Author Archives: Amy Potthast

05.21.10
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VISTA Career Transitions Featured on Social Media Monday

The upcoming Social Media Monday webshop focuses on the career transition, especially for AmeriCorps VISTAs.

Monday May 24th at noon Pacific, 3 pm Eastern, you can hop online and on the phone for a free web presentation featuring tools for your transition from VISTA.

Social Media Monday webshops (web-based workshops) are “virtual workshops for social change.” Monday’s webshop will focus on:

  • Plaxo, an online contact management and social networking tool that can help you stay in touch with the folks you work with currently as a VISTA, as you move onto your next steps — one of the most valuable, long-term effects of VISTA in your career and life will be the friendships and professional connections you’ve made this year. Plaxo isn’t just another e-rolodex, however. The contacts in your Plaxo network update their own information as they move along in their lives and careers — so you don’t have to. Plaxo also allows you to get all your social network updates in one place.

Learn more and register for Monday’s webshop: (free) Tools for Transitioning: Plaxo, Idealist & More.

Check out past Social Media Monday webshops — archived online — on the VISTA Campus (free login required).

05.19.10
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Asian and Pacific American Heritage Month Web Event: Diversity in Peace Corps

Diversity among Peace Corps Volunteer groups serving overseas is crucial to the success of the entire program — for many reasons. Peace Corps promotes person-to-person diplomacy, and aims to increase understanding among people of other countries about the United States. Without recruiting Volunteers who reflect the rich array of cultural and ethnic and racial heritages that make up U.S. communities, host country nationals in Peace Corps countries can’t begin to grasp the ways of life that exist here in the United States.

Tomorrow Peace Corps will highlight and celebrate the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans in Peace Corps service. Last year, hundreds of Asian and Pacific Americans served as Peace Corps Volunteers, providing needed skill sets and services to Peace Corps host countries.

Returned Volunteer Mike Buff  — of South Korean descent — will host an online information session tomorrow Continue reading →

03.15.10
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Senate Recognizes VISTA’s 45th Anniversary

Last week, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution honoring the work of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), for its 45 years of work towards alleviating poverty, and other accomplishments.

Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-VA) and Thad Cochran (R-MS) introduced the resolution (S.Res.449), and were joined by several co-sponsors. Rockefeller first lived in West Virginia as a VISTA, when he was 27 years old.

The resolution recognizes the more than 175,000 VISTAs who have served since 1965, and their creation of “many successful and sustainable community initiatives, including Head Start centers, credit unions, and neighborhood watch groups.” The resolution honors VISTAs’s work on diverse poverty-related issues such as health care, technology, crime/recidivism, housing, and literacy. The resolution also highlights these numbers:

  • 7,000 VISTAs serve each year
  • Annually, VISTAs bring in $100 million in cash and in-kind donations to their organizations
  • Also each year, VISTAs recruit 1 million volunteers who engage in 10 million hours of volunteer service.

Read the entire Senate resolution here. Oddly, the House introduced a similar bill (H.RES.1152) last week, but it wasn’t passed; instead it’s been referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor.

According to a statement today from the Corporation for National and Community Service, which operates VISTA, the resolution marks the official kick off of VISTA’s 45th anniversary celebration — a series of events and celebrations that will take place this year.

Celebrations will include a photography exhibit of VISTA photography from 1968, an effort to collect and share stories of VISTAs, and I’ll be launching a podcast episode featuring three VISTAs who’ve served across the decades during AmeriCorps Week in May.

Are you a VISTA or former VISTA? How will you commemorate the 45th anniversary of the organization?

03.11.10
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What Happens When Life Issues Become Legal Issues?: National Service as a Solution to the Justice Gap

Justice Corps member DeAndre

Contributed by guest blogger Martha Wright, Senior Court Services Analyst for the California Administrative Office of the Courts and Statewide Co-Director of the California JusticeCorps, an AmeriCorps program that places diverse university students to assist overburdened courts with supporting self-represented litigants.

Nowhere is the effect of the current economic downturn more visible than in the halls of our nation’s courthouses.

Just as budget cuts are forcing courts to close their doors one or more days a month and furlough or even downsize staff, caseloads spurred by economic hardship are on the rise.

The legal issues proliferating these days involve tenants evicted because their landlord is in foreclosure; marriages pushed beyond the breaking point; collection notices on bills that can’t be paid; or loss of health insurance due to a lay off.

The Justice Gap

These life problems gone unresolved often become legal problems. And without the means to hire professional Continue reading →

03.04.10
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Emerging Corps: Blue Engine’s Nick Ehrmann

Blue Engine's Nick Ehrmann

The New Service podcast show features a service program tackling the challenges of college completion for students from low income families. Blue Engine is now accepting applications for its 2010-11 corps.

In 2010, a new national service corps is getting off the ground. Blue Engine, based in New York City, aims to recruit a corps of about a dozen fellows for the 2010-2011 school year to facilitate daily, differentiated, small-group instruction for high school freshmen.

Our guest is Nick Ehrmann—Blue Engine’s engine and a Teach For America alum— who says that we know how to get high-needs kids into college, or getting them “college eligible” — nonprofits and schools have been targeting and tackling hurdles like high school completion, college admissions, and financial assistance.

But, while the high school drop-out problem is far from solved, groups are paying far less attention to college completion rates for high-needs kids, or “college readiness.”

Blue Engine aims to close the gap between college eligibility and college readiness.

After graduating from Northwestern University in 2000, Ehrmann began his career in education as a Teach for America corps member in Washington D.C. In 2002, he joined forces with local philanthropists to launch the nonprofit “I Have a Dream” Project 312, a youth development program for Nick’s fourth-grade students. In the fall of 2003, he began doctoral work in sociology at Princeton University as a William G. Bowen fellow.

Over the past three years, Nick spent months shadowing his former students in high school classrooms, living with their families, and conducting extensive interviews in the local community, where he has witnessed firsthand the negative effects of academic underperformance on the transition from high school to college. His dissertation—Yellow Brick Road—is scheduled for defense in the spring of 2010.

Idealist’s Amy Potthast talks with Nick about the Blue Engine fellowship, its application deadlines (March 10 and April 28, 2010); the gap between college eligibility and true college readiness; and why it’s crucial to expect more out of high schoolers in order to prepare them for high school and college success, and beyond.

Listen to the show here.