Annotated Bibliography 1. National Service Secretariat A number of youth service programs in the United States have been born from the philosophy of national service, but the country can be said to have adopted national service as a policy only with the passage of the National and Community Service Act of 1990. The Peace Corps. The Peace Corps has enrolled more than 130,000 persons aged 18 and over since its founding in 1961. The average age of Peace Corps Volunteers has risen gradually over the years, from about 23 in the early 1960s to about 33 today.
Most Volunteers are college graduates and serve for two years.
Some 6,000 Volunteers presently are serving in 90 countries, including the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America and eastern Europe. It has never enrolled more than 5,500 participants, and currently enrolls about 3,000. Originally it consisted primarily of recent college graduates who were dispatched for service on Indian reservations, at migrant work camps and in inner city ghettoes. Statewide Youth Service Initiatives. In recent years, several states have begun to support an array of youth service activities.