For me, civic engagement is participating in or creating some activity that benefits someone not directly connected to you. I feel like this is different than doing something that helps a person or group close to you. I really don't think there's a strict limit to what counts as civic engagement, and while I don't think it's synonymous with community service I don't see a huge difference.
As far as our own cohort is concerned, I feel like we have a good amount of resources and commitment and that we should be able to do something fairly significant. We're all pretty dedicated people and if we can find something that we all want to commit to, I don't see any reason why we couldn't do something really great. Personally, I'd like to do something with a tangible result, but that's just me being selfish and wanting to physically see the results of our hard work.
I've always had a passion for working with kids. I've purposefully surrounded myself with kids as often as possible for most of my life. In addition to my personal interest, though, I think doing something that benefits children is always a good bet because they still have so much time to change their paths, if they even need to be changed. Another area that interests me for civic engagement is low-income families and neighborhoods. The cyclical nature of this issue makes it such an obvious possibility for me because making one simple difference in a life can completely change the cycle.
One of the main challenges a foresee is coming with a goal that we can all agree on. I think it's become obvious that we're a very opinionated group and I know that will each have our own ideas that we're passionate about. Also, one thing that happens to me pretty often is setting an unrealistic goal. I'm not sure if this will present a problem as a group but I know that I've often encountered it. While I think that we're capable of coming up with something really meaningful, I don't want us to aim for something and then realize that we just don't have the time/money/resources a year into the project.
Overall I'm excited about starting to brainstorm, I'm pretty interested in hearing everyone's ideas.