Michigan Community Service Commission – Engaging All in Service

Hey all! My name is Kathleen Egan and I am the Cross-Stream/Inclusion AmeriCorps*VISTA serving at the Michigan Community Service Commission (MCSC). The MCSC is the state’s lead agency dedicated to fostering a culture of service and encouraging volunteerism to strengthen Michigan’s communities. The MCSC administers funds for AmeriCorps*State and Learn and Serve – Michigan programs, as well as the Michigan Volunteer Generation Fund. It is also home to Mentor Michigan. Since its founding in 1991, the MCSC has granted more than $41 million in public and private funds to community organizations enabling them to engage thousands of Michigan citizens in volunteer service. This support has leveraged more than $34 million in local resources to further support these community volunteer initiatives.

There are many different facets to the Cross-Stream/Inclusion VISTA position. The Cross-Stream part of my position has me focused on increasing partnerships and collaboration among the three streams of national service – AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve. I am continually updating Michigan’s National Service Directory, which contains a listing of all national service programs and project sites in Michigan. The directory is available on the MCSC website at www.michigan.gov/mcsc. Users may search for programs by location, issue area, or stream of service. The directory may be used to connect interested individuals with respective national service programs in their area and assist programs with member recruitment. I also help compile and distribute the Cross-Stream Connector, a bi-monthly e-newsletter that provides tools and resources, as well as great stories of programs demonstrating cross-stream collaboration.

For the Inclusion part of my position, I am striving to increase awareness about AmeriCorps and national service to the disability community. I also support Michigan’s national service programs by helping organizations increase their capacity to support a more diverse population of volunteers. I am also part of the MCSC Statewide Inclusion Team, which was established to help empower national service programs to make service a part of the lives of individuals with disabilities. I, along with team members representing both the national service and disability community, am hoping to shift the paradigm from seeing people with disabilities as those who need service, to seeing people with disabilities as those who can serve others and give back to their communities. By disseminating information, sharing resources, and promoting education and training opportunities, I hope to help equip programs to bring on a more diverse volunteer base and share information about national service with this largely untapped group of volunteers. I also help develop a bi-monthly e-newsletter called IN Touch that reflects and highlights the MCSC efforts related to disability/inclusion. The February edition is available on the Disability/Inclusion section of the MCSC website.

Currently, I am working to help promote Youth Service America’s Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) which is April 15-17, 2011. GYSD is the only day of service based around mobilizing youth as a volunteer group. It encourages groups to work together and assist younger volunteers and youth who may not have served before to be actively involved in the planning and coordination of a service project. The goal is for this involvement to help empower youth to serve their community and foster a sense of civic engagement. The MCSC in partnership with The LEAGUE Michigan is offering GYSD mini-grants for up to $500. The grant application must be written by a youth, and YSA defines “youth” as age 5-25. More information about applying for the mini-grant can be found on the MCSC’s homepage at www.michigan.gov/mcsc.

I’d like to take a moment to suggest, if you are on the higher end of the age definition of a youth, to not just write it yourself. Find a youth in the program you are partnering with and have them assist you with writing the grant. This way you are not only helping them learn grant writing skills, but helping build self-esteem and understand the process of planning a project from the very beginning.

If you have any questions about Cross-Stream collaboration, inclusion resources, or GYSD I’d love to answer any questions you might have!

LISC Helps Communities Transform

Hello, my name is Rhonda Catt and I am a LISC AmeriCorps member. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) is dedicated to helping community residents transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities of choice and opportunity — good places to work, do business, and raise children. LISC mobilizes corporate, government, and philanthropic support to provide to local community development organizations.

In 1994 LISC began its sponsorship of an AmeriCorps program as an additional strategy to help community development corporations (CDCs) help themselves. Members help promote volunteerism and civic engagement by encouraging neighbors to take active roles in helping to transform their communities.

LISC AmeriCorps members help to develop affordable housing and provide home ownership counseling to prospective first-time, low-income homebuyers. They also participate in community building activities in neighborhoods and with residents to form crime watches, neighborhood groups, tenants associations, and collaborations between local service providers. Members work with youth to provide opportunities to participate in sports, other recreation programs, and after school activities that include tutoring, homework assistance, and reading enrichment for underachieving students.

For my service year I have been assigned to the Edison Neighborhood Association in Kalamazoo. I administer several safety and community building programs such as starting block watch groups, organize neighborhood clean-ups, and develop a skills exchange program. My direct service days vary greatly from meetings with residents or local officials to discuss current safety issues to supervising several middle school students in a clean-up project.

