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AmeriCorps Montgomery

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Posts by Paul Costello1

Montgomery County’s vaccination rate is high enough for the county to fully reopen

October 25, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Opinion by Margery Smelkinson, Jennifer Reesman and Bethany Mandel October 22, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

Margery Smelkinson is an infectious-disease scientist whose research has focused on many pathogens, including influenza and SARS-CoV-2. Jennifer Reesman is a licensed psychologist in Maryland. Bethany Mandel is a writer. They are the founders of Revive Moco.

The vaccination numbers out of Montgomery County are so incredible, they sound as if they’re election results from an authoritarian regime. But according to the county itself, they’re real, with 99.9 percent of eligible Montgomery County residents having received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 90 percent considered “fully vaccinated” with two doses. Our hospitalization numbers reflect this near-universal vaccination, with only 22 new coronavirus-related admissions in the past seven days (as of Oct. 18), a 42 percent decrease from the prior week, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It quite literally does not get much better than Montgomery County when it comes to coronavirus vaccines and hospitalizations.

Despite these enviable numbers, however, it still feels like the spring of 2020.

Education continues to be disrupted. The county’s public schools and preschools continue to quarantine entire classes and even whole grades for 10 days in response to a single student or staff member testing positive, despite data from around the world showing these isolated kids rarely go on to test positive. Even in Montgomery County Public Schools’ mostly unvaccinated student population, surveillance testing has revealed infinitesimally low positivity with just 18 positive cases from 28,290 tests administered as of Oct. 8. Though these test results look good, the same cannot be said for the county’s academics. As Montgomery’s was one of the last school systems to reopen last year, it is perhaps unsurprising that math and literacy rates of young learners plummeted by 20 percent and 35 percent, respectively, with children of color and disadvantaged students faring even worse.Each stolen school day for the thousands of children pointlessly placed into quarantine is a lost opportunity to undo this damage. Indeed, studies have shown that even missing just a few days of school, for example because of snow closures, has significant negative impacts on student performance.

Large outdoor gatherings in the county, such as Gaithersburg’s Oktoberfest, Rockville’s classic car show, July Fourth fireworks and Festival of Lights continue to be canceled over “public health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Meanwhile, the rest of the country is safely gathering outdoors, even at large festivals and sporting events. The University of Florida recently reported, “Despite concern about packed college football stadiums during the pandemic, college towns like Gainesville aren’t seeing upticks in COVID-19 cases, said University of Florida epidemiologist Cindy Prins, Ph.D., who tracks coronavirus trends nationwide.”

Though Montgomery libraries finally reopened after one of the longest closures in the country, they’re still offering limited services. A county library official told us this week that story times and other indoor programs would not resume until vaccines are approved and available for children. Meanwhile, teen programming remains virtual, despite almost every single teen in the county having at least one vaccine dose.

Many in Montgomery County boast that our mitigation efforts, particularly our strong adherence to masking, are the reason we’re doing so well. However, an analysis of mask mandates in California suggests that it is vaccination rates, rather than masking, that dictate infection rates. The SF Gate reports, “Orange County — a non-mask-mandate county — had a very similar outcome to neighboring Los Angeles County, the first California county to bring back indoor masking in response to delta.” Importantly, these two counties had comparable vaccination rates and, in fact, there was a near-perfect correlation between vaccination and hospitalizations of all counties analyzed. Montgomery County is among the nation’s most highly vaccinated counties. It is this, not the masking of 2-year-olds in supermarkets, that is keeping our community safe.

Elsewhere in the state, life is much closer to what we enjoyed pre-pandemic. Several surrounding counties long ago dropped the indoor mask requirement. Carroll and Frederick counties significantly relaxed school quarantine protocols, and libraries all over Maryland have welcomed guests back to bookshelves and story times. Despite these eased measures, cases and hospitalizations have continued to drop throughout the state.

Montgomery County is clearly waiting on something to resume normality. What? What benchmarks must we meet to consider an off-ramp from these coronavirus “emergency” powers? To say the county leadership has been evasive is an understatement; it is next to impossible to get answers from our elected representatives about the mitigation efforts we’ve all been subjected to over the past year and a half.

