Sioux City, Iowa (CNN) Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday unveiled his campaign's plan to boost national service, rolling out a proposal in Iowa that aims to increase service opportunities and tie that service to incentives.

Buttigieg told an audience in a sweltering gym here in Sioux City that his plan to boost the prevalence of service is meant to help the country and to provide a way to knit people together in a time when politics seems to be pulling them apart.

"I don't think you ought to have to go to war to have that experience," Buttigieg said, referencing his own service in the US Naval Reserve and the way it helped bond him with people he barely knew. "So today, I am proud to announce a new call to service."

The South Bend, Indiana, mayor said that the plan, which intends to increase service opportunities to 250,000 a year and to "quadruple the number of service opportunities to 1 million high school graduates" by 2026, is aimed at "repairing the fabric of our nation."

"I think when we do that," Buttigieg said, "we will find not only a lot of work gets done but that America was closer together."

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