42 U.S.C. § 12572 — National service programs eligible for program assistance

(a) National service corps. Grant recipients under section 12571(a), and federal agencies supporting programs under section 12571(b), must use part of their money or positions — directly, or through subgrants — to run one or more of five kinds of national service corps, aimed at unmet community needs: (1) Education Corps. A recipient may run an Education Corps that meets unmet educational needs and works to improve certain results ("indicators"). Its activities can include: tutoring or otherwise helping elementary and secondary school students; improving school climate; mentoring students (by adults or peers); connecting students, their families, and their schools with needed services and support; helping a school extend its day with better staff and more academic programming, such as expanded learning time or a high-quality after-school program; helping schools and local educational agencies improve service-learning programs by training people to become service-learning coordinators; helping students prepare for college-level work; involving family members in supporting teachers and students; running a preprofessional training program in which college students train in fields such as early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, health services, criminal justice, environmental stewardship, or public safety, perform related service outside the classroom during the school term and vacations, and agree to serve after graduating in that field; helping economically disadvantaged students navigate college admissions; other activities addressing unmet educational needs that the Corporation designates; and providing skilled musicians and artists to build community unity through arts education and engagement, including in low-income communities and in education, health care, and therapeutic settings. The Corps is judged on: student engagement, including attendance and behavior; student academic achievement; the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate; the rate of college enrollment and continued enrollment for high school graduates; any additional indicator the Corporation establishes, consulting the Secretary of Education as appropriate; or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (2) Healthy Futures Corps. A recipient may run a Healthy Futures Corps that meets unmet health needs. Activities can include: helping economically disadvantaged individuals navigate the health services system; helping individuals, or their children, get access to health services, including oral health services; educating disadvantaged and medically underserved individuals about the health system and about disease prevention and health promotion, with a focus on common health conditions and chronic diseases where health disparities exist; improving patients' health literacy, including oral health literacy; providing translation services at clinics and emergency rooms; providing services designed to meet rural communities' health needs, including recruiting youth into health professions there; helping people adopt and maintain healthy lifestyles; addressing childhood obesity through in-school and after-school physical activity and nutrition education; and other activities addressing unmet health needs that the Corporation designates. Indicators: access to health services among disadvantaged and medically underserved individuals; access to health services for uninsured individuals, including disadvantaged children; participation in disease prevention and health promotion initiatives, particularly around common conditions, chronic diseases, and health disparities; patients' health literacy; any additional indicator the Corporation establishes, consulting the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the CDC as appropriate; or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (3) Clean Energy Service Corps. A recipient may run a Clean Energy Service Corps that meets unmet environmental needs. Activities can include: weatherizing and retrofitting housing for low-income households to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions; building energy-efficient housing in low-income communities; conducting energy audits for low-income households and recommending efficiency improvements; providing clean-energy-related services for rural communities; educating students and youth about reducing home energy use, including through service-learning projects; helping develop local recycling programs; renewing and rehabilitating national and state parks and forests, city and county parks, other public lands, and trails — including planting trees, reforestation, forest health restoration, erosion control, fire hazard reduction, and rehabilitating historic sites; cleaning and improving rivers; partnering with the National Park Service to renew park resources and enhance services for visitors and nearby communities; providing service through full-time year-round or full-time summer youth corps programs, such as a conservation or youth service corps, that undertake meaningful projects with visible public benefits, include participants age 16 through 25 (including out-of-school and other disadvantaged youth, such as youth aging out of foster care, youth with limited English proficiency, homeless youth, and youth with disabilities), and provide those participants team-based, structured, adult-supervised work experience, life skills, education, career guidance, employment training, and support services including mentoring, plus the chance to develop citizenship values and skills through service; and other activities addressing unmet environmental and workforce needs that the Corporation designates. Indicators: the number of low-income housing units weatherized or retrofitted; energy cost savings at facilities where participants served; the number of students and youth trained in energy-efficient and environmentally conscious practices; the number of acres of parks and public lands cleaned or improved, and the number of acres of forest preserves or miles of trails or rivers cleaned or improved; any additional indicator the Corporation establishes on clean energy, emissions reduction, or clean-energy job skills, consulting the EPA, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, or the Secretary of Labor as appropriate; or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (4) Veterans Corps. A recipient may run a Veterans Corps that meets unmet needs of veterans and active-duty members of the Armed Forces. Activities can include: promoting community efforts to support military families during and after a deployment; recruiting veterans, particularly returning veterans, into service, including opportunities using their military