various law enforcement in d.c. it's always a, it's always a very long procurement cycle to break into the federal space, but i think after ten years we have made a lot of traction, and i think it's had some impressive results. >> host: what makes you a libertarian? why to you donate to republicans? >> guest: well, i'm, you know, it's always hard to fully characterize one's views politically. i would, i say that i am socially more liberal, fiscally more conservative which, you know, sort of generally if you have a sort of litmus test of various political issues, i've come down libertarian on a lot of different things. in general, i'm always a little bit skeptical about how much our political system will fix things. i think it's politics are both or very important and very

broken in this country. so i spend most of my time working on technology which is the place where i think people can really move the dial and really make the difference. so i find politics incredibly interesting in theory, i find it in practice to be endlessly frustrating which i think is not even a very unconventional view. >> host: does washington understand silicon valley? does it need to? does it get in the way? >> guest: well, i certainly think that there's too much regulation of certain areas of technology, and so if you -- and so i think one of the reasons we've had this tale of two tracks of innovation with very fast and computers which were relatively unregulated and very slow in other areas. when it costs you $100,000 to start a new software company, it costs about $1 billion to get a drug through the fda on average, that tells you we're going to have fewer biotech companies and more software companies.

i think d.c. is extremely important for what happens in silicon valley. i think, i think the two cultures are quite different and that they don't understand each other terribly well. i think washington, d.c. ends up being focused very much on process. it's dominated by lawyers, sort of a certain framework people with that sort of background bring to ideas. silicon valley is more focused on substance, is more dominated by engineering, so you have a very different kind of a mindset of how to approach things. i would say one general bias people in washington, d.c. have is that technology is not that important, it's not something people are experts in. i once looked at the people in congress, 535 senators, congressmen. at a generous count, maybe 35 of them have a background in science or technology or engineering, and the rest of them are really clueless, and they wouldn't with understand that -- wouldn't understand that windmills don't work when the

wind isn't blowing. they're uncomfortable about science, they're uncomfortable about technology. so in general it's something people want to stay away from here. >> host: in your book you're critical of the educational testing system. how did you grade your students at stanford? >> guest: well, we did have a, you know, we did have a single test at the end of the course as well as a presentation people had to give on a company that they would try to build. so i don't think you can avoid testing. i don't think you can avoid grading if you're going of to have an educational system. i think it becomes a problem when everyone has to do the same things, when everyone is evaluated in exactly the same way because thened product is not finish the end product is not that everyone should be going to the same schools or studying the same subjects. so i do think, you know, an individual class would grade people. i don't know if we need to be grading people as much in our

society as a whole and put quite as much weight as we to on suspect a.t. tests or these standardized aptitude tests that are used to track people and very homogeneous careers. >> host: do you see yourself teaching another class? >> guest: you know, i've done this every few years, i will do so at some point in the future. one of the things that's always fantastic about teaching is it does force you to pull together an enormous amount of material, organize it in a way, and you end up, you know, you hope the students learn a lot. certainly as a teacher you end up learning a tremendous amount, and even though i'm a critic of the universities, i'm not at all a critic of learning. i think, you know, i think learning is good even if a lot of what gets put under this education rubric is more problematic. but i'm a big fan of people learning not just in college, but throughout life. >> host: the book is called "zero to one." peter thiel with blake masters

is the author. thank you. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> now, civic, business and education leaders talk about modern citizenship, activism and corporate responsibility. during the event retired general stanley mcchrystal was recognized for his national service and addressed how to get involved and give bang to the community. -- give back to the community. it's about two hours, 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> and now, ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the national anthem sung by diane ty from ncoc.

♪ o say can you see by the dawn's early light -- ♪ what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's gleaming. ♪ whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight -- ♪ or the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming. ♪ and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air -- ♪ gave proof through the night

that a our flag was -- that our flag was still there. ♪ o say does that star-spangled banner yet wave -- ♪ o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ♪ [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome national conference on citizenship chairman michael wiser. ♪ ♪ [applause]

>> diane ty, you should know, is not only a talented performer, an artist, she's also a very talented fundraiser, and her connection to the national conference on citizenship is working with our service year project. you may have heard the term the franklin project, it's all allied. we appreciate your efforts on our behalf, and we appreciate you bringing your talents to our stage. once again -- [applause] i am significantly less talented. [laughter] ncoc is honored to partner with american university for this year's a conference. would all of the claude eagles

in the room please stand up? people from american university please stand up? yes? [applause] yes. thank you for being here. this is a fall break for au, and faculty and most of the administration is at a retreat. there are some students on campus, a number have joined us, and we appreciate their participation and deeply appreciate the partnership of american university. which, like the national conference on citizenship, is a congressionally-chartered organization. through au's center for community p engagement and service, the university helps over 2,000 undergraduate students volunteer every year. we learn by doing. we learn by doing.

the freshman class alone provides more than 7,000 hours through the freshman service experience. i assume also studying for midterms, but that's just a guess on my part. au's many programs connects students with the diverse communities of the d.c. metro area, strengthening both in the process. please join me in thanking au for hosting this conference. [applause] i also want to thank our conference title sponsors, cisco and the lumina foundation. their generous support allows us to host this engaging event and develop world class programming through the year. in addition, i'd like to recognize kpmg, apollo education group, sprint, ge foundation, nrg, isl and paycom who have all contributed to the success of this conference. please join me in thanking all of our sponsors.

[applause] ncoc is called by our congressional charter to convene the civic engagement field, create programs that advance citizenship and facilitate action by our partners around the country. we hold this conference as a mandate of our charter once a year. this is the seventh conference that i have been honored to chair. but for nearly 70 years, we've been convening it, and it has played an important role in shaping our country's civic ethos. governors, supreme court justices, presidents have all shared their views on important issues including desegregation and the role of government. this year we will shine a light on the subject of economic equality. if you haven't already, i encourage you to during lunch to walk through ncoc's history.

there's a series of posters on display in the long hallway leading to these rooms, and it does a really interesting job of telling the history of ncoc and through it sort of the history of civic engagement in the united states since 1946. i want to thank jeannie harris and kendall for bringing it to life, they were summer interns this year. this year's conference's theme is connect, empower, act. our hope is you will form or strengthen connections at this conference and that you will share ideas and lessons learned that empower each of us to take action that leads to greater civic engagement. the process of being together, the process of engaging one another, the process of taking what we learn and feel from this room into our daily lives can have meaningful impact on the quality of citizenship in the

country. this is every year, this is every year an important meeting. i'd like to just take a moment to recognize my partners in this effort. my fellow directors of the national conference on citizenship who give of their time and their resources and of their good hearts. would ncoc directors who are here this morning please stand and be recognized? [applause] i have one main partner, and in the course of chairing ncoc, i've been fortunate to work with two excellent executive directors. now under their leadership, ncoc's contribution to the civic health of our nation has broadened and deepened. you got it from the source.

