The Building Bridges Coalition – a consortium that played a vital role in beginning the International Service-Learning Summits and the community-building that lead to globalsl – recently accepted the challenge to lead the international track of the Service Year campaign. The Service Year campaign aims to make one year of national service a normal part of growing up in America, as normal as going to high school. It aims to have one million Americans complete a civilian service year by 2023. International service will be one of the supported options. (The Beta version of the movement’s website can be found at https://serviceyr.org/)

BBC also announced plans for a major conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the BBC. The all-day conference will be held on June 14 at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Brookings is where BBC’s founding conference was held, famously starting with a call to action from Colin Powell. In June BBC will assemble another impressive group of speakers to address topics such as the role of volunteers in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, effective practices of international volunteer programs, and the latest research on the impact of volunteers.

BBC Research and University Engagement Working Group member Ben Lough also recently reported a breakthrough in a United Nations General Assembly resolution explicitly mentioning the vital role of volunteers in the agenda for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. He also noted an important survey of effective practices that will be carried out in early 2016 with partner organizations in foreign countries.