I caught up today with Neil Bush, the chairman of the board of the Points of Light Institute and the son of former president George H.W. Bush. He told me that he deeply admires the personal commitment to service that President Obama and his wife, Michelle, have made and he's particularly tickled that the president is using his "bully pulpit" to call Americans to action. "My dad used his presidency in the same way," Bush said, and indeed it was the first President Bush who coined the term "points of light" and connected it to volunteerism.
I asked Bush how his parents instilled the idea of service in their children and he said, "My mom volunteered every Monday at the local hospital. My dad sponsored an inner-city softball team...they lived it." And he spoke proudly about his daughter model Lauren Bush, 25, who used her interest in fashion to design a tote bag that is sold to fund United Nations hunger programs. Bush said Points of Light and Facebook folks have been talking about how to use the social networking site to invite youth into the service movement and he sees youth involvement growing noticeably.
In fact, Bush — who has been involved in volunteerism and service for 20-plus years — took a few seconds before he answered my question about whether serving one's country really will become cool. "It does feel different, he said," "there's a larger energy, a more compelling need, more awereness of the transformative nature of volunteerism and the impact it can have. It's like a tsunami wave — building."