The chief executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service began a series of strategic planning sessions in Vicksburg Thursday to encourage service among Americans in cities and small towns.

Patrick Corvington, appointed by President Barack Obama in February, will spend the summer traveling to 12 cities discussing the agency’s five-year plan to expand opportunities for more volunteers, said Ashley Etienne of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

As the nation’s largest “grant maker” in support of service with a strength of more than 5 million Americans of all ages, the agency helps nonprofit organizations, faith-based groups, schools and municipal agencies meet needs in education, the environment, public safety and disaster response.

Needs are met through programs including AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, National Civilian Community Corps and Learn and Serve America.

Corvington toured the AmeriCorps NCCC campus on Confederate Avenue Thursday morning and took notes on why the 20 team leaders, who arrived on Tuesday, chose to serve. He also asked of their choice of service projects.

Corvington said he was impressed by the eagerness of young people to spend a year of their lives in the national service program, and for some, three.

“It’s extraordinary,” he said. “Everybody should have the opportunity to be a part of the program.”

Some of the new leaders, 13 of whom chose to return to the Vicksburg campus, said they preferred environmental projects as well as disaster response.

Disaster recovery in Yazoo City following the April 24 tornado that ravaged Mississippi spawned an appreciation for the cleanup needed after Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters.

Corvington said he hoped the team leaders were inspired by his visit.

As applications for AmeriCorps are up 20 percent and more than 64 million people volunteered nationally last year, Corvington said “this generation is about solving problems.”

“It’s a big burden, and it’s yours to carry,” he said to the team leaders.

Escorted by Vicksburg police, Corvington visited City Hall, where he discussed strategies for local needs with Mayor Paul Winfield, who was instrumental in making Vicksburg one of 17 cities of service throughout the nation.

“It was really important for me to get to Vicksburg,” said Corvington, adding the city’s proximity to the oil spill is a major reason he selected the city as his first destination.

Winfield said he wants to focus on youth involvement and plans to identify and search for measurable solutions for local problems.

City officials and the corporation are “in the process of forming strategies as a mandate by Congress,” said Winfield.

Before taking office last year, Obama charged all Americans to commit to service. On Jan. 19, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, an estimated 1 million people served on more than 13,000 projects.

Winfield led city officials, employees, residents and NCCC members in a project restoring homes at The Initiative housing development for single parents on Hope Street.

Corvington will stop in San Antonio, Texas, today then head to Frankfort, Ky., and Memphis next week.

Before his appointment as CEO, Corvington served as a senior associate at the Annie E. Casey Foundation where he guided grantees on issues related to leadership and next generation development as well as capacity building. Before that, he was executive director of Innovation Network, a nonprofit that increased the evaluation capacity of the nonprofit arena.

Corvington, who is of Haitian descent, came to the U.S. as a teenager and received his citizenship in 1993. He earned a degree in sociology at the University of Maryland in College Park and a master’s in public policy at Johns Hopkins University, also receiving the National Minority Leadership Fellowship from the Kellogg Foundation.

He and his wife live in Maryland with their two daughters.