vyt voices summer 2011

VYT Voices

Vermont Youth Tomorrow A*VISTA Program

Legacy... Inside this issue:

Lauren Pyatt 1

Jessi Engelke 2

Niki Sylvia 3

Benji Thurber 4

Mike Schlegelmilch 4

Christian Chorba 5

Marisa James 6

John Gardner 7

Callie Frey 7-8

Tasha Marvinney 9

Sadie Allen 10

Sabrina Sears 10

Jenn Ringrose 11

Jamal Cole 12

Isaac Lawrence 13

Sunny Leporati 13

Ken Ward 14

Lauren Pyatt

AmeriCorps*VISTA Leader

Vermont Youth Tomorrow

Montpelier, VT

Dear Readers,

This month we say good bye to our 2010-2011

Vermont Youth Tomorrow AmeriCorps*VISTA Team

as they wrap up their year of national service. It’s been

an adventure from the start for our members from

moving across the country, surviving their first New

England winter, to writing their first successful grant

proposal, and creating sustainable and high-quality

youth projects—our members have done it all.

In this year’s final issue of VYT Voices, we

asked our members to reflect on what they see as their

legacy of service in their community and in their own

futures. Serving as AmeriCorps*VISTAs in the fight

against poverty in America has had a profound impact

on our members and the important role they see ser-

vice playing for both themselves and for their commu-

nities. Please take a moment to read about their

successful service and more importantly the legacy of

community service they are leaving as Volunteers in

Service to America.

Volume 1, Issue 4

This year has been loaded with learning and growth for me person-ally and the community I served. Winooski is certainly an extraordi-nary city with a great deal of diver-sity and challenges. I feel very privileged for having a chance to leave a legacy here. The most noticeable legacy I will leave for Winooski is in the form of the relationships that I’ve deepened over the year between the City of Winooski and the community mem-bers, community partners and refu-gee families through my service in the Winooski Community Gardens. Oddly, managing the community gardens was a ‘by the way’ task that I wasn’t prepared for as I began my service, but I ran with it and learned a great deal from it nonetheless. Here is a picture of the gardeners building the raised beds in the Peace Garden behind the O’Brien Community Center in Winooski:

This picture means a great deal to me because it shows everything I did for this project coming together at once in a huge way. When I see

this picture, I see the grant money I applied for to pay for the scholarships for the 40 or so refugee gardeners to grow their food here; I remember

the hours and hours I spent with my new supervisor to plan the work days, move the soil, and plot the boxes; I remember the chal-lenge of managing the dozens of lovely people who came to help build that day. It just makes my service all worth it for me. This picture reminds me that there is always a larger purpose to VISTA service. Sometimes, it’s just so easy to get wrapped up in the frustrations of managing too much and feeling like you’re just not enough. I remember coming to my site for the fourth day in a row and having, literally, dozens of emails, phone messages and applications waiting for me on my desk for community garden plots. It was the middle of the grant season, I had $60,000 to raise for the Summer Pro-gram, a hundred volunteers to train and manage, my supervisor was suddenly out of the office for an indefinite

amount of time, the City Manager assigned herself my supervisor, and I was so overwhelmed, confused and tired that I was ready to shut down the whole thing. I got a call on my cell a day later from a man call-ing on behalf of a

refugee woman from Nepal. He said that she had 3 young children, rented her housing at a premium, was on every type of public assistance available to her, was struggling in English classes

and just wasn’t getting by. He said he was trying to help her every way he knew how and asked if we can do anything to help her get a garden plot so she can grow food for her family. How could I shut it down? She has a plot in the garden now that she tends every single day. She even tends other people’s plots when they’re out of town without them asking. I’ve not once been able to bridge the lan-guage gap to thank her for work-ing so hard. She’s just a lovely person. Moments like this remind me that we’re all a part of something big-ger. I was able to give a new American access to something that means the world to her. It doesn’t matter to me that she doesn’t know my name and I will likely never have a complete con-versation with her. It matters to me that I was able to lay the groundwork for a community gar-den that will sustain dozens of refugees as long as they need to get by as they adjust to this new place. To me, that’s a legacy.

Jessi Engelke

AmeriCorps*VISTA

City of Winooski

Winooski, VT

Volume 1, Issue 4

Niki Sylvia

AmeriCorps*VISTA

The Collaborative

Londonderry, VT

Volume 1, Issue 4

After one and three-quarter years of VISTA service at Mobius, I can look back at my experiences and safely say that my efforts have made a significant and tangible impact on the community. Quanti-tatively, I can point to our volun-teer mentor recruitment efforts, media appearances, technical sup-port and training offerings, and our online presence as specific exam-ples of areas that have improved significantly because of my service. We continued our upward trend of potential mentors referred to local programs last year and this year to-date, but more importantly, the percentage of these people who followed through on their commit-ment and actually became mentors has jumped more than 10 percent during that span. From 2009 to 2010, my media outreach efforts led to twice as many appearances in local newspapers and television stations, and that number is poised to more than double again this year. More significantly, though, in a broader sense, I feel that the men-

toring organizations and representatives we work with now form a more con-nected mentoring community. On the whole, amicable and open collaboration has become the norm where distrust and disconnection often existed when I first began as a VISTA. I’ve helped staff members build