With regard to indoor masking, we at least have answers about what’s holding us back. On Aug. 7, the indoor mask requirement was reinstated following the CDC’s classification of Montgomery County as a region with “Substantial Transmission,” defined as 50 to 99 cases per 100,000 people in a seven-day period. However, in an area where almost every single eligible resident is vaccinated and the severity of a “breakthrough” infection carries a risk of 0.01 percent for hospitalization and 0.003 percent for death (likely substantially lower for those under 65), we should not continue counting cases, but instead rely on our number of vaccinations, hospitalizations or intensive care unit utilization when deciding on mitigation efforts. And more frustrating, even when the county mask mandate ends, there is still no off-ramp for unmasking children in school.

The voters are taking notice of county leaders mired in stale practices and clinging to the wrong metrics. If they do not change their ways soon, voters will remember on Election Day those who ignored science and needlessly kept their schools and libraries shut, who strangled their restaurants and other venues with ineffective policies, and allowed fear to cancel safe and popular public events. We will hold accountable those who hold us back.

Montgomery County draws up new district map that reflects surge in racial diversity

October 22, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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The draft map, which needs to be approved by the county council, includes a district with a Black plurality and another with a Hispanic plurality.

By Rebecca TanYesterday at 6:13 p.m. EDT

Montgomery County has sketched out a new council district map that reflects the suburb’s surge in Black, Latino and Asian residents over the past decade, and attempts to boost representation for communities in the northern, more rural parts of the county. As decided by a 2020 ballot measure, the map adds two districts to the existing five, creating seven district seats on the County Council on top of the four at-large positions.

The county’s redistricting commission voted 6 to 5 Wednesday evening to submit to the County Council one of three draft maps, which was designed by commissioners David Stein, Keshia Desir and former council member Valerie Ervin (D). The council will hold public hearings before a final approval.

Of the seven districts in the draft map, six have voting-age populations that are majority people of color, a reflection of the dramatic demographic changes recorded in Montgomery’s most recent census results. Since 2011, the last time district lines were redrawn, Montgomery has added about 90,000 new residents, many of them immigrants.

Study: Montgomery County has grown older, more diverse and pricier

One district, in the eastern part of Montgomery bordering Prince George’s County, has a Black plurality; and another, containing parts of Wheaton and Aspen Hill, has a Hispanic plurality. Potomac, Bethesda and Chevy Chase compose one district — the only one with a White majority — and the municipalities of Gaithersburg and Rockville form another. Takoma Park and Silver Spring are carved out of the existing District 5 and grouped with North Bethesda, and the remaining two districts divide the northern parts of the county along the border between Clarksburg and Damascus. The current District 1, which stretches from Poolesville to Bethesda, is split apart.

“This map tells the story of Montgomery County,” said Ervin, who represented District 5 from 2006 to 2014. “Hopefully, an outgrowth of this map is that we’ll see more people running for council seats who we haven’t seen before. … More Latino candidates, more Asian candidates, more Black candidates — that would be the best outcome of all.”

In recent meetings, commissioners debated how to divide districts between the northern, more rural “upcounty” and the southern, more urban “downcounty.”

Commissioners Jason Makstein and Nilmini Rubin voted Wednesday against approving the draft, saying that the way it had been drawn diluted the voices of upcounty residents, who were among the most vocal advocates for additional council seats last year. Clarksburg is split into different districts, as is Travilah, Makstein noted. Rubin said the new map might allow an overrepresentation of the downcounty, noting that all of the council’s at-large members live close to the border with D.C.

Other commissioners, however, said that was irrelevant. People from across the county can run for at-large positions, Ervin noted. Germantown in the north is the most populous census-designated place in Montgomery, and could theoretically elect its own at-large member. But voter turnout in Germantown has traditionally lagged behind other neighborhoods.

Women dominate early field of new candidates for Montgomery County Council

“We are not designing districts based on voter turnout,” commission chair Mariana Cordier said in an interview before the vote. Each of the seven proposed districts have about the same population — 150,000 — and while upcounty has grown more populous over the past decade, so has downcounty, she added.

