Founded in 2003, RockCorps is a national youth volunteer movement that uses music to inspire social responsibility. In 2005 it formed a partnership with Boost Mobile, the youth-oriented telecommunications company. The beauty of big corporate sponsors, of course, is their big budgets for advertising, which helps to spread the do-good message. Since joining forces with Boost Mobile, RockCorps has persuaded more than 30,000 teenagers and young adults across the country to serve their communities by donating time to various nonprofits in exchange for tickets to a concert. Some of the acts that have participated in the past include Kanye West, Green Day, Alicia Keys and Coldplay, who donate their talent but not their time: they still get paid, but in keeping with the generous spirit of things, it’s at a reduced rate. Stephen Greene, 41, CEO and co-founder of RockCorps–and a Grateful Dead fan–knows that music is a powerful motivator from his experience following the Dead in his years after college. BMRC applies the same music-as-motivator approach. “We use the music as the lure, but then the actual volunteer feeling becomes self-reinforcing after that,” says Greene.
But where does the cycle begin if, say, being a candy striper wasn’t on the agenda when you were growing up? “Young people have a huge desire to get involved with some kind of community work, but it’s that connection, between the nonprofit and the young person, that’s often missing,” says Greene. That’s where BMRC comes in: it serves as a bridge between the place in need and the person who wants to help. “We’ll come in and do our projects in partnership with a food bank or a homeless shelter or a parks department and produce this volunteer event with the organization,” Greene says. “After the concerts the volunteer can go back to the food bank or the homeless shelter and continue to be a volunteer for that organization.”
Ryan Sherman, 17, is a model of what Greene calls an “activated’ young man. Last year, as a BMRC volunteer, the New Yorker picked up glass off the beach where he lives in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood. This year he painted a mural and helped refurbish nearby Liberation Diploma Plus High School, a “transfer school” for struggling students and dropouts to get a last shot at earning a high school diploma. The ticket for the Radio City show, Sherman says, became secondary to finishing the mural (he went beyond the four hours). “I have a lot of friends who didn’t really do good in high school, and I see what they went through,” he says. “You don’t really want to go to a school that’s run down. If you have a school that you feel proud of, you’re going to go. So we made the school more welcoming, and I hope they want to go to school now.”
Sherman will graduate next year, and he hopes to attend the University of Miami to study information technology. “RockCorps thinks we are doing something good, but they’re actually doing something good for us,” he says. “They’re giving us something that we probably wouldn’t have had. They’re giving us the opportunity to meet new people, try new things and have a different outlook on life.” And so, while many future college students would be dreaming of the beach, beer and being a thousand miles from home, Sherman is worried about whether he’ll find BMRC programs in Miami so he can keep going with the program if he gets accepted by the university. (Don’t worry, Ryan, they’re waiting for you.)
