What is Member Development?
AmeriCorps allows 20% of your term of service hours to be Member Development. Member Development has three parts, professional, personal and service related. Professional and Personal hours are spent achieving a goal outside of your direct service. For example, if you would like to start publishing poetry, a goal of yours could be dedicating X amount of hours sending X amount of writings to publishing companies. A service related goal is what you would like to work on at your direct service site. For example, if you are working in a school you may want to improve communication with teachers by designating X amount of time a week talking with a teacher.
Service-Learning not only provides service to your community but also provides a service to you. AmeriCorps allows 20% of your Term of Service hours to be Member Development. Member Development has these components professional/personal and service-related. Professional/Personal hours are spent achieving a goal outside of your direct service. For example, a personal goal could be completing a CPR class or taking a sign language class. A professional goal could be studying for the SAT. A service-related goal connects to a goal you have set for your direct service. For example, if you are working in a school you may want to shadow a teacher to learn more about what they do.
