BY KATE SANTICH

One recent college graduate joined AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps, and is working in the Ocala National Forest.

Another signed up for Teach For America and landed in a classroom in Texas.

A third hit the road to build and refurbish low-income housing — while riding his bike 3,500 miles across the country.

And a fourth parlayed an internship at a local nonprofit into a full-time graphic artist position for a charity called Change This World.

Whether it's the most dismal job market in decades or an outgrowth of what has been dubbed the "compassion boom," many Central Florida grads are turning to nonprofit and charity work this summer to find both purpose and a paycheck.

"We've really seen an increase in the millennial generation in the community service sector," said Ashley Etienne, press secretary at the Corporation for National and Community Service, the nation's largest grant-maker supporting service work and volunteerism.

"They've been through 9-11 and Katrina and an economic recession, and all of this has forced young people to look around them and reassess their place in the world."

The organization, created by Congress, runs both AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America.

Applications for AmeriCorps, whose members do everything from mentor kids to restore parks to help crime victims, have tripled in the past year.

In 2009, Teach for America applications rose more than 40 percent over 2008. And a recent survey of 2,500 employers nationwide found the nonprofit sector was one of only a handful planning new hires in the coming year.

"I was looking at a job for the [for-profit] side at first," said Joy Powell, a 22-year-old studio arts graduate from Rollins College. "But when the earthquake in Haiti happened, my heart really wanted to go with the nonprofit world. And, really, I've always known that I wanted to work for a cause."

Powell is a pastor's daughter whose family has run a nonprofit for years. Inter-United Foundation forges cultural exchanges through soccer and music, bringing students to the United States and sending U.S. volunteers abroad. Powell made her first mission trip to a Chinese orphanage when she was 18.

As a college intern for an Orlando-based nonprofit called Change This World, she quickly learned she wasn't the type to sit at a desk from 9 to 5. Her best days were spent doing the organization's hands-on service work in the community.

For spring break, she led a group of 15 workers to Panama City, where they recruited fellow college students having fun on the beach to help with a "million-meal challenge" – packing food that would be shipped to Haitian earthquake victims.

"It was a great experience," she says.

Nonprofit work, though, is notoriously low-salaried. Not long after Powell's May graduation, she went to work full-time for Change This World. Between her distaste for the regimentation of a 40-hour-work-week and the need to make more money, she quickly decided to pare her hours and take on freelance work that will cover her bills.

Kelsey Pike of Clermont, a fellow Rollins grad who joined AmeriCorps, says it's not a place for those who are used to a comfy existence.

"I don't know how most people can exist on the living allowance that AmeriCorps provides," she says. "It's about $900 a month after taxes, and that has to cover food, clothes, gas – everything except health insurance, which they provide. Luckily, I knew someone who had a house near Ocala and I was able to rent cheaply."

But the experience, she says, is invaluable. Assigned to the U.S. Forest Service, she works in the Ocala National Forest doing community-outreach work to recruit volunteers and supporters. That can mean everything from setting up a booth at a local festival to leading a group of Boy Scouts on a trail-maintenance project in 100-degree heat.

"I was a critical media and cultural studies major at Rollins, but I really have an interest in the environment and social justice, says Pike, 21. "I kind of had to start with a job that would allow me to get the experience and knowledge I need to move into that field."

Already, she plans to renew her contract for a second year.

In surveys, young workers in the nonprofit sector cite the range of experience as one of the draws. They're often given more responsibility and put in leadership positions they wouldn't reach for years in a corporate setting. Travel and adventure are also pluses.

That's what initially attracted 22-year-old Josh Stutte, a Stetson University grad who majored in humanities. He had to raise $4,000 to join Bike & Build, a national nonprofit that organizes cross-country bike trips whose participants both fund and build affordable housing projects.

Stutte, a former cross-country runner from Titusville, left North Carolina in May with 30 other cyclists, riding some days, working others, and stopping along the way to speak to community groups about affordable housing.

"I've known I wanted to do this since I was a freshman in college," he says by phone from Dodge City, Kansas. "I wasn't just doing it for resume-building. Immediately after this, I'm looking to apply with Habitat for Humanity."

While a lot of students do service work to impress scholarship committees or future employers, Stutte has a different motive.

"At this stage in my life," he says, "I'm still young and naïve enough to think I can make a difference."