her work on service, a revolutionary approach to creating national service opportunities has led ncoc and the citizenship field into new territory. when you have a partner like alerec, you get encouraged in your open work. i get a call, a fax, a text, an e-mail, something that reminds me that the future's there, and it inspires me. his passion for civic engagement and the health of our communities is inspiring. please welcome ncoc's executive director. [applause] >> thank you so much, michael, for that introduction. can you join me in thanking michael for his commitment and his leadership at ncoc? [applause]

i also want to thank michael and his wife julie as well as tom us match, gayle lev witch and phil duncan for their sponsorship of this conference. this year we invited a number of our partners to design and lead the learning summits that are happening this afternoon, so i want to ask those people to stand and be recognized and be thanks. don't be shy if you're in the audience. maybe they're getting ready. [applause] ncoc's mission is to strengthen civic life in america. it is very good to be with all of you today to figure out the ways and means by which we do that together. claude debuts -- debussy once said music is the space between the notes, and i think community is also the space between people. and the question is how do we fill that space?

do we fill it with trust? do we fill it with support? do we reach across the divide to work on common problems together? do we volunteer? do we vote? do we engage with the government? the answers to the these questions are critical to our country because we know that when people are engaged, families are stronger. right? individuals tend to be more employed. schools are better. governments are more responsive. and, of course, critical needs are met when all of these things happen. and it's this sort of activity that we define as civic life. so when we talk about strengthening civic life, this is what we're talking about. increasing that sort of engagement and making the space between people vibrant and alive. and when that happens, we have strong civic health. over the past eight years, we have led a movement to call

attention to the civic health of the country. with many of you in the audience, we have issued over 30 reports around the country basically telling the story of how well our communities are doing or in some cases not doing. and the not is also important. those reports have been a catalyst for action across the united states. the census bureau collects the data that is the essential agreement of those reports, and we've put out that data ever year as part of something called voluntary and civic life. and wendy spencer's going to be out here in a little bit to talk a little bit about that data. but that's an important element. a number of years ago we also helped to create the civic 50 program together with our partners, points of light and bloomberg. now, the civic 50 calls attention to the top 50 community-minded companies in

the united states. these are companies that are doing great work in their communities but also getting something in return. they're strengthening their brand. they're increasing their capacity to recruit employees and to retain them. and those two things are critically important because a lot of companies are learning that more and more people, especially young people, want to work for an employer who cares about the community and does something to match that caring. we are thrilled at ncoc that bloomberg and points of light are continuing this program, and i want to give them a round of applause for doing that. [applause] now, ncoc has also taken the lead in the service year movement precisely because we want to have an impact in our communities. service year is an initiative of the national service alliance, ask we are proud member of the

alliance. i want to recognize our alliance partners, the franklin project, voices for national service and service nation, and thanks to all of them for being here and being members of the alliance. the goal of the alliance and of service year is really fairly simple, and it's twofold. one is to dramatically increase the service opportunities for young people in america. there are a lot more young people that want to serve than there are positions, and we need to change that. the second thing, foster the type of active, engaged citizenship that the ncoc charter calls for. now, we know from the data and from our research that when people are engaged in any way, they tend to be engaged in other ways. if you volunteer, you tend to vote more and vice versa. well, national service is a real multiplier. people who serve a community for a year tend to be very active, tend to volunteer at higher rates, give at higher rates and

also go into the nonprofit sector. and, of course, we need lots of folks to serve communities that way as well. so we're a proud member of the national service alliance. and, of course, all of our work would be easier if schools were to embrace their civic mission. after all, that was the idea of public education, right? so we've been proud partners of the campaign for the civic mission schools, and we were proud to with them a number of years ago support their seminal report called guardian of democracy which for students in the audience, that shouldn't be confused with guardians of the galaxy. that's a whole different thing. [laughter] but later today we're going to have deep dive summits into all four of these areas where we're going to ask you with our captains to really talk about the work that you're doing to the share lessons learned, to challenge us and each other, to think about how we should do our work differently, right?

to connect, to help us empower each other so that we can act when we leave this conference, and we can be stronger for it. so that's our mission today, and i am thrilled that all of you are here to be a part of that. at this time i want to introduce marcy campos. she's the director of community engagement and service here at american university. in addition to teaching american studies and government classes, she is critical to fulfilling aca -- au's commitment to community-based learning. she is a strong advocate for engaging students in services and coordinates departments across au's campus to support increased service opportunities. please join me in well -- welcoming marcy campos. [applause] ♪ ♪

>> good morning. >> good morning. >> great to have you all on our campus. um, on behalf of au, i want to welcome you and just congratulate the group that organized this. the conference agenda looks excellent and very much aligned with the importance that au places on student engagement in civic and community issues. au has a strategic plan that puts great emphasis on this work, stating that one of our goals is to act on our values through social responsibility and service and that we have a vigorous commitment to the city and people of washington d.c. last year the university decided to go further. we concluded that we needed some campus-wide learning outcomes to define what students should be able to do by time they graduate. so among the ten learning outcomes agreed upon, one is

actually civic engagement, and it states that au graduates will demonstrate knowledge of and respect for society and the environment. they will demonstrate an appreciation of the importance of the collective and the role of the individual. they will act with a sense of responsibility and service to the public enter and to social justice -- public interest and to social justice. au's history is very much rooted in a commitment to civic engagement, and we maintain that commitment. as i think was stated earlier, the university was chartered by an act of congress in 1893, and it was established to actually train and support public service. au is number three among medium-sized universities with actually 43 of our alumni currently serving as peace corps volunteers. this past year au had 19 presidential management fellows, and that's for students pursuing

federal service careers. and au students are among the most politically active in the country, according to princeton review. so my office, the suspect for community engagement and service, has the privilege and the opportunity to be a campus hub for organizing and for monitoring different forms of service and civic engagement. we manage an array of programs to extend student learning beyond the classroom and into the city, enabling our students to apply their learning to real life situations that are being tackled every day by our enormousen in profit sector, and we're -- enormous nonprofit sector, and we're very lucky because we have the community-based organizations, national organizations, international and, of course, public offices. so among our signature programs are freshman service experience which just celebrated its 25th year anniversary. and to begin -- what we do, is