Marilyn Balcombe, a Germantown resident running in the June 2022 Democratic primary for a district seat, said she understands the frustrations of voters in her area but believes the solution lies more in boosting voter turnout than in redistricting. While at-large council members are meant to represent the entire county, they lack natural familiarity with the experiences of upcounty residents if they live in Takoma Park or Silver Spring, said Balcombe.

“Our needs are different,” she said, citing the example of public transit. “There are a lot of people in the county who would advocate ‘no more roads’ but that just doesn’t work in the upcounty … We don’t live in the street grid, we live in a cul-de-sac.”

Advocates from the county’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods celebrated the draft map, which they say will help provide overdue representation to communities that have been disproportionately affected by poverty, joblessness and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.

“There’s been over 40 years of nondevelopment in east county,” said Daniel Koroma, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone and civic activist in White Oak. “Having a champion, a dedicated council member for a Black-majority district — it’ll make a huge difference.”

Ervin, the first Black woman to serve on the council, said east county has been the historical home in Montgomery for many Black families who weren’t able to buy homes in other parts of the county because of redlining and other discriminatory practices. “This map will give them the opportunity to elect someone who represents them and their community,” she said. “Our district map has not done that before.”

As of Thursday, 12 candidates had officially filed to run in the Democratic primary for County Council, which in deep-blue Montgomery often determines the eventual winner. Once finalized, the new district map is likely to influence where candidates choose to run.

Council members Andrew Friedson (D-District 1) and Sidney Katz (D-District 3) are running for reelection, while council members Nancy Navarro (D-District 4) and Craig Rice (D-District 2) are term-limited, leaving at least four districts without an incumbent candidate. Council President Tom Hucker (D-District 5) is not term-limited but has said he is weighing a bid for county executive.

Montgomery County Declares November Remembrance and Reconciliation Month

October 22, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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For Immediate Release: Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021 Montgomery County Declares November Remembrance and Reconciliation Month

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, the Montgomery County Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission is calling for this November to be a month of Remembrance and Reconciliation in the County. Engaging in this time of reflection will help County residents grow their understanding of the full history of Montgomery County and how we can move forward from it.

The Commission was established in 2019 to help bring the County together to promote a better understanding of our history. This includes recognition of three men who were the victims of racial terror lynchings in Montgomery County in the late 1800s: Mr. John Diggs-Dorsey, Mr. Sidney Randolph, and Mr. George Peck.

Throughout the month of November, the Commission will partner with organizations, like the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project, to host events for the community. Scheduled events will include a public arts demonstration, a museum exhibit, a high school student essay contest, a virtual address by Congressman Jamie Raskin and documentary film screening. More information on those events is available here.

Residents are invited to participate in the events the Commission and its partners are planning for November. The Commission is also encouraging Montgomery County agencies and residents to participate in Remembrance and Reconciliation month by hosting their own events, activities, conversations, and discussions to continue to move us forward as a community. If you or your organization are interested in having the Commission display information on your free, open to the public, event, then please fill out the form here.  

The Commission acknowledges the path to reconciliation is long and winding, but we are on it and must remain on it every day. That takes intention, purpose, and action. Therefore, citizens of Montgomery County are asked to pause during the month of November, as we gather as families and communities to break bread and express gratitude, to remember the past and dedicate ourselves anew to the work of justice and reconciliation through action. 

National Service Heroes Win Excellence in AmeriCorps Awards for Inspiring Acts of Service During the Pandemic

October 21, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sep 24, 2021

JustServe AmeriCorps recruiting for a year of service and a lifetime of change

Alumni and grantees from California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Tennessee, and Wisconsin were selected for providing outstanding service during the COVID-19 pandemic

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, AmeriCorps, the federal agency for volunteering and service, awarded the annual Excellence in AmeriCorps awards to five alumni, grantees, and advocates, for their outstanding service within AmeriCorps State and National programs. From California to Puerto Rico, and from COVID-19 response to mental health awareness, this year’s award recipients go above and beyond every day to make our country safer, smarter, and healthier.

Now in its seventh year, the Excellence in AmeriCorps Awards were created to recognize the outstanding and innovative AmeriCorps programs, members, and alumni tackling our nation’s most-pressing challenges. The 2021 Excellence in AmeriCorps award winners represent important examples of national service, responding to adversity with resourcefulness, creativity, and community-mindedness.

