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Here’s five interesting #SocInn links we’re clicking on today:

1. LIFT Blog: Why Serving A Year Is A Big Deal: A Guest Post by Our Partners at ServiceNation Tim Smith, Director of Online Engagement at ServiceNation brings awareness to LIFT’s Serve A Year campaign, and explains the importance of spreading a new spirit to our nation: “Through this campaign, we’ve been able to hear amazing stories of AmeriCorps members fighting poverty, rebuilding after disasters, empowering veterans — stories that speak to our spirit as a country. A spirit that Senator Kennedy knew, a spirit that AmeriCorps members know, and soon — with the help of LIFT and the Serve A Year campaign — millions of Americans will know. Then, maybe we can get Washington to catch up with the rest of the country.” New Profit is a proud funder of LIFT. ServiceNation is an America Forward Coalition member.
2. Connecticut Magazine: Iraq Veteran, Ballet Dancer Roman Baca Brings Fallujah to West Hartford Roman Baca returned to Iraq in 2012 as part of The Mission Continues, an organization dedicated to helping veterans transition back into civilian life, and the New York-based Battery Dance Company, which travels to at-risk communities to teach youth how to dance using their personal experiences as inspiration. “Baca worked with Iraqi youth for five days in April 2012, creating a dance number that expressed who they were as young people, how they felt about their country, what they thought the U.S. thought of them and how they wanted to live in a safer Iraq.” New Profit is a proud funder of The Mission Continues.
3. Huffington Post: Creating a “Light Bulb” Moment with a Pig’s Lung Sarah Rabiner, who served as an AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow with Citizen Schools in North Carolina, tells the story of a STEM-based apprenticeship to exemplify how these programs “give students the chance to become more comfortable with math and science before they have the chance to become wary of the subject matter. Citizen Schools was recently chosen as a STEM partner in ServiceNation’s Serve a Year campaign to inspire more young Americans to get involved in their community and the country for a year of service to create opportunities like Healthy Lungs, Healthy Living for more students.” Citizen Schools is a past New Profit portfolio organization. ServiceNation is an America Forward Coalition member.
4. USA Today: Study finds working and paying for college nearly impossible “Thirty years ago, the cost of tuition was low enough at most public universities that students could pay their way through school by working throughout college. But since the average cost of attendance for all 4-year public universities within a given state rises each year, this is now an almost impossible feat. 80 percent of students work at least part-time during college…some students are working almost full time to pay for school.”
5. Washington Post: Prison knitting class imparts empathy, life lessons and accountability A knitting class that isn’t necessarily about knitting: “’This isn’t about knitting. This is resocialization,’ said [Lynn] Zwerling, who created the program after picking up the practice soon after she retired. To help impart life lessons, Zwerling and her co-teachers structure the class with exacting rules.” Such rules include signing an attendance sheet to encourage accountability, and having every new classmate tell someone they’ve hurt or disappointed about their weekly practice and eventually knit that person a hat.