Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, and to commemorate the anniversary, Kid Reporter Chloe Jones wrote a piece about the Peace Corps for the Scholastic News Kids Press Corps.

The Peace Corps was founded on March 1, 1961, by President John F. Kennedy; for her story, Chloe interviewed Peace Corps Deputy Director Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet (who is also a former Peace Corps volunteer), as well as Philadelphia teacher La Toya Miller. Actually, make that former teacher. Recently, LaToya quit her job to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda.

“I’m going into the Peace Corps because, number one, I want to help people,” she told Chloe. “Especially when it comes to being in communities that are underdeveloped. I want to use my skills to help them build up schools and train teachers.”

Volunteering is near and dear to OOM. Many of the minds here make it a point to give back to their communities.  Whenever Ivy goes home to Berkeley, CA, she volunteers at the local men’s shelter with her mom and neighbors. Her mom heads up the meal service once a month, while Ivy helps out in the kitchen and on the serving line. Morgan, meanwhile, is in her fourth year as a volunteer with Girls Write Now. She also spent a week building houses in Sri Lanka with Habitat for Humanity after the 2004 tsunami. And Scholastic itself has the national Be Big! program, which recognizes and rewards people for their ideas on making their communities better places.

What about you? How important is volunteering to you and your kids? Maybe you lending a hand at your local library’s storytime or volunteer at your kids’ school — how do you give back to your community?