“Hailing from across the country, AmeriCorps members are strengthening their communities through their dedication and service,” said Sonali Nijhawan, AmeriCorps State and National Director. “This year’s Excellence in AmeriCorps awardees are an example of the tenacity and compassion of our country’s best. We’re proud to honor their impact and highlight their service during the pandemic.”

The 2021 Excellence in AmeriCorps award winners are listed below:

  • Jaret Reyes, Reinvent Schools Las Vegas AmeriCorps, Nevada – Impactful Service AwardJaret is a community navigator and provided assistance to multiple community members on a daily basis. His service helped students connect with their teachers through distance learning, families keep their homes, and parents keep food on the table for their children through the pandemic. Jaret worked directly with at-risk students, inspiring them to stay engaged with their schoolwork virtually and in-person.
  • Darian Boyd, Impact America, Tennessee – Influential Service AwardOver the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Darian completed three separate AmeriCorps service terms. Darian stepped up as Team Lead for the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance service and implemented new virtual and drop-off models that were utilized to prepare over 800 tax returns in the Memphis area. Darien stayed after his term concluded to see the job through and ensure that families had access to their tax refunds throughout the summer, exemplifying his unwavering commitment to service.
  • Victoria Ramierez-Gomez, California AmeriCorps Disaster Team – Inclusive Service AwardVictoria helped plan and coordinate the production of Be Red Cross Ready training and presented Homes Made Safer education to Alma Family Services, the lead agency for a collaborative Gang Reduction Youth Development Program serving youth and families. In addition to her work on the ground, Victoria has reached out to local school districts and local organizations to provide virtual preparedness training and offer personal protective equipment. She also played a vital role in helping to rebuild a Preparedness Coalition for the city of Bell Gardens where the majority of residents are monolingual Spanish. She reached underserved and underrepresented communities far beyond Los Angeles County to build partnerships and provide housing resources for Latinos while also building a core of Spanish-speaking volunteers through volunteer recruitment and engagement.
  • Paloma Suarez, Social Capital, Inc., Massachusetts – Innovative Service AwardPaloma served at the South End Community Health Center, addressing food insecurity and other social determinants of health. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Paloma established partnerships with local organizations to provide over 5,000 prepared meals, 3,000 culturally sensitive frozen meals, fresh produce, and supplies to pediatric patients. Paloma also played an important role in conducting 70% of the health center’s social determinants of health screenings. Paloma was onsite every day making sure that families had what they needed and through her contributions 706 adults, 183 youth, 494 children, 125 infants, and countless others were reached.
  • Jenise Terell, Public Allies, Wisconsin – Lifetime of Service AwardJenise served in AmeriCorps’ Public Allies for 25 years, serving most recently as vice president of programming. During her tenure, Public Allies has grown its alumni network to more than 8,000 individuals and engages with more than 750 Allies per year, while also partnering with over 450 nonprofit and governmental organizations across 24 communities nationwide. Additionally, Jenise has played a central role in developing several groundbreaking national programs, including a collaborative, multi-city venture with the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance that will build career and education pathways for men of color. Jenise is proud to be a native Milwaukeean, a Public Allies alumna, and a working mother of two children.

AmeriCorps State and National programs are implemented in partnership with State Service Commissions across the country. More than 1.2 million AmeriCorps members across all AmeriCorps programs have served the nation, giving more than 1.6 billion hours of service and earning nearly $4 billion in education awards since 1994. Every year, thousands of AmeriCorps members prepare students for success, rebuild communities and revitalize cities, support veterans, fight the opioid epidemic, respond to disasters, preserve public lands, strengthen education, foster economic opportunity, and more.

Making sure you show up in your own story

October 21, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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(From 2017) Tomorrow we have our fourth Annual Storytelling Festival for the AmeriCorps programs of Maryland. Our hosts at Casa Maryland and Pablo Blank always provide a warm welcome in their amazing space.

Each year, we try different things and end with the Living Stories, the signature process developed and used by Storywise.com over the past twenty years. Every time we invite people into this practice, we are amazed how much energy is released with the simple invitation for people to tell their own story in their own voice, to respectful and appreciative audiences.

