Blog Archives: March 2013

AmeriCorps is helping, building, connecting, growing, inspiring, encouraging, empowering, achieving, serving, learning.  It is the ultimate year-long service learning experience. Our nonprofits and communities become the perfect classroom, and our cohort of service members becomes the perfect class to discuss things like the roots of social inequality, educational achievement gaps, and strategies for alleviating poverty. We use our service experience to come together to reflect, brainstorm, strategize, and learn.

I have served as an AmeriCorps VISTA for the past two years with Habitat for Humanity of Minnesota and with the Community Design Center of Minnesota under the St. Paul VISTA Program. Through my service experience, I’ve learned about the inner workings of nonprofits, the importance of good evaluation methods, the craziness of grant writing/reporting, and the multiple hats everyone must wear. I’ve learned to utilize Excel to analyze survey data and databases, learned to juggle multiple projects and manage people, and learned to communicate with a variety of audiences through writing, speaking, video, and other media.  I’ve also learned the benefits and challenges of living on a budget and of social services systems.

Most of all, the people I serve have taught me so much about perseverance and the power of the human spirit. Habitat homeowners are overcoming incredible challenges and transforming their lives in so many areas. They are attaining higher education and their kids are doing better in school. They are achieving financial stability and paying down mortgages. They are increasing their emotional and physical wellbeing and are connecting with and becoming leaders in their community. The high school students I work with have found a family in our out-of-school-time programming and are making healthy life habits, increasing their 21st century skills, making their community and the environment a better place, and are persistent, hopeful, and determined to achieve their dreams. Ultimately, I’ve learned to never underestimate the power of the underdog, the shy kid, the troublemaker, because given the right opportunity, they are rockstars; sometimes a helping hand is all someone needs to find that path to open the doors to greatness. 

Without Limits attendees hit the ground running on Day 2 with the breakfast networking roundtables, a chance to discuss a wide range of education topics and to connect with other attendees from around the world.

After a morning of workshop sessions, everyone reconvened for an inspiring plenary session starting off with Kaitlyn Smith and Danielle Liebl from Special Olympics, who spoke of how their connection as best friends has helped them inspire others. Next up was Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell from the Dept. of Education, who stated: “we have to believe that every child can succeed; we all can live without limits.” She shared the stage with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who spoke to service-learning’s importance in Colorado schools and delivered an official proclamation declaring March 16 to be National Youth Leadership Council Day.

R. Dwayne Betts praised the youth taking the initiative to make changes in the world, contrasting their work with the story of his teen years and how he became a teacher and poet during his time in jail. He followed up his plenary talk with a lively thought leader session.

Fifty attendees participated in off-site projects today to the GrowHaus and the Denver Urban Gardens. The group at the GrowHaus learned about their work to create a sustainable urban farm, helping to harvest lettuce for a local restaurant, transplant seedlings, and help with cleanup and reconfiguration of their workspace.

The 11th Annual Indigenous Forum: A Gathering of Elders was moderated by Julia Sewell and featured a dynamic panel of young people and elders.

I am always jazzed when given the opportunity to discuss theories of social inequality – why our society is the way it is, the history of how our systems and policies came to be, and the root causes of social injustices – but what I’m most interested in is action. The “What now?” question. Putting mindful theory into practical action. And this is what led me to become an AmeriCorps VISTA member – where I get to fight poverty through education by building the capacity of local organizations to better serve our communities.

As the VISTA Leader with the City of Saint Paul VISTA Program through Mayor Chris Coleman’s office, I’ve been given the unique opportunity to see firsthand how our policy makers are creating positive change within the City of Saint Paul, while simultaneously getting to be a part of the grassroots-nonprofit solutions for social change.  Our 21 VISTA members are serving Saint Paul’s educational efforts in schools and nonprofits focusing on everything from parental engagement and after-school programming to volunteer management and organization fundraising. I get to see theory put into action everyday by the VISTA members I serve with who are fighting poverty with passion and trying tenaciously to close the education opportunity gap in Saint Paul.

Another awesome component of my year of service is the amazing opportunity given to me and ten St. Paul VISTA members to attend the National Service-Learning Conference as a service-learning project! We are eleven strong and road-tripping from Saint Paul to Denver for a six-day learning excursion, volunteering throughout the entire conference and getting the opportunity to network with hundreds of other professionals in the service-learning field. As a cohort, we are familiar with hands-on service-learning projects, volunteering as a group on both 9/11 and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day for two national days of service. On 9/11 we helped put the gardens to bed at one of our VISTA sites, the Community Design Center of MN, and for MLK Day we sorted donations for Arc’s Value Village in Saint Paul.

Some of my VISTA cohort members have asked me the question: “How do I fight racism; or poverty; or injustice?” – not knowing that they are already fighting for justice through their year of service by being a part of organizations fighting to close the education opportunity gap, and by being a part of the community service-learning projects. All of these actions are theories put into practice: if organizations see a community need and then determine strategies to provide for that need, then all organizations are, in effect, the application of solution-based theories through programming, resource sharing, and even community-building. And we as VISTA members get to be a part of that action plan through service-learning and other hands on challenges to racial and economic disparities. 

We are so excited to be given the opportunity to volunteer with the National Service-Learning Conference as a means to strengthen our own tool belts in this anti-poverty work, and to gain some more applied action experience during our year of service. Thank you NYLC for this incredible opportunity!

Angie Brown is a VISTA Leader in the City of Saint Paul VISTA Program

As the conference creeps closer everyone apart of NYLC is on hyper drive. The conference is a lot of work and there is a lot of preparation to be done.

As a part of the alumni engagement committee on NYLC’s Youth advisory council one of my duties is preparing for the National Youth Leadership Training breakfast at the conference. This year the breakfast is going to be better than ever, engaging both past alumni and people that have an interest in going to this incredible camp in the future. NYLT alumni from across the nation will be attending and sharing their story about how NYLT has impacted their lives. We are creating flyers to inform people about NYLT and inviting them to learn more by attending this event. We are also preparing conversation starters and icebreakers to connect all breakfast participants.  It’s my committees job that everything runs smooth and effectively at this event.

Another part of my preparation for the conference includes setting goals. Setting goals allows me to write on paper what I want to accomplish and how I will achieve success. Some of my goals are about the NYLT breakfast, but others consist of my other duties in Denver. For example, I am setting goals to facilitate successful workshops. To reach success in this goal I have to practice my public speaking skills, have the necessary material ready and be well familiar with the subject that each workshop is pertaining to. These are all things that should be done before the conference.

Preparing for such a big event take a lot of thought and time, at this point in time there is still a lot more to be done but everyone apart of NYLC is working hard. I am extremely excited to attend this event again this year, looking forward to reaching my goals and having a great time.

Emma Messner is a member of NYLC's Youth Advosory Council.