Volunteers plant saplings on a mountaintop near Blackey, Kentucky, as part of the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative.

Washington — Less than two months after first calling for new national-service legislation in his joint address to Congress, President Obama on April 21 signed into law a bill that dramatically expands national and community service opportunities for Americans, whether with a formal organization like AmeriCorps or in their local neighborhoods.

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act will usher in a “new era of service,” said the president, who went on to call on Americans to volunteer in their communities.

“Our government can help to rebuild our economy and lift up our schools and reform health care systems and make sure our soldiers and veterans have everything they need — but we need Americans willing to mentor our eager young children, or care for the sick, or ease the strains of deployment on our military families,” the president said.

In his classic work, “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville said more than 170 years ago that a defining characteristic of the American people is their commitment to service. Some scholars have located the historical roots of American volunteerism in life on the frontier, where a neighbor’s help could be the difference between surviving and perishing. Others have given greater weight to the religious impulse toward good works.

The same volunteer spirit is evident today in surging applications for such service organizations as the Peace Corps, which in 2008 had three applications for every position available; Teach for America, which had 35,000 applicants for 4,000 slots; and AmeriCorps, which has had a 400 percent increase in applications in the last four months, the president said.

Such national service organizations, which typically pay volunteers a modest amount for their efforts, connect people interested in helping with communities in need.

The Corporation for National and Community Service estimates nearly 61 million Americans volunteered for charitable and national service organizations in 2007, giving 8.1 billion hours of service worth nearly $158 billion to America’s communities. Such numbers do not include the efforts of someone like Audrey Bates in Nashville, Tennessee, who asked her friends to bring donations of nonperishable goods instead of gifts to her 5th birthday party recently because she had learned food banks are straining to meet a surge in demand during the current recession. Similarly, when the rivers rose this spring in the upper Midwest, many volunteers simply showed up and started filling and moving sandbags on their sleds and makeshift sleighs.

Volunteers clean parks, roadways and neighborhoods; build homes for low-income people; provide disaster relief; mentor students and young professionals; donate health and other professional services; coach youth sports teams; raise money for charities and nonprofit organizations; and much more.

“Because of this legislation, millions of Americans at all stages of their lives will have new opportunities to serve their country,” the president said March 26 in welcoming the act’s passage in Congress. “From improving service learning in schools to creating an army of 250,000 Corps members a year dedicated to addressing our nation's toughest problems, from connecting working Americans to a variety of part-time service opportunities to better utilizing the skills and experience of our retirees and baby boomers, this legislation will help tap the genius of our faith-based and community organizations, and it will find the most innovative ideas for addressing our common challenges and helping those ideas grow.”

The Serve America Act reauthorizes and expands national service programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency created in 1993. The corporation enables 4 million Americans to serve in a wide variety of capacities each year, including 75,000 AmeriCorps members, 492,000 Senior Corps volunteers, 1.1 million Learn and Serve America students, and 2.2 million additional community volunteers mobilized and managed through the agency’s programs.

Obama said it was fitting that the Serve America Act was named after Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy, “a person who has never stopped asking what he could do for his country”.

President Obama congratulates Senator Edward Kennedy before signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act on April 21.

Kennedy, a longtime champion of national service, was elected in 1962 to finish the final two years of the Senate term of his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, who was elected president in 1960. Since then, he has been reelected to seven full terms and has represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for 46 years. He is currently the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The Serve America Act:

• Authorizes up to $6 billion over the next five years to spread volunteer efforts nationwide, to expand AmeriCorps, and to encourage innovative nonprofit organizations.

• Increases from 75,000 to 250,000 the number of AmeriCorps positions. AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs created in 1993 by President Bill Clinton building on earlier programs created by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush.

• Adjusts the focus of AmeriCorps to service on education, health, clean energy, veterans, economic opportunity and other national priorities.

• Creates a Summer of Service program to provide $500 education awards for sixth-to-12th graders, a Semester of Service program for high school students to engage in service learning, and Youth Empowerment Zones for secondary students and out-of-school youth.

• Makes September 11 a national day of service.

• Establishes a Volunteer Generation Fund to award grants to states and nonprofits to recruit, manage and support volunteers and strengthen the nation’s volunteer infrastructure.

• Creates a National Service Reserve Corps of former national service participants and veterans who will be trained to deploy, in coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the event of disasters.

In closing, the president addressed Americans of all ages directly: “We need your service right now, at this moment in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be; that’s for you to discover. But I’m asking you to stand up and play your part. I’m asking you to help change history’s course, put your shoulder up against the wheel. And if you do, I promise you your life will be richer, our country will be stronger, and someday, years from now, you may remember it as the moment when your own story and the American story converged, when they came together, and we met the challenges of our new century.”

The White House also launched a new Web site April 21, www.serve.gov, which allows people to search for volunteer opportunities in their neighborhoods by keyword and ZIP code.