Tomorrow, we will introduce some of our latest work that we call POND, the principles of Narrative Design. Members of AmeriCorps are creating a new story, one that will lead to life long memories of how they dedicated a year of their lives to serve their community. That is a remarkable story in and of itself.

But four months in, the members will be invited to map out the journey as one that goes through the predictable Beginning Middle Ending axis of coherency, where Beginnings hold the creative space, Middles hold the Complication and Recommitment space, and Endings hold the completion space. If you want to have a great story at the end, design it from the beginning. Don’t leave it to chance. That is what POND teaches.

Tomorrow, we will push the chairs aside and open up the room so space has a voice. We will ignore the Power Point and shut off the phones, and invite the members to walk back into the story of their service, retracing WHERE it began, ( not why or when) and then walking into the space that reveals their expanding horizon of possibility. We will ask the magic question “What do you know from here that you did not know from there that will help you get to where you are headed?”

Image result for where to?

We get so tied up in the Why or the How. We forget a far more important question- Where? We start with WHERE. Even that word “question” is loaded with the same insight because it contains a “Quest,” which wikipedia calls “a long or arduous search for something.” To ask a question is to be going somewhere.

Our other focus will be to invite stories that go beyond excuse and blame, stories of the decisions and choices that members made to get this far and the decisions and choices that lie ahead. Too often, our lives in the telling sound like experience after experience, “this happened” and then, “this happened,” or as one writer put it, “one damned thing after another.” But this only masks the character in the story who is walking the road and deciding which path to take. Even deciding to take no path is deciding on a path. Decision comes from the same word as “incision” meaning cutting off one option to pursue another. A choice of a path is a choice about what story you will be able to tell.

We may not be the sole creators of our history as we live it, but we are the creators of our own history in how we choose to remember it. Though our lives can be assaulted by enormous challenges, we are a species that knows instinctively that how we tell the story is how we manage to name and tame our chaos, how to get beyond it and how even to transform the most painful memories into moments of discovery.

We will ask members to share in three directions:

1) Go to the place that holds the story of their decisions to serve at the beginning- the Genesis story or origins.

2) Go to the place that holds the stories of their decisions they are having to make every day to honor and deepen that commitment- the Exodus story or passage.

3) Go to the place where this decision might grow into something about the kind of life they are choosing to live, the kind of world they are choosing to create, and most of all, the kind of person they are choosing to become. That is the story of Revelation.

We joke at storywise that before 35, you can blame parents and family and circumstances all you like but there comes a time when you have to grow beyond that and stop only showing up in someone else’s story. Its time to show up in your own- the story of your fateful, faithful choices.

Surely, your choice as a member of AmeriCorps to serve, and to put your other life on hold, and to live on a barely livable allowance, all in the name of a higher good that you are bringing into the world is a story worth showing up in.

“No Struggle, No Progress”

October 20, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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LOOKING BACK: The Slaveholders' rebellion: Frederick Douglass' Fourth of July in Himrod | Local History | fltimes.com

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglas

Getting Ready for Guest Faculty- Peer-to-Peer Group Coaching

October 20, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Project Change  got off to a great start, with four Friday meetings during the month of September to get everyone into the AmeriCorps groove. The highlight was our trip to Camp Letts, on a beautiful day where the team braved the dreaded zip wire in the morning and  lazily canoed the river in the afternoon, and concluded with a camp fire and stories. Thanks to our guides Meredith and Richelle and a big shout out to the Supervisors and staff from our partner sites who joined us in a fun day.

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October is a special month of guest trainings which begin on October 9th with Master Coach Lynne Feingold introducing the formal practice of Peer to Peer Group Coaching. The team have already started this activitity with the Bells and Whistles check-in time that starts every meeting. If a member has a challenge and they want more feedback, they request time from the group to have a conversation. During that time, the group acts as a coaching team,  and asks questions to unfold the situation, then deeper questions to expose the assumptions behind the dilemma, and then to help the person come up with a positive plan of action that they are willing to hold themselves accountable for at the next meeting.

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This is the special practice that grew out of last years team, and something that members enjoyed and learned to practice as a life skill that could be applied to other areas of their work.

