Prelim Post

Hello everybody,

I feel like I need to give a bit of an intro to the nature AmeriCorps NCCC and the kind of work I will be doing-- or at least as I understand two weeks before starting anything. Before you continue, look to the side of the blog for a quick 'Rundown'. It's a short and sweet version of what you're about to read.

AmeriCorps was started in 1994 as a project of Bill Clinton. Say what you will about the guys personal life, but as a prez he got a few things right. AmeriCorps as a whole is just an umbrella term for the money that Congress gives to nonprofits around the US. Most of the programs are self-contained and very varried in purpose. The three big breakdowns are AmeriCorps NCCC, AmeriCorps Vista, and AmeriCorps City/State.

As I understand it AmeriCorps NCCC is the only one with it's infrastructure rooted solely as an AmeriCorps program. That is, if Congress stopped funding AmeriCorps, then NCCC would immediately cease to be. The others are separate non-profit organizations that use AmeriCorps to recruit volunteers and gain some funding.

The difference between the Vista and City/State program, again as I understand it, is that Vista is a more behind-the-scenes professional work to run the non-profits. My brother Colin is actually a member of a Vista program called GRID Alternatives. The program puts in solar pannels for low-income housing and is based out of Oakland, CA. He does do a lot of desk work, but luckily gets to participate on the occasional construction effort.

City/State , besides being organized on a City/State basis-- who knew?-- is more of the hands-on work. One of its more popular programs that I also looked at was City Year program. You might heard of City Year Philadelphia: they run tutoring programs in inner city Philly schools, for example.

For those young people reading this that might be interested in any of these programs, I would definately suggest it. Each of these programs provide young volunteers the opportunity to fulfill a little civic duty, take time off from 'normal' life, and make a little money for schooling. Don't get into it if you want to kick up your heels and party, though. Most programs only provide enough of a living stipend to scratch by-- much to my brother's chagrin. With the money that he makes, he's had to find cheap housing and with this came some "interesting" roomates and living arraingements. My program, luckily, avoids most of that mess because housing and meals are taken care off, with the trade-off of sleeping in school gyms and church basements for 10 months. The award worth caring about really is the schooling reward, which comes at the successful completion of the program. For me this is about $5K: this is going to my past student loans, but it can also be used to pay for future schooling.

Okay, I hope this hasn't been information overload thus far. I've covered most of the technical things. Now on to the things that I will be doing. Starting in a couple weeks, I will begin the Corps Training Institute. This is about one month of daily physical training (5:30 every morning), learning first aid/CPR, getting certified to drive the 15-person vans that we take across the US, etc. While there I'll be living communally with about 300 other people in a dorm-like setting. By the way if you want to send me mail while I'm there, the address is below and to the side-->. This will be the best way of getting ahold of me for the month of October, but afterward I will be in God-knows-where, USA and all snail mail will have to be redirected to me wherever I am.

By the end of the month I'll be placed in a team of about 10 people and deployed anywhere throughout the Pacific Region or wherever the greatest need is (likely the Gulf Coast). Our projects last about 6-8 weeks a piece followed by a transition week back in Sacramento to train for the next one.

Well this is what I'm looking forward to at the present moment. It still all hasn't hit me yet. I've been worrying a lot about getting done with my summer work doing science research.

Oh yeah, here's my address...

Jesse Bright, Class 15 (Team name)
AmeriCorps NCCC
3427 Laurel Street
McClellan, CA 95652

P.S.--The team name will eventually be also be important for any mail to get the right team, but unfortunately I won't know this for a while.