This week, March 13-19, is AmeriCorps Week 2022, and in recognition of members' service throughout the year, Sarah Sturtevant, deputy director of LISC's AmeriCorps program, turns a spotlight on the extraordinary contributions of members in the communities LISC works with. We're proud to partner with a number of members who won AmeriCorps Equity and Innovation Grant awards this past year. Read on for more about their work.
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
-Dr. Howard Zinn
Each year during AmeriCorps Week, a special light is shined on AmeriCorps members and the service they provide to communities across the country. But it’s every day of the year that AmeriCorps members perform their acts of service, hundreds of dedicated people coming together to transform the world one person, one family, one neighborhood, and one community at a time.
This year, it is my privilege to honor the many contributions of LISC AmeriCorps members by highlighting their work within LISC partner agencies and sharing their stories, all of which connect to LISC’s larger body of work to reduce racial disparities in health and wealth across the United States.
In 2021, LISC launched its most ambitious and urgent initiative ever, Project 10X. Project 10X will invest over $1 billion in community organizations working in rural and urban communities across the country, including many where AmeriCorps members serve. The aim of the initiative is to scale proven solutions and to seed new ideas for closing racial health, wealth, and opportunity gaps and to build the capacity of our partner organizations to advance equity in their own work.
LISC’s Project 10X initiative aims for lasting, systemic change in a country where, in 2020, the average White family’s net wealth was 10 times that of the average Black family’s, and where white people on average could expect to live a decade longer than Black people.
AmeriCorps members are at the forefront of this movement for racial and economic equity, bridging divides not only through the service work they do but also as a reflection of who they are. Nearly 70 percent of LISC AmeriCorps members self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). As these members transition from service, LISC has the opportunity to support them in meeting their individual career goals—a very direct and personal link to the larger aspirations of Project 10X. By acting as a national sponsor for AmeriCorps, LISC directly benefits the many AmeriCorps members who leverage their LISC training and service experience to secure living-wage employment. A recent external evaluation found that within six months after service, over 92 percent of LISC AmeriCorps members are employed or in school.
If AmeriCorps service is a great way to gain entry into living-wage employment, it’s also an opportunity for members to give back to communities that are traditionally underserved and under-housed, that may have high unemployment and low educational attainment, and where individuals often live below the poverty line. At LISC, we place more than one hundred AmeriCorps members in community-based service roles each year, the vast majority of them (84 percent last year) living in the communities where they serve. Over the past 27 years, more than 3,000 LISC AmeriCorps members have recruited and managed nearly 200,000 volunteers, assisted in the development of over 13,000 units of affordable housing, provided homeownership counseling to 50,000 people, and helped nearly 10,000 individuals secure employment—all acts of service that contribute to closing this nation’s health and wealth gaps.
At LISC, we witness the transformative power of service every day.
In the face of an ongoing pandemic, and in response to the Project 10X initiative, LISC AmeriCorps members have stepped up, finding creative ways to mitigate and overcome disparities. Last year, for the second time, LISC hosted the AmeriCorps Equity and Innovation Grant Award Competition, where members competed for up to $1,000 to help seed or expand community-based projects that specifically address racial disparities and barriers that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The competition is designed to foster innovative, member-driven solutions that promote equity.
To date eight LISC AmeriCorps members serving at placement-site organizations across the country have been awarded funding. The grants have allowed them to use their training, knowledge, and personal experiences to develop new, barrier-busting approaches to seemingly overwhelming access issues.
Within six months after service, over 92% of LISC AmeriCorps members are employed or in school.
Take Christine Lopez, for example, who served in San Diego with Think Dignity, a service and advocacy group that works with people experiencing homelessness. Lopez used her grant to expand the Street Boutique, a mobile “shop” that provides free menstrual hygiene products and clean undergarments for people who are unhoused, serving primarily BIPOC women and girls. The Street Boutique operates in areas with large unsheltered communities and offers products from the back of a truck, with guests browsing for items displayed attractively on mannequins, shelves, and clothing racks. Lopez is now employed by Think Dignity, thanks in part to the opportunity that the LISC AmeriCorps placement created for her to demonstrate her potential. “Being able to assist these women continues to be an amazing experience,” she says.
Emily Klaassen, who served at Access Community Center, also in San Diego, used her Equity and Innovation award to help amplify youth voices in the community and create a Youth Advisory Council. The council helps BIPOC youth develop leadership skills and advises Access Community Center, an employment and training program, on how to be more responsive to community needs and connect more people to jobs, especially during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
In Kalamazoo, Michigan, Amin Finch, who served with the local YWCA, used her grant to create an early-childhood development tool, the Edison Community Everyday Play Boards. The tool guides a form of play therapy, helping reduce stress and boost engagement for children experiencing social isolation caused by the pandemic. Like Lopez, Finch was hired as a full-time employee by her site following her service term.
In Detroit, with just weeks left in her term, Catherine (Cat) Diggs, who served at Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ), crafted a proposal to elevate the voices of Detroit residents and organizations that have worked toward climate resilience by going solar. “Conversations about environmental issues often take place in closed circles among subject experts,” observes Diggs. To reinforce the notion that citywide access to solar is possible, her goal was to share a vivid display of solar success stories that are relatable and approachable. Her remarkable seven-video series is outlined in detail here.
There comes a time when each of us asks how we can give back to our communities and bring them together. My answer: only in service to others can we truly change the world. AmeriCorps members have always shown us that selfless commitment to improving the lives of others can help to solve intractable problems and close social divides large and small. Over the 27 years of our history, LISC AmeriCorps has developed a focused program emphasis on innovative thinking combined with hands-on, project-based training and lived experience—the most powerful way we know of to support lifelong success for members, and for the people and communities they serve.
We are expressing our #AmeriThanks to those making a difference. For ways you, too, can carry out acts of service, or recognize an AmeriCorps member in your area, please see opportunities here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Sturtevant, Deputy Director of LISC AmeriCorps Program
With nearly 20 years of professional experience, Sarah has served the last 13 years as a community development practitioner, working for The Arlington, VA, County Office of Economic Development; Philadelphia LISC; NeighborWorks America; and now as Deputy Director for the AmeriCorps Program, at LISC.