What is AmeriCorps?
AmeriCorps is an opportunity to make a big difference in your life and in the lives of those around you. Its a chance to apply your skills and ideals toward helping others and meeting critical needs in the community. Each year, AmeriCorps offers 75,000 opportunities for adults of all ages and backgrounds to serve through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups. Whether your service makes a community safer, gives a child a second chance, or helps protect the environment, youll be getting things done through AmeriCorps! AmeriCorps members address critical needs in communities all across America.
AmeriCorps provides opportunities for 75,000 Americans to give back in an intensive way to their communities and country each year. It consists of three main programs: AmeriCorps State and National, whose members serve with more than 2,900 national and local nonprofit and community groups; AmeriCorps VISTA, through which members serve full time fighting poverty; and AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps), a team-based residential program for young adults 18-24 who carry out projects in public safety, the environment, youth development, and disaster relief and preparedness.
AmeriCorps: A National Corps of Capable, Committed Individuals “Everyone Can Be Great because Everyone Can Serve” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What is AmeriCorps? AmeriCorps is a national service program that provides opportunities for citizens to serve their communities. Participants in AmeriCorps, known as “members,” join a local program and provide intensive community service. Nationally, AmeriCorps Members serve with more than 3,000 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based organizations. Since 1994, more than 400,000 men and women have provided needed assistance to communities across the nation through their AmeriCorps service. AmeriCorps opens the door for citizens to serve in a variety of ways. Through their service and the volunteers they mobilize, AmeriCorps members address critical needs in communities throughout America, including: • Tutoring and mentoring disadvantaged youth • Fighting illiteracy • Improving health services • Building affordable housing • Teaching comput
From the AmeriCorps national website, www.americorps.gov: In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the National and Community Service Trust Act, which established the Corporation for National and Community Service and brought the full range of domestic community service programs under the umbrella of one central organization. This legislation built on the first National Service Act signed by President H.W. Bush in 1990. It also formally launched AmeriCorps, a network of national service programs that engage Americans in intensive service to meet the nation’s critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. . . . AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps, engages more than 40,000 Americans in intensive, results-driven service each year . . . Most AmeriCorps members are selected by and serve with projects like Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross, and Boys and Girls Clubs, and many more local and national organizations. Others serve in AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteer
AmeriCorps, the domestic Peace Corps, engages more than 40,000 Americans in intensive results-driven service each year. Were teaching children to read, making neighborhoods safer, building affordable homes, and responding to natural disasters through more than 1000 projects. Most AmeriCorps members are selected by and serve with projects like Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross, and Boys and Girls Clubs, and many more local and national organizations. After their term of service, AmeriCorps members receive education awards to help finance college or pay back student loans. What Americorps Members Do? AmeriCorps members train volunteers, tutor and mentor at-risk youth, build housing, clean up rivers and streams, help seniors live independently, provide emergency and long-term assistance to victims of natural disasters, and meet other community needs. What is MountainServe? Just as Americorps is a branch of the Corporation for National Service, so MountainServe is the Lock Haven