experience; helping veterans pursue education, professional certification, licensure, or credentials, coordinating with agencies on veterans' education benefits, and coordinating with entities offering internships and fellowships that could lead to employment; promoting community efforts to serve veterans and active-duty members, including helping file benefits claims, assisting federal agencies serving veterans, and sending care packages to deployed troops; helping veterans develop mentoring relationships with economically disadvantaged students; developing projects to assist veterans with disabilities, unemployed veterans, older veterans, and veterans in rural communities, including with transportation; and other activities addressing unmet needs of veterans that the Corporation designates. Indicators: the number of housing units created for veterans; the number of veterans pursuing educational opportunities; the number of veterans receiving professional certification, licensure, or credentials; the number of veterans engaged in service opportunities; the number of military families assisted during and after deployment; the number of disadvantaged students mentored by veterans; the number of projects meeting veterans' needs, especially for veterans with disabilities, unemployed veterans, older veterans, and rural veterans; any additional indicator the Corporation establishes relating to veterans' education, skills, or well-being, consulting the Secretary of Veterans Affairs as appropriate; or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (5) Opportunity Corps. A recipient may run an Opportunity Corps that meets unmet economic-opportunity needs of economically disadvantaged individuals. Activities can include: providing financial literacy education, including on credit management, financial institutions, and savings plans; helping construct, rehabilitate, or preserve housing, including energy-efficient homes, for disadvantaged individuals; helping disadvantaged individuals, including homeless individuals, find and keep housing; helping disadvantaged individuals get access to health services for themselves or their children; helping individuals learn about federal, state, local, or private assistance programs; helping disadvantaged individuals enroll in and complete job training; helping disadvantaged individuals get access to job placement assistance; fighting hunger in low-income communities and rural areas through projects involving food banks and pantries, addressing hunger's long-term causes through education, teaching basic health, nutrition, and life skills, or helping people learn about federal nutrition programs; helping homebound citizens with food delivery, legal and medical services, nutrition information, and transportation; running an E-Corps program that develops and expands access to technology and its benefits in a community; and other activities addressing unmet economic-opportunity needs that the Corporation designates. Indicators: the degree of financial literacy among disadvantaged individuals; the number of housing units built or improved for disadvantaged individuals or low-income families; the number of disadvantaged individuals with access to job training; the number of disadvantaged individuals with access to job placement information; any additional indicator the Corporation establishes, consulting the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and the Treasury as appropriate; or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (b) National service programs. (1) A recipient or federal agency may also use its assistance or positions for broader national service programs and model programs focused on meeting community needs and improving the indicators in paragraph (3). (2) These programs may include: (A) a rural community service program using teams or individuals to address rural poverty or the need for health services, education, or job training; (B) a program engaging participants in public health, emergency and disaster preparedness, and public safety, including recruiting and placing trainees as law enforcement officers, firefighters, search and rescue personnel, or emergency medical workers, and helping organize coordinated federal, state, and local responses; (C) a program expanding mentors for disadvantaged and other youth, whether through direct mentoring, supportive services to mentoring organizations, technology-based mentor matching, or support for statewide and local mentoring partnerships that increase state resources, build new programs, or assist direct-service mentoring; (D) a program in which at least 75 percent of participants are disadvantaged youth, offering life skills training, employment training, educational counseling, help finishing a secondary diploma or its equivalent, or a mentoring relationship with an adult volunteer, with priority given to programs that engage retirees as mentors; (E) a program reengaging court-involved youth and adults to reduce recidivism, which may create support systems beginning in correctional facilities and offer life skills training, employment training, education programs, counseling, and postprogram placement services; (F) a demonstration program mainly aimed at recruiting court-involved youth and adults as participants, volunteers, or members, which may serve any purpose otherwise permitted under this chapter; (G) a program providing education or job training designed for rural communities; (H) a program expanding mentors for youth in foster care, through direct academic mentoring, support for organizations that mentor foster youth (including training mentors on child development, domestic violence, foster care, and confidentiality requirements), or support for foster-care mentoring partnerships; and (I) any other national service program addressing unmet human, educational, environmental, or public safety needs that the Corporation designates. (3) These programs are judged on the indicators described for the five corps types in subsection (a), or any additional local indicator approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (c) Program models for service corps. (1) In addition to the activities already listed, a recipient may carry out a national service corps program through: (A) a community corps program that meets unmet health, veteran, and other human, educational, environmental, or public safety needs and builds community unity through diverse teams of participants; (B) a service program that recruits people with special skills, or trains participants before placement, individually or in teams, and — if consistent with the program's purpose — brings participants together for further training and civic-responsibility-building activities; (C) a campus-based program providing substantial community service during