we invite students to begin their college experience by going out into the city and working at about 50 different sites throughout the city to do can two full days of community service and learn about the place they will be living for the coming years. so we think that's a great way to start your education, to actually learn about where you're going to live and what are the pressing issues. and each year anywhere from 550-700 students participate in that program. we also have a very unique alternative break program which operates over winter, spring and summer breaks, and it's really an alternative to the typical cancun-type spring break. our students play key leadership roles in this program because they design, plan and actually implement a social justice-oriented trip either domestic or international. they decide it, and they write a proposal, and it has to be approved and selected. so in the coming year we have 3

trips planned -- 13 trips planned, and just as a sampling, one group will be going to the u.s./mexico border to learn about the immigration system and how we are addressing the arrival of thousands of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence this central america, another group will go to san francisco to look at the intersection of homelessness and glbt youth. and another group will focus on healing and community development in rwanda. however, the program that is actually growing the most rapidly on our campus is community-based learning which is also commonly called service learning. a lot of high schools have requirements and some colleges actually require it. we do not. this is an academic, course-based pedagogy that extends and deepens learning through meaningful involvement with a community agency, a nonprofit or a school. through a planned collaboration between the professor and community partners, all stakeholders benefit both by

meeting course objectives and addressing community-identified goals and needs. and this is really important, that reciprocity. so this current semester as we speak we have 47 different courses in which students are linking the course lectures and the discussions and the readings to an issue faced by residents in the city. classes as varied as public health, third world cities, visual literacy, marketing for change and the american constitution are linking to over 100 organizations. developing partnerships in which both sides benefit from this collaboration. your theme today, the impact of income inequality on parse in our society -- on participation in our society, is central to what our students are exploring. so why are these new approaches to learning growing? and they are. not just at au, but around the country. why is this so important right now? millennial students want to be actively engaged in their

learning. they learn much more from hands-on experiences that connect to people's lives, not just what they read about in theory in the abstract. retension, as you may know, is a big buzz word in higher education, and several studies have shown us that there is a correlation between involvement in community-based learning and pact couples and completing -- pact couples and completing college. so that's critical to all of us who are paying tuition somewhere. and students' exposure to the nonprofit sector opens their eyes to the great opportunities that these places offer when they graduate and are looking for jobs. so it offers them both the experience, the hands-on experience, and a whole world of where you can work. we have many students now working in d.c. public schools including cesar chavez which i know is one of our presenters, we have several alumni there, and in the agencies with which they have collaborated as undergraduates. and for me personally, this is

very gratifying because my own professional history lies with schools in d.c., in maryland and with the nonprofit sector where i worked for 25 years before i came to au ten years ago. we believe that nonprofit agencies, public offices and schools should all see the university as collaborators in the surgery for the solutions -- in the search for the solutions to problems faced in areas like education. so housing, immigration, employment and the environment, and that's just to name a few. we can be co-educators and problem solvers together. so on behalf of the university, i welcome you and look forward to hearing how this conference helps us all connect, empower and then act. thank you so much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, for our first civics highlight, please

welcome diane douglas of seattle city club. [applause] ♪ ♪ >> good morning, everyone. >> good morning. >> the collection and analysis and interpretation and dissemination of data on our american civic life is one of the most important and impactful things that ncoc does. and this afternoon we're going to look at why that matters, how it matter, how it's done, how all of us can be involved and how we can bring it back to our states and communities. we're going to look at, actually, threats to the collection of civic data that are happening right now. and if you've come to this conference to get involved, that's a way you can get involved immediately, because we all have to rally to make sure that that stays a coherent and supported part of ncoc's mission and vision. and then we get to help shape that and talk to the great ncoc staff about how that vision should continue into the future,

and we'll talk about just end larging our cohort of stakeholders. and then in the second half of the session we'll turn to our communities, to see how this data's meaningful in states and localities, and we'll look at the partnerships and support and the impact that it has in this local communities. we'll share best practices with each other. so if you're someone who's worked on civic health indices for your state or locality, we hope you'll come and share your wisdom. if you're someone who's planning on writing a civic health index report if -- for your community, you can't find a place to get more practical tips on how to make it the west report in the -- the best report in the nation, and if you're someone who's just curious about what does this all mean and how does data impact our life and shape it, then we hope you'll come and

bring your questions. thanks so much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back alere. ♪ ♪ [applause] >> so we're going to call wendy spencer out here in a moment, but before we do that, i want to say a few words about her. her career spans 30 years and includes leadership roles across sectors in government, nonprofits and the private sector. she has served both democratic and republican administrations. prior to coming to washington, d.c., she served as the ceo of the florida governors' commission on volunteerism where she coordinated major volunteer efforts in response to disasters including eight record breaking storms from 2004-2005.

quite an achievement. she's also held professional roles in many organizations including the united way, the chamber of commerce and the bank and insurance industries. we know her as our primary cheerleader, and i know her as my sister in service, wendy spencer. [applause] ♪ ♪ >> thanks, and he is my brother in service. so we love to share that. hello, everyone. it's so great to be at national conference on citizenship where we are all rallying around civic participation, civic life, volunteerism. i feel like i'm just -- this is an american choir of volunteerism and civic life. are you ready for a great conference? yes? absolutely? this is great. really pleased to be here on behalf of the corporation for

national and community service. so a little bit about our agency. we are really doing our part to engage americans in service. across the nation today 75,000 members are serving, around 300,000 seniors are serving in our senior corps programs, rsvp and foster grandparents. we also have about 4.6 million volunteers who are either serving alongside those aher corps members, or they will participate in one of our days of service like dr. martin luther king day of service or 9/11 day of service and rethem brans. so combined with the national service participants and the volunteers, it's about five million americans in service through all of our programs. in 60,000 locations across america. and that's unduplicated.