Building Blocks is by far my favorite program. Neighbors along the same street come together and help each other plan and work on exterior home improvement projects; to do so they share a small grant for materials and supplies. The families vote on what projects will be done and how much of the grant will be spent on each project. This is a wonderful community program that builds social capital by involving all the neighbors to complete the projects; it also builds structural capital by the projects that are done to the home. I have seen a street transform from neighbors who don’t know each other with their front yard in shambles to a cohesive neighborhood where they take pride in where they live and who they live next to.

Power of We – Doing Powerful Things in Lansing

My name is John Bolan and I am a member of AmeriCorps*State program with the Power of We Consortium at the North West Initiative-Food System Project in Lansing. At the Food Systems Project I serve as the volunteer and internship coordinator. The Power of We Consortium is a diverse group of partners. We aim to reduce chronic disease for Lansing-area residents by creating, maintaining, and expanding community gardens, sustainable food systems, and access to healthy food; and by creating, maintaining and expanding trails, greenways, and non-motorized transportation systems.

We have 15 AmeriCorps*State members currently serving at the following organizations:

Allen Neighborhood Center
East Lansing Parks
Greater Lansing Food bank
Ingham County Land Bank
Ingham Family Center
Mid-Michigan Environmental Action Council
Mid-Michigan Food Bank
Northwest Initiative
South Lansing Community Development Association
The Garden Project

In the 2009-2010 program year our goal was to create or expand five community gardens. We created more than 20 new gardens and helped to improve countless other. Through 19 of our Ingham County Land Bank affiliated gardens we produced thousands of pounds of fresh produce for the community. We provided resources to people who wished to start gardens on their on land and Land Bank property to people who needed land. We also provided expertise to new gardeners and guidance to community centers, schools, faith based organizations, and neighborhood groups who wished to create community gardens.

Gardening has encouraged neighborhoods to take pride in their land and increased fresh food access in low-income areas. It has enabled families to save money as well as helped us bring to light the connection between eating fruits and vegetables and reducing chronic disease.

Our garden at Urbandale sells produce at reduced rates, which brings healthy, fresh, affordable food within walking distance of the many residents who had been formally in food deserts. Our gardens have been so successful that, even after all local residents and volunteers had taken all they could eat of this fall’s harvest, over 1,000 pounds of produce was left over. Our members distributed this food to nonprofit organizations like Letts Community Center.

To increase access to healthy foods, our members at the Mid-Michigan Food Bank coordinates the Weekend Survival Kit program. A Weekend Survival Kit is a backpack full of three days of healthy, kid-friendly food that local elementary school students on free/reduced lunch plans can take home. Because of the program, students that rely on school meals are not going hungry when school is not in session.

We promote the use of trails, greenways, and non-motorized transportation by hosting community events and improving local trails and parks. More than 1,700 employees participated in Mid-MEAC’s SmartCommute challenge to commute by bike or other options that reduce our city’s automobile use. Community feedback indicates that residents are excited about reducing our city’s reliance on automobiles. The Walkability Audit will help to increase non-motorized transportation. Members at East Lansing Parks and Ingham County Parks removed invasive species from our parks and improved trails so that residents have more attractive, user-friendly greenspace. They have boosted residents’ involvement with local parks and helped the native habitat to thrive.

Lastly, we aimed to educate 300 community members about the link between exercise and healthy food and the reduction of chronic disease. By the end of the program year, we had far surpassed our goal by engaging 2,300 Lansing area residents. Our AmeriCorps members at NorthWest Initiative and SLCDA organized and taught nutrition, exercise and gardening classes to local elementary students. Our program helped the Ingham Family Center to start a large garden, chicken coop, and hoop house to grow food in the winter. Students now grow, learn about, and eat local organic food.

Downriver CARES Cares

How is it going? My name is Gabriel Thurin and I am serving my year of service with the Downriver CARES AmeriCorps program. Downriver CARES (which stands for Community, Action, Resources, Enrichment, and Service) is a fairly large AmeriCorps program with around 63 current members. The majority of the group is serving out of The Guidance Center, which is a human services agency that offers adults, youth, and family services. Additionally, Downriver CARES also places a number of its AmeriCorps members in various other organizations in Southeast Michigan, such as: United Way, Starfish Family Services, and City of Wayne, Oakland Child Care Council, Wayne Metro Community Action Agency, Oakland Family Services, and Macomb Family Services. 

