On AmeriCorps

I am an AmeriCorps*VISTA. For more than a year, I have volunteered my time to serving residents of the Gulf Coast who were affected by Hurricane Ike.

A month ago, the rest of the AmeriCorps, which includes State & National, NCCC, and VISTA, celebrated “AmeriCorps Week,” an event intended to spread awareness and support for the national program.

I was supposed to put together a slide presentation of “A Day in the Life of a VISTA,” but I got busy with day-to-day work and forgot. Apparently, I’m not much of a photographer anyway; remembering to take photos all day proved more difficult than I had expected, even when I finally remembered that I should be doing it.

The result is that I’ve had a full month to think about my experience with VISTA, and to consider options for accurately expressing exactly what VISTA is and what it means to me.

To be honest, it wasn’t an easy thing to come up with. I’m not one to do things just because I’m supposed to, if there’s no other compelling reason for it. So even the day of photos I’d originally planned seemed like a shallow expression of my experience, and, in part, a dishonest representation.

I started my VISTA service on February 23, 2009, and in the last year and three months, I’ve seen the program from many angles, both good and bad. I’ve felt the sting of abandonment when everything is going wrong and nobody is fighting on my side, and I’ve also benefited from the support of a network of like-minded individuals all working toward similar goals.

About a year ago, I nearly quit. Three months later, after transferring to a different site, I elected to extend my service for an additional six months.

Being in AmeriCorps is difficult. My work schedule is that of a full-time, regular employee, but the monthly stipend barely covers expenses. At times, we’re trapped in a strange world somewhere between employee and consultant, without a full, clear idea of our role.

And yet I wake up every morning knowing that the work I’m doing is good. Living on a budget has taught me about what really matters. And my resume is suddenly chock-full of fantastic, real-life experience, preparing myself for a long career in the non-profit world (a career I hope to start with full-time pay in August).

In the end, I’ll be sad to leave the organization and programs I’ve spent the past 9 months working to develop. But I’m excited to take the experience and work for good in new ways. AmeriCorps*VISTA is my springboard; I’m about to hit the water with a splash.