BILOXI, Miss. – Ten years ago, when I was in college, the United States had a glorious economy, gas was pretty cheap, and because the American dollar stomped the Canadian dollar, we’d go shopping north of the border.

I ran with civic-minded kids, both conservative and liberal, with plans to solve poverty, homelessness, sexism, racism and every other -ism. America was in great shape, we thought, so we dreamt of jobs in the Peace Corps, or at some big, bad nonprofit. We ran on the endless fuel of youth, hope and the can-do attitude that suffused everything in the mid- to late 1990s.

I wish I was 18 again. For the past two days, I’ve been with volunteers at the Biloxi Habitat for Humanity Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project site. On my work site are a half-dozen kids from AmeriCorps, whose accolades from the other volunteers include: “they never complain about anything,” “they are the hardest working volunteers,” and my favorite, “they’re young – they have good knees.”

When I was in college, AmeriCorps was a fledgling program, the five-year-old domestic answer to the Peace Corps. Now, through a partnership with Habitat, every swing of their hammers solves the global issues of poverty and homelessness for a family, giving them the stronghold to fight their own battles against the -isms.

AmeriCorps, they tell me, is a way to solve our domestic problems. Why leave? We have so many. These are MTV-generation kids, who’d rather the producers of “The Amazing Race” cover their reality than Tila Tequila.

That argument is really convincing, especially when I look around me. We have so many young people here who could fill so many gaps in rebuilding this community, even if they are exhausted from rebuilding their own lives. I see them everywhere. At the mall. At the movies. At the skate park.

Maybe they aren’t ready for college. Maybe they will never be. Maybe they are but want a different experience before they go. Maybe they are done and don’t know what to do next.

This is where groups like AmeriCorps could burst through the pack. This is where our local kids could have the kind of life experiences they might bring back to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in their “adult” lives. This is a small way that the Gulf Coast could build capacity, a way for the area to grow and heal. It’s a way to build communities, one house at a time, one day at a time, one life at a time. Go to the mall, the movies and the skate park. But spend your days being part of the solution.

In Israel, most kids are required to serve in the military after high school. Can you imagine a country where kids who don’t do military service have to do civic service? I get giddy at all the problems we could solve. I turn 18 again.