the school term and vacations, using college students (including work-study students), teams of such students, or teams combining students and community residents; (D) a professional corps program that recruits and places qualified participants as teachers, nurses and other health care providers, police officers, early childhood staff, engineers, or other professionals in communities lacking enough such professionals — positions that may pay above the usual living-allowance cap under section 12594(c), because sponsoring public or private employers pay 100 percent of the participants' salaries and benefits (other than the national service educational award); (E) a program giving veterans opportunities to take part in service projects; (F) a program carried out by an intermediary that builds the capacity of local nonprofit and faith-based organizations to expand services; and (G) other program models approved by the Corporation or a State Commission. (2) A recipient funded for a corps program described in subsection (a) may carry it out, in whole or in part, using one of these program models, as long as it still meets the requirements of subsection (a) and this subsection. (d) Qualification criteria to determine eligibility. (1) The Corporation must establish qualification criteria for different types of national service programs, to decide whether a program should be considered eligible for assistance or approved positions under this division. (2) In setting these criteria, the Corporation must consult organizations and individuals with extensive experience developing and running effective national service programs, or delivering veteran, human, educational, environmental, or public safety services. (3) Recipients under section 12571(a) that use part of their assistance to run a subgrant program must also use these qualification criteria. (4) The Corporation must encourage eligible national service programs to establish, where consistent with the program's purpose, an intergenerational component combining students, out-of-school youth, disadvantaged youth, and older adults as participants. (e) Priorities for certain corps. In awarding assistance and positions to the corps described in subsection (a): (1) for the corps described in subsection (a)(2) — Healthy Futures Corps — the Corporation may give priority to entities proposing to support participants pursuing careers that improve the health indicators, and must give priority to entities proposing to run programs in medically underserved areas designated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services; and (2) for the corps described in subsection (a)(3) — Clean Energy Service Corps — the Corporation must give priority to entities proposing to recruit significant percentages of economically disadvantaged individuals and to provide them support services, education, and training for in-demand clean energy jobs. (f) National service priorities. (1) After reviewing the strategic plan approved under section 12651b(g)(1), the Corporation must establish, and may periodically alter, priorities on the types of national service programs and corps to be assisted under section 12581 and the purposes for which that assistance may be used. States, consistent with paragraph (4), must establish and periodically alter, through the process in section 12638(e)(1), priorities for programs assisted under section 12581(e); the Corporation reviews those state priorities during the application process under section 12582. (2) The Corporation must give potential applicants advance notice of any priorities in effect for a fiscal year, including a description of any changes since the last notice, and a description of programs the Corporation has designated under section 12585(d)(2) as eligible for priority consideration in the next distribution of assistance under section 12571(a). (3) The Corporation must make rules to ensure fair treatment of national service programs that receive multi-year funding and would otherwise be harmed by annual changes in priorities. (4) Recipients making subgrants under section 12571(a) must also use these national service priorities. (g) Consultation on indicators. The Corporation must consult with the Secretaries of Education, Health and Human Services, Energy, Veterans Affairs, the Interior, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and the Treasury, and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as appropriate, when developing additional indicators for the corps and programs described in subsections (a) and (b). (h) Requirements for tutors. (1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), the Corporation must require each recipient running a tutoring program for elementary or secondary school students to certify that tutors serving in approved national service positions have obtained their high school diplomas and successfully completed pre- and in-service tutor training. (2) This requirement does not apply to an individual serving in an approved national service position who is themselves enrolled in an elementary or secondary school and is providing tutoring through a structured, school-managed cross-grade tutoring program. (i) Requirements for tutoring programs. Each tutoring program that receives assistance under the national service laws must offer a curriculum that is high quality, research-based, and consistent with state academic standards and the local educational agency's instructional program, and must offer high quality, research-based pre- and in-service training for tutors. (j) Citizenship training. The Corporation must establish guidelines, consistent with the principles behind U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' citizenship programs and suited to participants' age, education, and experience, for recipients to promote citizenship and civic engagement among participants in approved national service and approved summer of service positions. (k) Report. Not later than 60 days after the end of each fiscal year in which the Corporation makes grants under section 12571(a), it must submit a report to Congress's authorizing committees containing: (1) information on how the Corporation allocated financial assistance and approved positions among entities proposed to carry out the corps and national service programs described in this section; (2) information on the amount of financial assistance and the number of approved positions provided to each corps and program; (3) a measure of how much the corps and programs improved performance on their indicators; and (4) information on how the Corporation is coordinating the programs funded under this section with related programs carried out under this division, division C, and titles I and II of the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973.