by Michelle Nunn, CEO, Points of Light Institute

At Points of Light Institute, we are finding that our international HandsOn Network affiliates are often leading the way in terms of growth and innovation.

Today, we have HandsOn affiliated organizations in 16 countries around the world, including three in China – in Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hong Kong.

HandsOn Shanghai, founded in 2004, has grown to a group of almost 10,000 volunteers—90 percent of them local — contributing to more than 40 projects each week.

It did terrific work in the wake of the recent earthquakes in China, and has model programs around wellness and senior care.

It also works with schools to provide teaching, tutoring, extracurricular clubs and mentoring to migrant schools.

HandsOn Shanghai is also one of our most creative and aggressive affiliates in partnering with corporations.

I believe that corporate engagement is, and will continue to, play a pivotal role in the globalization of civic engagement.

Multi-national corporations are no longer thinking about their philanthropy domestically but they are starting with the premise of global strategies for employee engagement.

Our Hands On Manila affiliate, for instance partners with corporations like Starbucks, Accenture, Chevron, Intercontinental Hotels, the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corp, and they involve 35 corporations on for their annual serve-a-thon.

So at Points of Light, we are seeing first-hand the power and potential of international service.

For all these reasons and so many more, we are thrilled about the Service World policy platform.

“Service World policy platform is a collaborative movement led by the Building Bridges Coalition, National Peace Corps Association and the International Volunteering Initiative at Brookings. This powerhouse of sector leaders aims to scale international service to the levels of domestic volunteer service with increased impact through smart power policy proposals. What Service Nation did to unite Americans around domestic service as a core ideal and problem-solving strategy in American society, Service World hopes to do on a global scale.”

The Service World vision parallels our Points of Light vision that one day every person will discover their power to make a difference, creating healthy communities in vibrant democracies around the world.

We believe that fundamentally, service plays a unique role as a bridge that can foster international understanding and ultimately shape the foreign policy of nations, while building the civil society of nations and nurturing democratic practice.

I want to highlight one particular dimension of the proposed Sargent Shriver International Service Act – the International Social Innovation Fund.

The fund, modeled after the Serve America Act’s Social Innovation Fund and Volunteer Generation fund, is designed to fuel further innovation in how Americans can have a greater impact through international volunteer service and to increase the capacity of local organizations to effectively utilize their time and talents and those of indigenous volunteers.

More than 1 million Americans volunteer overseas in a year, but we can account for only 60,000 of them through major nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.

We want to track those 1 million volunteers, support them, and establish a baseline for growth.

For example, we could provide grants to nonprofits to mobilize and train people in effective and culturally appropriate volunteer service.

We could provide grants to international service organizations to enhance the capacity of local overseas nonprofit, community, and faith-based organizations, particularly in the developing world, to use volunteers most effectively.

Groups like HandsOn Shanghai have told us how important volunteer training is, and how China lacks a strong network of NGOs that can take on volunteers – both areas in which the Fund could have a significant impact.

HandsOn Manila also cites volunteer leader training, staff development and benchmarking/metrics as key needs.

The International Social Innovation Fund can help bring to scale particularly promising international volunteer service programs and build the capacity of local organizations to engage expats as well as local volunteers.

It will help meet real needs, build relationships across boundaries and highlight effective programs that can be adapted for use here in the U.S. and in other parts of the world.

We look forward to working with our colleagues in the Service World coalition and in Congress and the Administration to flesh out the details of the fund and to make it a reality.

Let me close by sharing the Hands On Manila story- which is a story of global volunteering and its potential ripples across the globe.

Gianna, the founder, volunteered with Hands On Greater Phoenix until she moved back home to her native Philippines, where she recognized the need to start a similar organization.

The organization builds upon the local concept of bayanihan, the local term for getting together to help someone in need.  It is Filipino team spirit.

HandsOn Manila anchors its volunteering in the same values, which elders are accustomed to and young people are learning. But it applies a model borrowed from the US for flexible volunteering.

In the last ten years it has grown to engage 2,200 volunteers. They have borrowed the idea of volunteer leaders and made it their own- calling them sherpas, which are at the base of their project management.

Hands On Manila has hosted international teams around disaster relief, has brought back innovations that have been modeled by our domestic affiliates like CD’s to raise money and a book of transformational volunteer stories.

They have launched a Hands On Vacation program and are hosting international volunteers to work on ecological, heritage, and disaster response efforts.

They are generally at the forefront of a volunteer movement that is no longer defined by geographic boundaries, but lived out across the globe through powerful new possibilities.

The Service World agenda invites millions of new stories and ripples to create a more just, participatory, prosperous, and peaceful world.