The Service News Digest is a regular feature on the Serve.Gov blog. In this series, we showcase news highlights that feature national service and Corporation for National and Community Service programs. Take a look at some of the great stories that had people talking recently.

Today, too many young people in America are struggling. More than a million students drop out of high school each year and one in every three do not graduate on time. The problem is even more severe among African American and Latino youth, and those from low-income backgrounds.

To those who have lived through devastation as complete as a tornado, every minute following the horror of wind and chaos is a perpetual memorial to the many who did not survive to see the skies run clear again.

Many years ago, I stepped off a plane from Iraq and onto the tarmac at Pope Airfield in Fort Bragg, NC. The scene was filled with open arms, cheers, the sound of muffled grunts of joy as weeping kids jumped into the arms of their parents, and spouses' soft cries of love and longing. The sounds of reunions were deafening as they bounced off the high walls of the hangar -- it was a sound that I welcomed, and remember to this day.