ATLANTA - Michelle Nunn spoke at Oglethorpe University's 2006 commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 13th, 2006. 

Michelle Nunn graduated from the University of Virginia with a major in history and a minor in religion. She was a Kellogg National Fellow and completed her master's in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Mrs. Nunn has been part of the Hands On Network movement through her fourteen-year leadership of Hands On Atlanta from a grassroots startup in 1989 to one of the nation's largest community-based volunteer organizations. She was appointed and currently sits on the President's Council on Service and Civic Engagement.
 

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Thank you -- President Schall, faculty, graduates-to-be and guests. And thank you especially, Norm (Findley), for your very generous introduction. President Schall thank you for spotlighting service as the theme of your Presidency and for creating a vision for the University that restores to higher education its fundamental mandate to cultivate citizen and servant leaders.

The honorary degree you have presented to me is a great and humbling honor. I accept it as a tribute to all of the people who worked to make Hands On Atlanta and Hands On Network a positive force in our communities- locally, nationally, and internationally.

I also want to pay tribute to the most amazing role models in my life- my parents. It is a special honor to receive this degree with my father. And on this Mother’s Day weekend, I have to thank my mom who embodies service to others – I might add, especially to me and our family! As a parent myself now, I can begin to fully appreciate the enormity of their gifts to me.

As I look out at you today, I can recall that when I graduated from college, I had ABSOLUTELY no idea, what I was going to do. I am sure that you all know exactly what you want to do! I did know that I wanted it to involve serving others.

Serendipitously, as I searched for my calling I met a small group of people that wanted to create a new model of volunteerism. Twelve people, literally each put $50 into a hat, and most importantly, dedicated themselves passionately to serving the community. They threw out some names to designate their effort and decided after much argument on Hands On Atlanta. We began with a few monthly projects and I became the first staff person, 10 hours a week, in a closet of the Days Inn building.

None of us could imagine that today, seventeen years later, Hands On Network would engaged close to 500,000 volunteers in projects ranging from building wheelchair ramps, to playgrounds, to re-pairing homes in the Gulf for victims of Katrina. Just last year, Hands On volunteers completed 50,000 projects. The Hands On model of engagement has spread to 58 communities, representing 26 states and 7 countries. We could not have imagined that this fledgling effort would spread across the globe and give birth to Hands On Manila or Hands on Shanghai.

It has been my great privilege to work side by side with thousands of individuals committed to change – here are some of the things I have learned in the time that separates me from my own graduation.

Whether you dedicate yourself full-time or whether you do it in your spare time- each of you holds the capacity to change the world. You will never be more powerful than you are right now- armed with knowledge, idealism, and the belief that change can happen. Begin a service journey now. You will search for meaning throughout your life, but I can tell you that you will find no greater fulfillment than in serving others.

As you leave the University, you enter a world that needs you. There has never been more opportunity or need for change agents. Domestically, we live in a society with a fraying social compact and a disintegration of public discourse and democratic participation. It is estimated that 18 % of our nation’s children live in poverty with approximately half of our minority students dropping out of high school. WE NEED YOU. Globally, we live at a time in which we have the resources and technology to eradicate extreme poverty and global health inequities, but lack the will and imagination to do it. We need you.

Many of us look back with longing to be a part of some clear cut movement of change- the Civil Rights Movement, or women’s movement - but there are moral issues today that are clear and we need young people, YOU, to have the moral lenses to see these issues and to act upon them. There are social change movements that are waiting for heroic citizen action. In the last year, we have seen great heroes of movements like Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King pass on. Who will take their place?

You stand at a time when individuals have never been more powerful. We live at a time of what people are calling the “super-empowered citizen.” Through the internet, resources and people can be galvanized at a scale that is unprecedented.

As an example, while the government failed to act effectively after Katrina, heroic individuals and groups organized themselves to offer help, sustenance, and hope. I have spent a good bit of time in the Gulf coast over the last few months- the needs are staggering. But the resiliency of the people is more powerful still. A number of you spent spring break with President Schall serving in New Orleans and have seen this first hand. Hands On Network has set up two volunteer base camps and every day between 200 and 400 people are living in tents and on the floor of churches to re-build the homes and lives of the people of Louisiana and Mississippi. Many of these volunteers are young people- they are serving their country at a critical time- in the process they are shaping the course of their own lives.

Whatever your passion, find a way of applying it in service. Whether it is re-building in the Gulf, serving overseas, helping a neighbor, or getting involved in politics.

Remember that change starts with individuals. Don’t wait for someone else. Take the bounty of your education and, whatever your path, find a way to serve others.

Sweet Honey in the Rock is a singing group that got their start during the Civil Rights Movement, and they have a song that repeats “We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Truly, I say to you, you are the ones that we have been waiting for.