Sometimes we get so enmeshed in our own problems, we lose sight of the wider possibilities that a discerning listener can help us tease out. The process is not meant to be about giving advice, or replace therapy. Rather the process is meant to help a person listen to more deeply to what they are intending underneath what they are saying. The one critical axiom for group coaching is, except in exceptions, never to to ask Why. Why? Because Why is a question that invites people to get more into their head, rather then laying out the situation for others to observe.  Why invites interpretation when what coaching asks for is observation.

AmeriCorps Project Change inspire Peace Makers in Jerusalem

October 20, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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April 9, 2015 adminUncategorized Off

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Over the weekend of March 19-21 2015, Jermarkus Booker, Caprecia Camper and Ben Eichberg traveled to Jerusalem to present a snapshot of their work as young leaders fighting the urgent issues of structural racism in American education. Invited by the  New Story Leadership, an innovative narrative based conflict transformation program, the three AmeriCorps members were part of the #Encourage Conference, where alums of NSL joined other peace activists to share stories of courage that would send a message of encouragement to a world hungry for hope.  Despite the last Gaza war and despite the results of the elections earlier that week,  young people from Israel and Palestine and the USA and Ireland  were coming together over this special weekend  to encourage each other in their struggle for change, and their quest for peace.

The message coming to them from guest speakers such as Ambassador Saeb Erakat and Knesset Member Hillek Barr and various members of the USA delegation to the region was- “Don’t give up now. We need you more than ever.” And the AmeriCorps members shared their own struggles with racism and shared their work of fighting discrimination that creates a yawning gap in school achievement between minority and majority students.

This is a first for Project Change and probably a first for AmeriCorps for members to be invited to share their story and their volunteer experience on an international stage.

Till they have Faces

October 17, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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During the latter part of the service year, we usually give the members a chance to take the lead in training and offer their team something of their own skill set and experience. One such member, Ben, decided to teach the team a session on Gratitude and how to invite people into a circle of grace.

At the time, all the members were battling with the ZOOM world for working with their students. For most of them, the level of participation for students was haphazard or low. Many students refused to show their faces. It was a regular topic about how hard it was to engage with a screen that only had a name, and nothing else. Funa took the teaching on gratitude to heart and decided to change his mind set in how he handled this frustration with his faceless students. Next time he had his ZOOM class, he greeted the blank squares on the screen with gratitude that the students had even managed that much in terms of showing up. He could not see if the student responded or not, but Funa decided that if they did not want to show their face, that was going to be OK. And even if nothing changed for the student, the experience was different for Funa.

Fast forward to the start of this school year. Funa signed on again to serve and returns to the classroom at Sligo Middle School. He is with a group of students that he has not met. One of them suddenly says, “I know you I think. Weren’t you on ZOOM last year and were the one helping everyone and welcoming us all?” Funa said he was not sure because he could not recognize any of their faces. Turns out that this student was one of the faceless participants on the ZOOM classes that Funa had welcomed. Now she had a face. Because the student recognized him, she immediately told all the other students, “Mr. Funa is here to help, so if you have any problems, go to him.”

And that is what Funa spent the rest of the class doing, receiving the students and their question on the strength of this one faceless student who appreciated the attitude of gratitude that Funa had learned to adopt, through the teaching and training of his fellow team mate. The student only had a face when she recognized Funa, not so much from the face but from the smile in his voice.

We teach the members in their interaction with students that there is a double learning loop. It is not the members’ experience of the student that matters so much as what the student experiences of the member as she or he experiences the student. The example of Funa is a perfect example of this. It’s not what impression I have of you, but what do I mirror back to you about how I encounter you in this moment. Gratitude can change everything.

Project CHANGE Oral History Project 2020-21

October 14, 2021 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized
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Professor Jean Freedman

Oral History Project - College of Architecture

Origin and Purpose

            The AmeriCorps Oral History Project was developed by Paul Costello as a way to commemorate and learn from the experiences of the 2020-2021 AmeriCorps Project Change volunteers, particularly in regard to the changes that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. Jean Freedman developed the questionnaire and interviewed Paul Costello, 11 of the 15 volunteers, and one faculty member. The questions focused on the volunteers’ work with AmeriCorps, how this work changed during the course of the pandemic, the consequences and challenges of this work, and what lessons can be learned from this experience.

