'GIVE' Act Would Give Back

The bill would also create "green" opportunities -- including a Clean Energy Corps to focus on environmental conservation. It would also create a Healthy Futures Corps, focusing on health care; a Veteran Services Corps, focusing on services for military veterans; and an Education Corps.

(ABCNEWS.com)

Previous attempts to expand AmeriCorps funding have failed since its inception in 1993. Miller said that while the investment would be substantial, with the economy in decline, this time, he believes the legislation will pass. "This money is really leveraged into benefits way beyond the billion dollars that it cost and it's leveraged in the private communities and the corporate communities and the philanthropic communities dramatically all across the nation," he said.

AmeriCorps volunteers work in a variety of sectors -- from healthcare, to education, national parks and construction.

Jacob Debor is one of six AmeriCorps volunteers building houses in a lower income section of Washington, D.C. He moved here from Michigan and said this is much better than any work he could find at home.

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"Coming from Michigan, there aren't really any job opportunities at all," he said. "If I were to find a part-time job in my home town, I mean it probably wouldn't last that long -- a lot of the factories that produce parts auto companies are shutting down."

Fellow volunteer Eric Hansen said AmeriCorps was the first job he was offered after he graduated college last May.

"It was a really nice alternative when I was looking for work, and kind of facing some difficulties in other sectors," he said.

Habitat for Humanity builds homes and sells them to low income buyers below market value. The buyer must also provide "sweat equity," several hundred hours of labor in building their own home.

Kenya Hunter, a mother of three, lives in public housing, but will soon live in one of the houses Debor and Hansen are building.

"Right now, the neighborhood that we're in, I don't really let them go outside and play, " Hunter said. "Lot of gun fire, drug selling, things like that, so to have our own home, where we have our own backyard where they can go outside and play would mean a lot."