Ed. Note: This blog was originally posted on Corporation for National & Community Service Blog. To view the original post, click here.  By CNCS Staff Initiative will provide national service resources to solve tribal and community challenges Today the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) announced a new grant competition to partner with tribal and local governments to solve community challenges. Operation AmeriCorps will devote AmeriCorps members to intensive service on high-priority tribal and local challenges with the goal of developing solutions that can be replicated in communities across the nation. As part of Operation AmeriCorps, CNCS will partner with governments of U.S. cities, counties, or towns; federally-recognized Tribes; Territories; and school boards to engage AmeriCorps members as the catalyst to address a pressing problem. Leaders (a tribal leader, mayor, county executive, or other chief executive of a locality) will identify a high-priority local issue that AmeriCorps members can address and solve in a comprehensive way and a relatively short period of time (no more than two years). What kind of proposals are we seeking? The solution must be place-based and ambitious, and it may be a new initiative or use AmeriCorps to scale up an existing successful effort. For example, a community may decide that it wants to ensure that every high school senior has opportunities after graduation to connect to jobs, college, service, or other opportunities. Perhaps, the challenge is cleaning up and securing all the blighted properties in a neighborhood. Or maybe the goal is ending veteran homelessness in the community. These are some of the ideas the initiative hopes to support. (You can find more examples in the Notice of Funding Opportunity.) This new grant competition will engage AmeriCorps members to achieve a dramatic and measurable improvement in the lives of community members that could be replicated in other localities across the country. Program applicants will be asked to provide evidence that their proposed intervention will lead to the outcomes identified in their theory of change. Applicants are also expected to contribute and engage significant community support and resources for the transformative effort including funds and other types of support and engagement from public, private, non-profit, and community partners. To learn more, visit the Operation AmeriCorps Notice of Funding Opportunity page.