so that's every school, every health care center, every park, every habitat home that's being built. all engaging in invest doing many, many great things. tutoring and mentoring and reaching out to our elderly, helping shelter those that are homeless, providing food to those who need food security, serving our veterans and their family members who need our support, as well as serving in the recenter and -- in the convenient, and, unfortunately, rebuilding after disasters. we're currently doing that in detroit, even some aftermath from hurricane sandy, oklahoma, many of our tornadoes. they're serving right now. so collectively i'm very pleased that we feel that so many americans are committed to service and are demonstrating a very strong sense of desire to help one another. in fact, our volunteering and civic life in america study, we ask this question: do you help

your neighbors? and i'm pleased to say that about two-thirds of americans, roughly around 180 million, say yes to that question. .. are this generation which spans

from 18-33 has come and i will quote ron brownstein, i heard him say has an impulse towards a service. among that group, a college age millennials, 18-24, so that's the youngest sector of the group of millennials has a particularly strong service impulse. our recent study shares with us that the volunteering rate among the 18-24-year-olds attending college, that's the key word, attending college, was 25.9% last year. that's higher on average than volunteering rate for adults over all. which hold steady at just around, just over 25%. it's significantly higher than the volunteering rate of 18-24-year-olds who were not enrolled in college. that rate is about 13.8%.

we have some good news and we have an opportunity. the good news is when you consider the number of americans in this age group is larger than it was a decade ago and the percentage of 18-24-year-olds attending college has increased dramatically, there's a lot of hope because they are serving in volunteering and we are connecting with it. the opportunity to as your talk about those who are not enrolled in college, that rate is 12% less among that age group 18-24. this gives us opportunity i think we need to address. so there's a couple of ways to approach that. one these just helping your team and he is important. please try to find a cause that you're passionate about and support that calls. but if that isn't enough to lure that group of 18 to 24-year-olds into volunteering, let's

persuade them with a very specific benefit. volunteering as a pathway to employment that was released, this report released last year, has given us some very good news, that if you are unemployed and you're looking for work and you volunteer, you increase the likelihood of getting the job by 27%. if you don't have high school diploma and you're looking for work and you volunteer, that likelihood raises up to 51%. if you live in a rural community and you are looking for work in a rural community, if you volunteer you increase the likelihood about 55%. so because many of our young people in that age group of 18-24 are looking for work, in fact there in the bracket that has the highest unemployment rate at any age group comment we need to find ways to get them

connected to jobs. i think that with this case study now that luring them in through the volunteering is a really good way to do so because it's going to help them but it's also going to help the communities they serve. people with more hands and hearts to help those and serve. so that's the case, how do we do it? president has forced on us by national service that president obama issued over a year ago asked us, and i co-chaired that with the domestic policy adviser to the president, asked us to go and find new partnerships to grow opportunities for americans to serve. so we set out to work with other federal agencies, the private sector, nonprofit, faith community. i'm pleased to report with our new partnership we have been able to enroll over 4000 new americorps members here this

year and in the coming year, and $33 million committed to them. that's through these partnerships, and we are looking for more. so if that's not enough, we said another way to help engage more americans deserve, especially young people, is let's find some resources. we were to identify up to $30 million in a partnership we call americorps partnerships challenge. this partnership for all those will take us up on it will help us engage up to 8000 americorps members in service over the next year or two. so this is college scholarships that we'l we will be offering. were looking for organizations who are willing to underwrite a living stipend, a modest living stipend for the americorps members. so bring us right is. if you've got an id and you're

willing as an organization to underwrite some of that modest living allowance, we are willing to part with the educational scholarship and brand them as americorps members, which is a great opportunity to join with us. and i'm really pleased that the nclc and the national service alliance we spoke about a few months ago has also had this goal. to engage more americans in particular that 18-24, 20 year americans in service, and its lead with a wonderful leader, general stanley mcchrystal, who is eating a wonderful face and a prolific champion for encouraging young people to serve. we are going to hear from him soon, but we really have to thinthink general mcchrystal and only her fourth leadership and all the members of the national service alliance as well as. so now we know opportunity when

you get more americans to serve. we've got partnerships available. we provide a set aside for funding to do so. i know we're going to engage more americans in service. we just celebrated our 20th anniversary where we celebrated 900,000 americans have served in americorps over the last 20 years. what we'v we have learned from e who served in americorps is that they learned great skills. they learn how to be great speakers. they learned how to connect service to individuals. they learned how to market a program. they learn how to work through problems, and is on how to serve with people different from themselves. all of these are characteristics that employers are looking for, and we would encourage employers to look for. they also have a bit of a service above self, mission of self sort of mentality in their qualification. they competed for these positions and they've been selected. so we are now going to ask

employers across the country to recognize that national service participants like the alums of peace corps and americorps have great assets to offer an organization. so at the 20th anniversary event president obama, alongside president clinton, and we were pleased that president george w. bush and laura bush, give us a message during the day, and also president george h. w. bush participate in a service from his home with americorps members where in all 50 states a new class of americorps, 75,000 of them were inducted at the same moment in time on september 12. but on this day president obama announced a new initiative called employers of national service. so we are asking employers to give a little bit of a preference to those who served communities through americorps or peace corps our other national service programs. may be in your advertisement

that you post job applicants you say, americorps members, peace corps alums, encourage to apply. take it a step further and maybe we would ask of those employers around the country both nonprofit and private sector to put a checkbox in your application that says have you served in the national service program like americorps or peace corps? polices tried your experience. or maybe there's a point system you might want to encourage. americorps alums and peace corps alums to do so. i'm very pleased that we are having an inaugural charter, employers of national service partnerships challenge that will enlist employers around the country who will participate with us, and that deadline is december 31. but i'm pleased to share a couple of great employers have already signed on. disney, comcast and nbc universal, the american red cross, habitat for humanity, teach for america, the city of

nashville was my very first city, and the city of south sioux city in nebraska. i was just in nebraska to announce this partnership with the first lady of nebraska on the steps of the mansion there last week. so if you're an avid organization and to employ anyone, consider the alums of national service in your qualifications, or is someone you should look to to bring onto your teen. because i promise you they will make outstanding team members. so i'm thrilled to be a part of this conference. i'm thrilled to be a partner in, and i support all the work that our universities and colleges are doing to connect our students to opportunities to serve. let's work on that group who are not enrolled in college as well.

i'm going to count all of you to join us in the americorps partnership challenge, or any we can find a vehicle, an avenue for americans to serve our communities. thank you so much for having me today. a really appreciate it. [applause] ♪ ♪ the country and -- >> thank you, wendy. before bringing out our next speakers, i wanted to just give you a sneak peak at some of the civic life, data that we becoming a. i want to share three numbers with you. two of them haven't changed much but the third i find interesting. 88 or send of americans ate dinner with friends and family, which is great, that's good news. 56% of america's trusted most or

all other neighbors, but this last number, 55% have some are great deal of confidence in media. that sounds, it's a majority and that's a large number but it went down seven points since 2011 in that sense to me like it's worthy of pacific health index report. so we need to delve into that number. of course, all of these numbers don't mean as much or don't have meaning in and of themselves, connected or disconnected from people to work on the ground. it's those folks who in small and big ways make a difference in our community. i want to invite a group of folks who have done that through national service. mary bruce and our colleagues from americorps. please join me in welcoming them to the stage. mary bruce. [applause] ♪ ♪

