During his recent talk on the UW-Madison campus, Wayne Meisel, one of the architects of the federal AmeriCorps service program, asked the largely college-age audience which historical figures inspire them to do community service work.
Some of the names that came back: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Gandhi.
“So many of these people are people of faith,” Meisel said. “Faith is what defined them and kept them in the game.”