Highlights

The volunteers worked primarily in the field of education, both in schools and in community organizations. The volunteers spoke frequently about the importance of service and the need for fundamental societal change. The pandemic exposed structural problems such as racism, food insecurity, and unequal access to medical care. The volunteers used their positions as AmeriCorps workers to ameliorate the difficulties that their clients experienced. The volunteers’ resilience and creativity in adapting their jobs to online platforms were particularly impressive.

The volunteers’ passion for service to others was striking. One volunteer said, “I wanted to get involved in something bigger than me.” Another said, “I was called to service.” The volunteers’ jobs included teaching in the classroom and in extracurricular programs, implementing restorative justice programs, mentoring girls, and empowering students through the arts. However, the volunteers were frequently confronted with issues that went beyond their official tasks: students who could not concentrate because of food insecurity or because a family member had lost a job or become ill. Faced with these problems, the volunteers’ immediate response was, “What can I do to help?” They organized food deliveries, translated for students who had difficulties in English, created videos to supplement classroom work, encouraged students to go to college even if their parents hadn’t, and let the students know they had advocates who would fight for them.

Then Covid-19 hit. Teachers, students, and volunteers were suddenly thrust into unfamiliar territory. Programs that had thrived in-person suddenly had to become online. The volunteers immediately rose to the challenge. One volunteer discovered a talent for making videos, which she was able to utilize in a school district on the other side of the country, something that would have been impossible without virtual learning. When faced with the challenges of online learning, one volunteer remarked, “The students are amazing. They mentored each other, without us telling them to do that. If a student couldn’t log on, they just stepped in and said, ‘This is what you do.’” Many found that this concern for one another was mirrored in society at large; as one volunteer put it, “I’m grateful for the fact that we’re looking out for each other a little bit more than I think we were.”

Yet the Covid-19 pandemic also highlighted structural inequalities, such as racism, poverty, and domestic violence. The clients frequently came from vulnerable populations, who bore the brunt of society’s ills. Some students had parents who developed Covid because they worked in essential industries, such as food service and janitorial work. Some parents lost their jobs because of the pandemic and were unable to sufficiently provide for their families. Some students did not have computers sufficient for online learning. As one volunteer put it, “This position has opened my eyes to all of the programmatic obstacles and institutional limitations; this is much bigger than Covid.” While all suffered from the worldwide pandemic, not all suffered equally. The volunteers’ clients frequently did not have the resources needed for essentials such as food and medicine. The volunteers rose to the challenge magnificently – organizing food deliveries, creating innovative educational programs, finding scholarship money for college, translating government forms, and so forth. Yet they recognized that their efforts were not enough.

Catastrophes always allow for the possibility of structural change. Some were optimistic that the pandemic’s highlighting of social problems could lead to their solutions. One volunteer said, “I think most of us have changed for the better.” Another found that the pandemic allowed her to develop talents she might otherwise have overlooked: “I’ve had the opportunity to innovate through problems and challenges.” The volunteers recognized that the status quo was not serving their clients sufficiently, and that change was both possible and necessary. As one volunteer put it, “We need to make a change right now.”

Conclusions

National service programs such as AmeriCorps benefit both the volunteers and the clients. While the benefits to the clients are obvious, the benefits to the volunteers should not be overlooked. National service programs provide the volunteers with educational and work opportunities, put them in contact with people they might otherwise not have met, and allow them to participate in important work, something that extends beyond themselves. While AmeriCorps has provided magnificent results, the needs currently outstrip the resources. If more Americans were involved in programs such as AmeriCorps, we could go a long way toward eliminating evils such as hunger, racism, and poverty. AmeriCorps provides its volunteers and its clients with the tools and the will to make the world a better place. As one volunteer put it, “Now I think anything can be possible.”

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Jean Freedman - author of Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics.

Jean Freedman is part of the Project CHANGE faculty. She holds a BA in Dramatic Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MA and Ph.D. in folklore from Indiana University. Her first book, Whistling in the Dark: Memory and Culture in Wartime London, is a study of the interplay between culture and political ideology in London during World War II. Her biography of American folksinger Peggy Seeger, entitled Peggy Seeger: A Life of Music, Love, and Politics, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2017. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Journal of American Folklore, and other publications.