>> my dad dropped out of high school. he went back in his early '20s. i remember him telling me, he took it much more seriously the second time around and there was another student who was being distracting in class. he didn't like that. my dad found that kid in the hallway, grabbed him by the collar, slammed into lockers and threatened him with an inch of his life to pay attention. my dad said that help the kid pay attention. my dad later went to college but he didn't finish, and he always regretted that. so in our household growing up, college wasn't optional. my dad's story and is hope for us made us pay attention. so when our college acceptance letter came we were thrilled. but wind, no matter how we ran

the numbers can we found out that we couldn't afford it. it was devastating. so very late in my senior year of high school i had to find something else and i found americorps. and it changed my life. i moved from suburban ohio where 99% of my peers went to college to washington, d.c. public schools. we are at the time fewer than half finished high school. i served as a tutor and mentor any fourth grade classroom. i have never been so exhausted. i remember once i was walking to school. it was the winter holidays and wanted to do something for those kids so i bought some crayons and some small things and put them in gift bags and they carefully tied ribbons on the givebacks. i was in the middle of the sidewalk, handful of these gift bags and i broke down and cried. how crayons possibly going to make a difference to these kids? charisma and tunisia, carlos,

alfonzo to rafael nadal i can see those kids. they were so smart and sword work in stuck in a system that was completely failing them. these kids may be pay attention. i don't know where they are today but i would like to think they were a little bit better prepared for the fifth grade because i was there. and more than that i know i'm part of a movement of teachers and principals, of poets and policymakers, who made in americorps. individuals who continue to live a life of service because they served. the data shows that. nine in 10 americorps alums go on a continued to work in the public sector. they said was among the most significant professional experience is other life. i'm thrilled today to be joined by two fellow americorps alums, jeffrey and kelly. we were made in america corporate we're part of, we are part of the movement and i am thrilled to have them share

their stories today. >> growing up, i was an ordinary kid. i was often bullied and picked on. but despite that i was had this interconference do whatever is going to be like it was going to be important and it was going have an impact. i haven't because my parents, my family can folks in and who instilled a vision of my future into the. for me i always thought, i was want to be a doctor. i remember when i got my first microscope when i was eight. thought i was going to be emergency room. i loved the show pr. thought i would be in a lab trying to find cure for cancer and the human impact on the world. i was a bio major in college and one semester, a social science requirement i signed up for service learning core. i didn't know what it was big it sounded different and engaging a deadly didn't know that in the service learning core with a sunday to grupo working with teenagers who'd been removed from their families. because of decisions they

themselves admit or decisions that are taken% made. but it did. i develop a relationship with of the people. i begin to look at them and began to see my teenage self within them. when i looked in her eyes i didn't see any light that i didn't hear any vision of what they thought their future could be. it was in those moments i realize the impact i always thought i would have from a work in my life was likely going to let a little different. that one course to get another and another, until when i graduate from college i didn't want to go back into the bile that. i was looking for professional development and leadership opportunity that would help me become a youth service professional that could impact the lives of young people. i found an americorps program. when i got on the plane from durham, north carolina, and landed in new hampshire and i raise my rating to take the americorps pledge i have no idea what to suspicion that program was going to do to me. it was going to ignite a lifelong thirst to empower and public interest in individuals and communities, but it did.

as a result i stand before you today back in the lab in the social innovation lab excited and honored to be part of a network of americorps alums, national service support and working with organizations like nco seek or export how can we leverage halted and the national circumstance and coercion to address the challenge we face as a committee, a country in the nation. i'm jeffrey richardson, office of mayors office in d.c. where do so by the national service opportunities each year and a district are getting things done. thanks. [applause] >> so good morning. i was everybody feeling this morning? great. my name is kelly tsai, i'm based in brooklyn, new york, i like my colleagues here, mary ann jaffe i was made in america corporate when i graduated from college i graduated with a major in urban planning comparatively short

clearly prepares you for life as a spoken word poet. i actually is a three-time alternative spring break along which is the thing almost a record. i wanted to do something with my life and i graduate from school in 2000. i know i look so young, but i graduate from school in 2000 have the benefit of just always going that americorps was there. that's what i could do with my life when i wanted to country and get back to my committee. after i graduate from school i served a year in public allies chicago. back then that was in large part due to michelle obama and back in those days people are stuck but a great the obama's were. and i was let go of the obama's and what is up with think they're so great? but we soon learned that joe impact on american history. but when i was in my time at americorps of switch on the west side of chicago doing youth entrepreneurship. my first and the jobless everyone first day on the job

since the with the startup as well as in the early weeks of my time there. one of the major gang leaders in the neighborhood who was assassinated by a rival gang, so there was so much happening in thinthe community at that time. as i kind of to perform all over the world i will always take that experience of not only serving in that space but of my cohort and friends that continue to make impacts in so many different fields. but before i close out today i would like to share a little poem with you all if that's all right. is that all right? i wrote this in celebration of the 20th anniversary of americorps, so it's dedicated to the 900,000 people who have served their -- to americorps, and to all of you who care so deeply about contributing to our communities in so many ways. to find your place in the world, where your leverage can mean everything, where your courage can invite a child to read, a

house to be built, a veteran to live more fully again, grasp hands in this circle. where none of us know what we can be, not yet. we find out together, planning nights at the school gym, packing medical supplies at the clinic, i'm jamming paper stuck in the printer, driving that long stretch of road beyond the floodplain. here where value so often goes overlooked, here in this place, this community, and this person. you, you commit with that maybe even knowing exactly why yet. you commit 10 months, a year, two years, three, a lifetime. add to the billions of hours of work, the hundreds of thousands of hands working so hard to pull together what so often falls through the cracks. find of value here.

