Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join the Voices for AmeriCorp in urging Congressional support for President Bush's call to increase the size of AmeriCorps to 75,000. I served as the first Chair of the Corporation for National Service and was delighted to work with Eli Segal and members of the U.S. Congress to establish AmeriCorps. I appear before you now to testify to how important AmeriCorps has become to our nation in providing an outlet for the idealism of our young people and in addressing pressing needs in our communities.

AmeriCorps has won the praise and support of countless Americans because it provides a vehicle for integrating American idealism with both patriotism and pragmatism. I have come to think of community service as a form of soft power in a world greatly influenced by hard power. While the use of the word power could be misleading, I like the distinction that is increasingly made between "hard" power and "soft" power. Hard power refers to the use of military might or economic muscle to influence and even coerce. Soft power refers to the ability to attract and influence through cultural values, moral messages, acts of generosity and involvement in the needs of others. As Professor Joseph Nye, Director of the Kennedy School at Harvard reminds us, hard power is the ability to get others to do what we want while soft power is the ability to get others to want the same things we do. The former is based on coercion. The latter is based on attraction. The former can prevent and even inflict pain. It can be used to gain an immediate advantage, but soft power builds community and creates enduring goodwill.

Soft power is a powerful metaphor for understanding the principles and potential of community service, but it is also a fundamental element of the public values we affirm as a nation. The historian Tacitus defined patriotism as praiseworthy competition with our ancestors. I recall that description of civic virtue on this occasion because it reminds us that each generation has an opportunity, indeed an obligation, to contribute something as significant, as meaningful and even as extraordinary as preceding generations.

In the 21^st century, national service should be a part of what it means to be an American citizen. Last year, the members of AmeriCorps numbered 50,000 and this year it has been reduced to 30,000. I urge the Congress to pass President Bush's budget proposal to grow the corps to 75,000. We have an unprecedented opportunity to help make real the ideals on which our nation was founded. AmeriCorps is not a Republican idea nor is it a Democratic idea. It is an American idea whose time has come. It has been tested. It works and young people of all ages are ready to serve their country in this innovative partnership between the public and private sectors.

It would be a tragedy of enormous proportion if we allowed the crisis now confronting AmeriCorps to diminish or damage this great opportunity for civic engagement. It is the kind of social capital that is difficulty to quantify, but all who seek to measure its impact point to community service as providing a return on investment that would be regarded in any capital market as extraordinary.

It may be that one of the best ways to consider the impact of community service is to examine it in relation to the enduring national commitment to forming a more perfect union. Pollsters, pundits, preachers and others all tell us that we Americans are a united people, as united as any time in our history. With the events of 9/11, the Iraqi war and the continuing threat of terrorism looming so large in our consciousness, it is easy to assume that the songs and symbols of patriotism that we hear and see are the signs of a more perfect union. But I am reminded of the caution provided some years ago by the eminent psychiatrist and writer Scott Peck that we build community out of crisis and we build community by accident, but we do not know how to build community by design. He went on to say that the problem with the spirit of community that emerges out of crisis is that once the intensity of the crisis is over so usually is the strong sense of community.

So how do we build community by design? How do we sustain the sense of community we now share when the intensity of recent crises has diminished? How do we include all of our citizens in the new solidarity we embrace? When we think about the social glue that binds us together as a people, many point to the observations of the Frenchman Alexis deTocqueville. He thought he had stumbled on to the unifying element and he called it civic participation. He mused about everyone "taking an active part in the affairs of society." But those who analyze civic engagement - voting and other forms of public activity - tell us that America's social capital is on the decline.

Another foreigner and keen observer of American life was Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist and sociologist who wrote the American Dilemma. He saw the unifying element as "the American creed," that cluster of ideas, institutions and habits that affirm the ideals of the essential dignity and equality of all human beings, of inalienable rights to freedom, justice and opportunity. But we have been so preoccupied with the private virtues that build character that we have neglected the public values that build community.

So how do we build community by design? It is has been my experience that when neighbors help neighbors, and even when strangers help strangers, both those who help and those who are helped are not only transformed, but they experience a new sense of connectedness. Getting involved in the needs of the neighbor provides a new perspective, a new way of seeing ourselves, a new understanding of the purpose of the human journey. When that which was "their" problem becomes "our" problem, the transaction transforms a mere association into a relationship that has the potential for new communities of meaning and belonging.

In other words, doing something for someone else - what John Winthrop called making the condition of others our own - is a powerful force in building community. When you experience the problems of the poor or troubled, when you help someone to find cultural meaning in a museum or creative expression in a painting, when you help a community to find its own strength and to release its potential, you are far more likely to find common ground, and you are likely to find that in serving others you help create the conditions for enduring community. So the civic imperative of AmeriCorps is to help transform the laisez-faire notion of live and let live into the principle of live and help live.

It was my great privilege to serve as the United States Ambassador to South Africa during the time of Nelson Mandela's presidency. I was drawn to the concept of community he often referred to as ubuntu. It is best expressed by the Xhosa proverb "People are people through other people" which is to say that my humanity is bound up in yours. What dehumanizes you dehumanizes me. I belong to a greater whole so I am diminished when others are diminished by oppression or treated as though they were less than who they are. It is not I think, therefore I am. It is I am human because I belong. I participate; I share because I am made for community.

The highest praise that can be given anyone in South Africa is to say that he or she has ubuntu, which means that they are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring and compassionate. And, of course, they are forgiving. It is this spirit of ubuntu that is promoted and developed in those who serve our communities through AmeriCorps.

That is why I am convinced that community service is an idea whose time has come and must be continued. AmeriCorps provides not only help, but also hope, the kind of hope that Vaclav Havel had in mind when he wrote, "I am not an optimist because I do not believe that everything ends well. I am not a pessimist because I do not believe that every thing ends badly, but I could not accomplish anything if I did not have hope within me. For the gift of hope is as big a gift as the gift of life itself." When asked why they are engaged in community service, many young people understand that they are providing not simply help, but hope, and the gift of hope is as big a gift as the gift of life itself.

(James A. Joseph, a former U.S. Ambassador to South Africa, was the first Chairman of the Corporation for National Service. He serves presently as Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies and Director of the United States - Southern Africa Center for Leadership and Public Values at the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University)