As one would suspect, the Downriver CARES AmeriCorps members serve a vast range of activities – in educational and tutoring capacities, mentoring programs, juvenile resource coordination, workforce development, prevention services, homeless outreach, youth and adult resource coordination, mental health services, literacy initiatives, and many more. 

One of the more unique aspects of the Downriver CARES AmeriCorps program is that every Friday all of the 63 AmeriCorps members get together and conduct a service project out in the community or with another nonprofit/AmeriCorps program. In previous Friday Service events, the group has served with Motor City Blight Busters, Gleaners, Habitat for Humanity, and a number of other organizations in Southeast Michigan.
The Downriver CARES AmeriCorps program has also been granted the opportunity to host AmeriCorps Week projects for the past four years, bringing the various AmeriCorps programs serving Wayne County communities together through a large service project. Last year for AmeriCorps Week, Downriver CARES (with the help of other AmeriCorps programs and local community members) were able to create a community garden in the city of River Rouge. This year we will be creating another community garden at Bunche Academy in the City of Ecorse.

For my year of service I am serving as a Mentor Coordinator for The Guidance Center’s mentoring program. Our mentoring program is a group mentoring program and is held at one of The Guidance Center facilities. Currently we offer mentoring three days a week. Because this is a group mentoring program, each mentor is typically matched with two or three mentees. My specific role as Mentor Coordinator is to recruit, train, and give guidance/support to all of the mentors in our program. For the month of January, we conducted our Mobile Mentor Challenge with goal of recruiting 50 new mentors in 30 days. Even though we did not reach the initial goal, the event was still a huge success because we were able to recruit several excited and motivated adults that will surely be a positive role model in our youths’ lives. 

Getting the opportunity to serve along side with the Downriver CARES AmeriCorps members has definitely been the highlight of the past year. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be excited to come to The Guidance Center from nine to five. But it has been a blast serving with such a fun, energetic, and committed group.
Please check out our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/downriver.cares.

Communities In Schools Gets Things Done

Hey everybody!  My name is Dave Mangum and I am an AmeriCorps member with Communities In Schools and specifically The readetroit Corps. Communities In Schools (CIS) is a nation-wide organization championing the connection of needed community resources with schools to help young people learn, stay in school, and prepare for life. CIS was founded on the model that every child needs and deserves a one-on-one relationship with a caring adult, a safe place to learn and grow, a healthy start and a healthy future, a marketable skill upon graduation, and a chance to give back to peers and the community. Currently, there are over 200 local CIS affiliates with a presence in 25 states.

Communities In Schools-Detroit is pleased to have two AmeriCorps programs this year, The readetroit Corps (RDC) and Eliminating Roadblocks to School Success (ERSS). Members of RDC spend about 80 percent of their time tutoring and working with children in grades K-2 in an effort to get them up to grade-level reading by the time they take the MEAP in the third grade. This is done through one-on-one tutoring, group tutoring, and working in the classroom; whatever it takes to instill strong reading skills in all of our students! The rest of our time is spent mentoring at-risk youth and children with incarcerated parents, as well as recruiting parent volunteers and other community resources in an effort to address the many needs of the schools we work in. Currently, there are 34 RDC members with a presence in 21 schools!

This year I am serving as an RDC member at Pasteur Elementary School in Detroit. On a weekly basis I work with 36 K-2 students in six classes in a one-on-one setting to give them the tools and confidence to read. Additionally, I enjoy the opportunity to work with groups of students who want to improve their reading, and have found some time to work with the school band twice a week. On the volunteer side of the service, I have been working with the administration and the Local School Community Organization (formerly PTA) on the portion of Title I focused on parental involvement. We are trying to set up a system to identify and place productive parent volunteers in classrooms and other areas where volunteers are needed throughout the school.

Now time for some good news! Back when I started my service in September, the five students I was assigned from Mrs. Jackson’s classroom were in the “red” as far as Dibels and Burst were concerned. After working with the students since then, the “middle of the year” testing has shown that four of the five students are now in the “green” with considerable improvement from the fifth student!  Mrs. Jackson told me she appreciated all of the work I have done with her to “seal up the cracks,” and asked how she could make sure I would be serving again next school year. Just another great example of how AmeriCorps is GETTING THINGS DONE in Detroit, the great state of Michigan, and across the U.S.!