wear it too often goes overlooked, where its leverage can mean everything for all of us, every single one. thank you all so much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the chairman of the national advisory board of the ncoc to present the trend toward. good morning. we are running behind by random stage. it's a procedure story of service learning translate into what we heard was a lifelong first to serve community and country. what a wonderful display and our service. also just want to have some to mary bruce was doing such a partner job with americorps alums and wendy spencer on the upper country whose helping to

strengthen the service culture. two and half years ago our next guest and keynote speaker was giving a talk on leadership at the aspen institute ideas festival and ignited a nation with a big idea. having just returned from commanding troops in iraq and afghanistan, he noted that for the first time in history less than 1% of americans are serving in our military during war leading to the complacent assumption that serving the country was someone else's job. he went on to call for large scale national service so that every young american could have the shared experience of serving their nation either in the military are as a civilian. this commitment to service goes out of its own service to country, and remarkable record of achievement. he has been praised for creating a revolution in warfare diffused intelligence and operations. a four star general, he is the

former commander of u.s. and international forces in afghanistan and iraq. he's also the former leader of the joint special operations command, jsoc, which oversees the military's most sensitive forces. his leadership of the jsoc, which he completely transformed, is credited with well-known actions that made our country safer. today, through his work here at home is on the frontlines of the national service movement yet again, bringing the same ingenuity and dedication he brought to the battlefield to the franklin project at the aspen institute, and the new national service the lines, which the national conference on citizenship service nation invoices for national service our a proud part. as chair of the franklin project leadership council he has recruited and let a high level team of advocates for national service. bringing in former secretaries of defense and state, leaders from the military and from every sector of american life, and

tapped a talented marine corps veteran gay men going to lead the effort with his extraordinary team, teach for america, americorps alum -- former cia analyst terry moeller from new york city civic core member adam, and former california volunteers analyst test mason l. become a coach or alan casey, irrepressible allen case is with us here today as well. he is encouraged all of us to apply some of the lessons from jsoc to from a new national service for funds with a common vision, clear goals and the plan of action to meet him. is also the author of the best selling book, my sure of the task -- how many of you read it? and scope of. were future. his new book team of teams, set for release in 2015. so today the national conference on citizenship is honored to present general stanley mcchrystal with the hooah award commission by the major

george h. smith memorial fund. this annual award is designed to honor the life and service of major smith, a man who served for 20 is in the u.s. army as a foreign area officer throughout the middle east and spent his retirement working to help hurricane victims restart their lives. in honor of major smith legacy of service, his family established the hooah award to recognize an outstanding veteran who defines their citizenship through service to our country, both in uniform and beyond. i cannot think of anyone who better fits that description or someone who has done more than his share of the task. banner honoring and keynote speaker today. please welcome general stanley mcchrystal. [applause]

>> i grew up in the rangers and the word and one actually was first used in the rangers. it was interested because there's a great story about what it came from because all rangers walk around saying hooah all the time but it went back to omaha beach in the second world war. if immediate scene saving private ryan, the story is that the battalion landed, it was difficult, they're getting shot up and general norman cota, brigadier general walked along the beach and he needed people to start moving inland difficult it was going to be. he went to in order station and he said, which unit are you guys

from? the young sergeant looked up and he goes, we are the rangers. and he says okay, rangers, legally. vienna looked up, who, us? off mike

really is expensive as what you are and which are about and why you do or don't do what you do. i think citizenship in america has eroded for lots of reasons. but it's eroded to the point where we need to stop and look at the real problem. we can look at partisanship and politics, but that economic inequality. we can look at the polarization a different parts of our society. but it would we look at the problem and we want to fix it instead of going after each individual thing and if we want take a big step, it will take a big idea. i believe in the big idea that service produces different citizen. i believe in the big idea that once you're part of something bigger than yourself and once you commit yourself, you feel differently about it.

once you've invested, you on part of what america is and what society is. the franklin project is the recognition that the big idea is needed right now. we have been doing great things for many years but we need to do more. the nation needs to embrace the idea that citizenship is reinforced dramatically by the experience of service. the franklin project is really one part of an alliance to push the idea to make service a rite of passage and an expectation for all americans by giving an opportunity to every american between the ages of 18 and 22 to service your, 12 months of paid national service in some spectrum, health care, conservation, education. it's two sides of the same going with the military service. we have allowed the term service to be associated with wearing a uniform and it's not. service is service to others.

so if we say are you in the service, that ought to apply to everyone who is or has been serving others. what we've got to do is give people the opportunity to do that because think about your first experience doing that. you felt good about it initially. he felt okay i get a good thing, but over time you felt very different about your commitment. it gets inside. so the idea of a service your, we have a long-term effort which is going to take a decade or more to expand the concept of service years so every young american has that opportunity. right now we are pretty limited. the opportunities available to americans, we will have to expand those dramatically. our 10 year goal is to have an opportunity for 1 million young americans every year which would be about 25%. our ultimate goal is to have it so embedded in our culture that when people sit around the

dinner table with her family, their parents will go, well, what are you thinking about serving? either before, during or after college or if you're not going to college for you began the rest of your life. and young people will talk among themselves not about are you going to serve, they will talk about where you served. then i think we will be best when it goes long enough where on a train, you're standing in a crowded train weight and start talking to the stranger next to you coming very early in a conversation you say, where did you serve? and one person says well, i thought any school in louisiana. the other person says, i served in the marine corps. and a third person says i was doing conservation in nebraska or there will be an instant connection between them. there will be a bond that they never knew that they all had contributed to something. they all had bona fides with

each other because citizenship didn't just mean i can vote. it means i have the right and responsibility. and in the long term i like to think if we can make this an expectation to where people who move forward in society and then move forward in business or government or wherever, particularly politics, and they think about running for office, they won't do it unless they can stand up and say, and this is what i did for the nation to contribute. i am a small part of this movement. as bridge mention i don't legislate over two years ago. i didn't know what americorps was because another service i had no idea. and i think i'm probably average. a sense of gotten out of got me opportunity what it is and what the amazing stuff that's done and so we have to so much more

of this. this room shouldn't be full of 150 people. it ought to be 50,000 hearing this at the same time. and i believe it's possible if we align to the big idea. thank you so much for all you've done but i think is really just trying to get you to do more. [laughter] so thank you so much for all you are and all you have done. [applause] ♪ ♪ >> i feel a little bit like a dj but one more time would you give

it up for stan mcchrystal, please? [applause] every time i think i might be doing something, might be making some country be sure i think of people like stan mcchrystal and it gets me out of bed a little faster, it's my pants a little faster and gives me out the door a little faster. a couple of personal notes. is ted mcconnell here? where is ted mcconnell? would you stand up, please? [applause] >> today is ted's birthday. ted is the executive director of the campaign for civic mission of schools and a pillar of our community. so happy birthday, and many happy returns of the day. is kristen campbell backstage? kristin? oh, kristin?

