Anyone planning a Semester of Service or Global Youth Service Day project is invited to register for these calls, all at 2:00 pm EST. February 17, 2009 will cover partnerships and volunteer recruitment, March 3 will discuss fundraising and grantwriting and the March 17 webinar will address media and web communications.

WKCD is launching a web-based national petition campaign to make college access and success for low-income students one of the Obama Administration's top priorities.

New Youth Connections, a youth-written publication from Youth Communications, has a special issue of true stories by teens about the election -- titles include "Teen Pregnancy: An Election Issue?" "Electoral College Made Easy" and "Awakening the Youth Vote," just to name a few!

When the What Kids Can Do youth-led news bureau, Y-Press, covered the recent Presidential conventions, half the team camped out at the DNC and the other half at the RNC. Each team produced slideshows and audio commentaries that capture what makes the Democrats blue and the Republicans red (and why we need to find common ground between the two).

This book marks the first time a human development approach to measuring well-being has
been applied to an industrialized nation. Published by the Social Science Research
Council and Columbia University Press, it ranks states and congressional districts
according to the "American Human Development Index"—which goes beyond economic
output to include three aspects of well-being: health and longevity, access to
knowledge (educational attainment and enrollment), and standards of living (median
earnings). Hard copy: $16.47 or access findings for free on the Web site.

Take The Measure of America Quiz - How sensitive are you to the factors that shape the
quality of life for average Americans? Find out online, and then learn about the Social
Science Research Council and Columbia University report on the American Human
Development Index, The Measure of America.

Mayor Bloomberg has a new plan and it's the first time any local government has put in
place an alternative to the country's 40-year- old standard for measuring poverty, the
National Academies reports.

This report from First Focus is a road map for the Children's
Budget Bill in Congress (as of July 2008). Only one penny of every new, non-defense
dollar spent by the federal government has gone to children and children's programs.
Since the 1960s, the share of spending on kids has dropped 23 percent.
Kids' Share 2008. From the Urban Institute and the New America Foundation, this report
looks at trends in federal spending and tax expenditures on children and finds that
kids have historically not been a budget priority. In 2007, children's spending did not
keep pace with GDP growth and will continue to be squeezed in the next decade unless
policies change.

When it comes to the federal budget, not much is a simple. But a bill in Congress has
potential. The "Children's Budget" legislation -- introduced in Congress in July 2008
by Senator Menendez (D-NJ) and several co-sponsors -- would require future Presidents
to add up all the different sources of funding for children's programs in the federal
budget plans they submit each year, much the way they currently tally spending on
homeland security. It carries no cost and is an easy way to paint a clear picture of
overall spending on children's programs.

Run to Vote combines the sport of track and field with your pledge to vote in 2008. A nonpartisan voting drive led by students and teachers from Granville Central High School in Stem, North Carolina, the Run to Vote team is traveling through 48 states to register people to vote, and collecting pledges to participate in the election this November. For every person that registers to vote or pledges to vote, one of the teachers, or volunteers from the team, will run the equivalent lap on a quarter mile track. Through July 5, 2008, the team has run 814 laps, registered 153 people in 18 states and collected more than a thousand citizen pledges to vote.