By Chester Spellman, Director of AmeriCorps

Recently, I traveled to Southwest Florida to meet with AmeriCorps members supporting Hurricane Irma recovery efforts. This was my first trip as Director of AmeriCorps.

I was joined by fellow Floridian and Director of Senior Corps, Debbie Cox Roush and Acting NCCC Director (and AmeriCorps alum!) Gina Cross. We visited AmeriCorps Disaster Response Team members from the Conservation Corps Minnesota and Iowa and the Washington Conservation Corps. We also visited AmeriCorps NCCC and FEMA Corps members. To date, more than 900 AmeriCorps members have responded across the state of Florida.

Here are five observations from the field:

Keep reading

Guest blog by Arizona Serve of Prescott College

Deep in the south side of Tucson, Ariz., sits Pueblo Magnet High School, home to more than 1,500 students from one of the city’s lowest-income areas. The school, a member of the Tucson Community Schools Initiative, recently hosted a press conference to celebrate the past two years of the Operation AmeriCorps initiative, as well as its continued funding.

In 2013, Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild created the Mayor’s Commission on Poverty to understand how to better serve low-income families. The commission found that Tucson had a wealth of nonprofits offering assistance to lift families out of poverty; at the same time, difficulty accessing these services paired with a lack of awareness created challenges in bringing these families together with local nonprofits.

Keep reading

Whether it’s a reliable job, a chance at a degree, or the keys to your own home, people across the nation are all seeking the American dream. As Americans, we’re eager to build a future where that dream is possible for all. Service provides us a unique opportunity to collaborate with one another and reach for these goals together, all while serving our neighbors, community, and country.

Here’s a few ways that national service programs like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps help make our American dream a reality:

Keep reading

By Theo Helm, University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education

Editor’s Note: On Sunday, May 21, Vice President Mike Pence will deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame. For 23 years, AmeriCorps has partnered with the University of Notre Dame to support the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), a highly successful teacher corps program.  We asked ACE to reflect on this longstanding partnership.

This weekend, 40 seniors from the University of Notre Dame will walk across the stage, proudly accept their diplomas, and march into their future as members of AmeriCorps and the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).

They’ll be joined by more than 50 graduates from colleges and universities around the country who will be members of the 24th class of ACE Teaching Fellows. Another 75 ACE AmeriCorps teachers will earn their Master of Education degree this weekend as they near the end of their service.

Keep reading

This is a guest blog by The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that empowers veterans to find purpose through community impact. It originally ran on The Mission Continues Blog on March 11, 2017.

Keep reading

By: Ismael Calderon, AmeriCorps VISTA member with United Way of Lake County, IL

“As an AmeriCorps VISTA Member I am working to eliminate poverty and the negative effects it has on our community. In my role as a VISTA Member, I support these goals by helping provide high-risk children with the core skills they need to succeed in school. “

Keep reading

Thanks to public-private partnerships, the Corporation for National and Community Service leverages an additional $1.26 BILLION in outside resources to increase our impact. That’s even more than the federal investment! www.nationalservice.gov.