kristin is a long time -- am i in trouble. come here. [applause] [inaudible] she has become sort of of counsel in legal terms. and along the way she's going to get married in two weeks to a wonderful guy. [applause] spent and along the way she really screwed up her arm, and so only, only national service trust issued a wounded warrior. thank you. >> thank you. [applause]

>> this morning we aim to shed light on the issue of economic equality and its relationship to active civic engagement. the goal certainly is not to engage in a partisan discussion of the solution or to discuss the full married economic causes related to the quality your instead our goal is to better understand this issue relationship between civic engagement and the quality. what are the interplays between these two elements of our lives? and how can we see active citizenship as a potential long-term way to address this challenge from any political, social and economic vantage point? it sort of an interesting prison this morning, an interesting way to diffuse the light, said engagement is an interesting way to do the light that is coming

from the issue of economic equality. a history of capitalism in our country has been a constant search for balance, it does but what the economists refer to as our basic animal instincts which are often insensitive that have propelled our country forward nonetheless. and the need to ensure all americans feel like they have a stake in the economy and our democracy. i'd like to read something that a friend sent me. as capitalists, income inequality is part of our economy. motivates entrepreneur's to take risks and build companies. over our nation's history the most successful society in a relatively short 250 years, america's gone from nowhere to leading countries to there five times our age. at the same time democracy serves as a counterbalance, giving every citizen equal representation. america is getting richer, but

most voters don't feel it. taken to its conclusion the indicators that ncoc measures, civic health initiative both qualitative and quantitative and we need to keep that civic data coming, tell us about the balance. iq thermometer these indicators inevitably signaled when our countries economic and civic health is threatened. the system of ours works better than any other but has to work for as many as possible. everyone, in basketball terms, basketball turn, everyone needs to have a legitimate look at the basket of success. this is one reason why in 2011 and again in 12 ncoc delved deeply into unemployment, ma and he wasted a panel discussion at the national evolution of that work, looking not government looking out at the downstream challenge of unemployment but

the more culturally ingrained upstream challenge of economic equality. we don't expect to find a solution in the next six was but we have gathered a group of distinguished thinkers, that's easy for me to say, to shed light on this topic. the panel is led by someone the nexus of civic engagement and national issues, bill galston. is in the brookings institution governance studies program, former policy adviser to president clinton and presidential candidates. bill is an expert on domestic policy, political campaigns and elections. is good research focuses on designing a new social contract and the implications of political polarization. additionally, many of bill's best thoughts can be found weekly in his "wall street journal" column. there he poses important questions to my fellow journal readers, and to use this balance

and my thinking about these critical issues, and i know others do as well. my only lament is this balance is in precious short supply. ncoc its long-standing relationship with the bill india served as found support and advice to her civic health initiatives, and without it is certainly a pleasure to introduce bill galston and the members of his panel. [applause] >> haven't yet got to the bifocals. but i think i should.

it is a pleasure and an honor to be back here at an annual meeting of this organization which has done so much to promote both knowledge and action in the area of civic engagement. there is nothing like this organization, and i hope it continues to go from strength to strength in the years ahead. the most precious thing that we have is time, and i will try not to waste it. my first job is to introduce the members of this panel. they all have distinguished resumes, and so i will not give any one of them the introduction that he or she deserves. starting at the far end, robert doar, who is fellow in policy

studies at the american enterprise institute, and for purposes of today's discussion, perhaps most importantly, the former commissioner of the new york city human resources administration which is the largest municipal human resources administration in the country, and an extraordinary vantage point from which to do much of what is going on in our society today. next is eric liu who is the founder and ceo of citizen university, and probably very well-known to many of you as the co-author of a couple of really influential books in the case of citizenship and civic engageme engagement, gardens of democracy, and the truth patriot. next, erica williams simon, who

has become extraordinarily prominent and influential at what i now regard as a very young age. she is the founder and ceo of e. w. s. strategies. her advice has been sought on some of the most important profit making as well as nonprofit institutions in the world to i think you recognize some of these names, coca-cola, the red campaign, aspen institute, rock the vote and the children's defense fund. anybody can get all those together in one tent is on to something i think. and to my immediate left, or right, depending on your vantage point, thomas hungerford who was the senior economist and director of tax and budget policy at the economic policy institute, and he has served with distinction in virtually all of the federal government

agencies that i would describe as honest and functional including gao, omb, the social security administration, the congressional research service. he has it touched cbo or the joint tax committee, ma but other than that his resume is complete. so since, tom, since you're a certified economist, i'm given to understand, could you get this conversation launched by talking of it about such concepts as income, wealth and inequality, and what we know has been going on in these areas over the past generation or so? >> okay. well, i want to step back a little bit and be very brief but when we are talking about inequality or economic inequality, we can be talking about economic opportunities over economic outcomes.

it's easy to talk about economic outcomes, it's easier to measure economic outcomes and is to talk about opportunity. that's where we get into a discussion about consumption, income, or wealth inequality. i'd say in a word, however you measure income, or income economic -- income inequality, looking at income if it's before taxes and before transfers or after transfers or after transfers and taxes, the trend over the last three decades has been upwards. income, wealth and consumption inequality have been increasing for the past 30, 35 years. the interesting thing about much of this increase is much of the action has been at the top of the distribution, top of the wealth dissipation or income test edition.

basically it's the top 1% or maybe even a smaller slice is pulling away from the rest of us, which i think does have some implication or why income inequality is very important for a variety of other reasons including social cohesion, citizenship and civic engagement. >> thanks so much. now i'm going to pass the microphone all the way down to robert doar because i mentioned previously, as the commission of the largest usable human resources administration in the country, he has had the opportunity to look at what happened in new york city but also as a scholar, as a student of these matters, to take a look at the national trend as well and look at the relationship between them. >> the human resources ministry shipping nukes he was the city's principal social service agency. we had well for and child support enforcement and medicaid

and food stamp benefit our focus there in the agency was less on inequality and moral poverty reduction and opportunity against the. we felt we had an approach that worked compared to other large cities. i think we made progress during some difficult times in the last seven years. nationally, i think the inequality issue is in some respect for those of us who care about poverty in meeting incomes in helping people at the low end move up, a little bit of a distraction. nationally the most recent data from the census bureau was very disappointing, about where they were in 2013. 45 million americans are still classified as poor. that's three years in a row it hasn't moved. meeting incomes for african-americans is almost 15% lower than it was in 1999-2000 when it reached a peak. we are far off we were in the relatively recent past it before the recent recession and very far off where we were at the end of the 1990s into thousands. from my perspective i think we

need to focus more on broad-based growth, that increases opportunities and jobs at all levels of the economy. the weakness in the recovery has been terrible for struggling americans. we had to focus on work requirements and work emphasis in social services programs. that's some of what we did in new york city. went to focus on work support that make wages go farther, special for people left out of her work support system like childless adults and single individuals who don't get in earned income tax credit, not likely to be a food stamp benefits, no other support. they are reliant on a wage. lastly, family. to the extent that again the most recent data, once again confirms child poverty rates for children in single parent families is 45%. in married couple families its 9%.

