It's AmeriCorps Week!
You may be asking "What is AmeriCorps?" right now.
Here are the basics:
Since
1994, more than 800,000 Americans have given more than 1 billion hours of
service through AmeriCorps. Every year,
more than 75,000 AmeriCorps members meet pressing community needs across the
country – strengthening education, assisting veterans and military families,
providing disaster services, fostering economic opportunity, expanding health
services and preserving the environment. Serving at more 15,000 locations,
AmeriCorps members recruited and managed more than four million volunteers last
year, boosting the impact of the nonprofit and faith-based organizations they
serve.
AmeriCorps members work in communities across the United States to:
*tutor and mentor disadvantaged youth
*fight illiteracy
*improve health services
*build affordable housing
*teach computer skills
*clean parks and streams
*manage or operate after-school programs
*build organizational capacity
&much more!
But what does this have to do with Habitat for Humanity, you ask?
AmeriCorps members serve in a variety of roles within Habitat. Whether
they are engaging communities, building homes, leading volunteers,
raising resources or developing new programs, AmeriCorps members help
Habitat affiliates operate more efficiently and effectively. Most
importantly, members help us to serve more families.
Since becoming one of the first nonprofits to partner with AmeriCorps in 1994, Habitat has engaged over 7,000 members who have performed over 12 million hours of service and:
*served more than 15,000 families in the United States
*mobilized and engaged over 2.5 million volunteers
*raised tens of millions of dollars
"Service is a spark to rekindle the spirit of democracy in an age of
uncertainty. When it is all said and done, it comes down to three simple
questions: What is right? What is wrong? And what are we going to do
about it?"
~President Bill Clinton, swearing in the first class of AmeriCorps members
