Harnessing the Transformative Power of Civic Engagement and Service Learning

Inspired by retired Army Civil Affairs Colonel Christopher Holshek’s Travels with Harley – Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity, The National Service Ride Project is an adaptive, community-based initiative in which veteran motorcyclists roar into schools to help motivate and mobilize youth to better themselves, their community, and their country through civic engagement and service learning—at school assemblies, in social studies and health classrooms, or for volunteer fairs.

The project helps foster a self-empowering, uplifting, and unifying narrative of citizenship and service, promote youth civic engagement, and pass the baton of generational leadership, fostering civic readiness and citizen resilience. As Holshek says in the initial project video: “When we become better citizens, we become a better country.” 

Home-based in Hudson Valley, the project teams with the Orange County Youth Bureau, the Orange County American Legion and Legion Riders, the Hudson Valley Honor Flight, and the Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club of West Point, NY. It is also a member of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce.

In its interactive presentations, veterans help students from grade school to college learn the what, why, and how of service to others, using role models and peer examples—how service is kindness and what you are more than what you do; how serving your community is serving your country; and, how service doesn’t require a uniform, a change of address, a good grade point average, or even money or status. It only requires courage, humility and gratitude — all matters of choice and character,

Civic engagement and service learning also help youth self-actualize and gain the self-confidence and leadership, interpersonal, teambuilding, collaborative problem-solving, and other practical skills they need no matter their pathway forward. In addition to growing social connections and networks beyond their smart phones, they can build resumes and gain valuable experience and personal references.

Adaptable to growing civic educational and community service requirements such as in New York's Civic Seal of Readiness and local school constraints, the project encourages sudents to help themselves by helping others—whether they sit in the front or back of the class—then steer them to self-help resourcing on an online volunteer portal.  Combined with related initiatives, it supports multiyear civic and service-learning curriculum strategies for school districts, students, and their parents.

In addition to producing better citizens through civic readiness and service learning, the project also fosters a stronger sense of community and citizen resilience to combat many societal problems and their costs.  Moreover, it promotes the unum among the pluribus. 

It also helps veterans better connect with their communities, leveraging their unique skills and social capital in generational partnering to ensure America's long legacy of citizen service lives on. To this end, the project helped initiate a program for "youth guardians" for the Hudson Valley Honor Flight.

For more, check out our initiatives and events, and download the project briefing or one-pager.