that's a big difference. the recent report out of harvard showed that income inequality and opportunity, that says texas are highly related to community for most of the households are in single parent families. so work supports, family, those i think will become and poverty reduction and helping people alone is what we need to focus on. >> so eric liu, and you have spent a number of years now looking hard at the relationship between civic trends and economic trends. what is the impact of what both of the first two speakers said? how do you assess the impact on our civic and political life? >> well, first of all, it's exciting to be part of this conversation and i'm really gratified that ncoc is decided

this year to focus squarely on the question of inequality. it is, for those as robert is gesink, whose concern is primarily about poverty and alleviating poverty, i'm not sure i would call a inequality a distraction to understand the point you are making but i think to me, inequality, economic and political, or the central fact of american life today. we are living through a period of nearly unprecedented both inequality in terms of spread and unprecedented concentration of wealth. at levels not seen from roughly before the great depression. this is one of those instances where we don't really want to test how much correlation ends up being causation when you this kind of concentration. it's not healthy for the economy. where it connects, bill, to your question, i think it's not unrelated phenomena. they are quite two sides of the same coin or two parts of the

same vicious cycle, economic inequality and political inequality. when you have the level of concentrate voice and concentrated political clout that we have in this country today, there is a recent study by benjamin page and another political scientist showing essentially the policy preferences of average citizens, average americans, have little to no bearing on the policy outcomes of national politics. that's not a partisan statement. policymakers spent primarily to those in the top 10%, probably even slices within the top 10%. that economic inequality begets political and civic inequality where those in the middle, much less of those who are poor, i have little to no voice and little to no power to make their voices heard. that in turn begets more economic inequality. that's the thing, this is not just, these are two interesting phenomena going on.

they are part of a feedback loop of a cycle. our charge here both in this conversation but i think more broadly in the work that all of us do and that ncoc is so great at getting us to focus on its figure out how to break the vicious circle and sent in motion a virtuous circle of more economic opportunity, more political opportunity, and more civic opportunity to i'm sure we'll get to talk a bit more about that as we go. >> so erica, not only having worked with all of the nonprofits and profit-making organizations i listed, you have been one of the principal actors in the effort to get the millennial generation involved in addressing all of these questions. i've really have a two-part question for you. first of all, does what you just heard ring true given the sorts of people you counseled and the

sorts of groups that you try to activate in this fire? and number two, how are you advising groups and individuals to begin responding to these questions? >> first, i had to set up because i'm not as rigid as my colleagues up here. i'm very excited about this work i know everyone up here is. my job has primarily been to tell stories and how people tell the stories that inspire change. and so when i hear this david and his announcer, it out so the rings true. my primary role in this work is how do i help young people, not just understand this data and what it means, but convey the stories that young people are telling us and acting out on a day-to-day basis to decision makers? so we are hearing and what we know about the economy and its impact on young people is terrifying, right? it's kind of depressing if we're going to be honest about it.

and yet all of the dead and research about millennials show we are still, and i say we do know i'm on the upper older end of the millennial demographic, but all the data shows no menus are still optimistic. that is because what we know about millennials is a very solution driven generation. in that, and i've read some wonderful work that eric has been very articulate this brilliantly. use of millennials will bypass, they are a bypass generation. they are not interested in the institutions of old, i'd hate to say of all by the institutions that they were told, is a better way to put it, would solve the problems, would lead them to economic prosperity. word i have it heard used to appear at this point is economic security which is another term i hear, quite a bit when young people are talking about their future. they feel very insecure. they don't put their faith in the institutions that have so

far failed them. that's the story that they've been told and have seen played out in their lifetime. and yet they are solution oriented. i think the conversation we're having today about the relationship between economic insecurity and inequality and civic engagement really needs to be transformed to one of solutions. how do we as a civic engagement community positioned the work that we do, positioned civic engagement as a solution? perhaps not the only, certainly not the only but the data that wendy spoke about i thought was so exciting when she said you can see the relationship between volunteerism, civic engagement and employability. so if we can begin t to do not just young people but the country that this is not, civic engagement is not something beautiful and wonderful and positive for the sake of historical references, for the sake of civic engagement in and of itself, but really began to

paint it as a solution to the economic insecurity that you are experiencing as a way to help garner yourself a better future. i think we will see a dramatic increase, and we already are seeing an increase in young people participating. the second thing i will say is when we look at young people and millennials and the levels of civic engagement, i think there are two stories being told. in our work and in our space worried about the data, we recognize millennials are civic minded to wendy said in an impulse toward service and yet the national merit is that young people are selfish, lazy, connected to technology too much. that's not true but we have to find a way into civic engagement community talk about the working people are doing. it may not sound to the common ear, to the average person like what we've been taught civic engagement is. it may not look the same. social entrepreneur should is the white and people are responding to the pressures of

the economy and responded to their social concerns. innovating with technology and finding ways to hold their leaders accountable via the technology that they have helped build and create is another example. i think we also have to talk about language and how all of the work that we do is communicate to people who are not in this room to accurately reflect what they are feeling and what we are doing. >> that's terrific, for wonderful opening statements and response related to different questions. i'm going to call an audible for a minute. because the important debates have emerged already, at least points for discussion and reflection. first, i detected at least some difference of emphasis between tom hungerford and robert doar on the question of whether we should be looking at any quality or poverty obviously we could look at both, but what should we

really be keep our eyes on as a problem to be addressed through civic engagement as well as other means? tom, do you want to check since robert raised the question. >> i mean, i think income inequality is very important but i think one of the things, and i think both eric and erica brought this up is when you to keep our institutions honest. ..