and strengthen relationships with direct service programs, increase the number of training opportunities and mentor pair events, and position Mobius as a more effi-cient public awareness machine that fo-cuses on promoting programs. I’m in a unique position compared to my VISTA service-year mates at VYT in that I still have another quarter remaining in my service. With that position comes a unique opportunity for Mobius to establish an even stronger sense of continuity with the VISTA member who will be replacing me, as she will start in Au-gust and overlap with my service time by three months. My Ameri-Corps experience as a whole has been overwhelmingly positive, and I’ve been grateful for the opportu-nity to make a difference in the lives of local youth, and to develop my resume to prove my worth to future employers. That being said, I feel as though there is a limit to what one can ac-complish during a single year, espe-cially in what is in many cases one’s first year in the “workforce.” I am so grateful for the second year I’ve

spent at Mobius, and I feel as though much of the work I’ve done this year would not have been as successful for some-one during his or her first service year. My challenge over the next few months will be to establish a sense of continuity within Mobius by training my replacement, and inform-ing her of the work I have done, and the systems I have in place. If she can pick up where I am leaving off, I feel confi-dent that my legacy, but more impor-tantly Mobius’ legacy as a conduit for mentoring in Chittenden County, will continue to grow and prosper.

Benji Thurber

AmeriCorps*VISTA Mobius, The Mentoring Movement

Burlington, VT

AmeriCorps*VISTA member, Benji

Thurber, talks about mentoring in

Chittenden County at the VYT End of

Service Event in July.

Mentee, Odrielle, and Mentor, Nicole, pose

for a picture at a Mobius Mentoring Event.

Volume 1, Issue 4

On a Friday afternoon at the end of June, I remember feeling giddy about my service term. I felt many things during my VISTA year – proud, exhausted, excited, frustrated, bored, over-stimulated, competent, bumbling, very very cold (hello again, New England winter!) – but I’m not sure I ever felt giddy until that after-noon. What had happened was sim-ple: I had used a curriculum guide that I had spent much of the year writing to help lead a two week-long summer staff training. And it had gone well! And our summer job readiness program would start in four days! This was neat. I felt that same elation at the end of the following week, after I led a goal-setting activity for the youth in

our summer program, part of their on-the-job training. As I facilitated the discussion, I realized that curriculum guide was in action at that very mo-ment, creating programming before my very eyes! Youth were benefitting from my

work! I felt just a little bit proud. I’m sure most VISTAs have a similar moment, when the capacity they’ve been building in the form of documents or databases or commu-nity partnerships, paperwork and administrative tasks, all of a sudden is reincarnated before their eyes as worthwhile programming for youth, well-trained staff, and actual dollars to finance it all. Looking out your office window at a group of teens and young adults working together to tend an organic vegetable field, you think to yourself, I helped make this happen. Maybe you give yourself a pat on the back. Then you go back to your desk and get back to page six of that grant narrative you’re writ-ing. (And listen up, kid, if you

wanted to actually run the programming that you planned, publicized, and financed – well, you should’ve applied for AmeriCorps*State.) This is what being a VISTA is like. You scramble around behind the scenes, gather all the props to-gether, make sure everyone is in their place, and try to please the customers and sponsors. Only occasionally do you get to peek out through the curtain and catch a glimpse of the spec-tacle. And even the snatches you do catch won’t fully do jus-tice to your efforts. As a capac-ity builder, the full impact of your service won’t really be felt by your community until years after your term ends. The cur-riculum guide I spent most of my year revising and rewriting is bound for a statewide jour-

ney, to be used by future VISTAs and other Youth Agriculture staff to train folks across Vermont to do what we’ve been doing in Brattle-boro. It may be a year or two down the line before programs based on this curriculum pop up around the state, but VISTA isn’t exactly for those who need instant gratification. So, what’s my legacy of ser-vice? Hard to tell at the moment. Maybe a statewide network of job training opportunities for youth. Maybe just a small part in the suc-cess of an already-existing, Brattle-boro-based youth program. Maybe something totally unexpected. I’m hopeful, but I’m in no huge rush to find out.

Mike Schlegelmilch

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Youth Agriculture Project

Brattleboro, VT

AmeriCorps*VISTA, Mike Schlegelmilch,

helps a student from the Youth Agriculture

Project dissect a seed.

Mike Schlegelmilch at the VYT End

of Service Event at Silver Lake State

Park.

Volume 1, Issue 4

I drove up to Vermont nearly one year ago with little more than a can-do attitude of alleviating poverty through helping disadvantaged stu-dents realize their full potential. I knew no one in Burlington, was still trying to wrap my head around find-ing a way to survive on the Ameri-Corps living allowance, and certainly had now way of knowing what it would really be like to serve in a high school for a year. My apprehensions were soon alleviated, however, when I met the other new VYT members and realized that none of us really knew what the following year would bring. Armed with knowledge about food stamps, weatherizing our homes to lower heating costs, and how to find the best deals in town, we were

sent out from orientation to make a difference in our new communities. As we now near the end of our service, it’s amazing to look back and reflect on how much we’ve accomplished and

learned. Over the past year at Linking Learning to Life, I’ve contributed to programs that have reached thousands of students, making an impact—however imperceptible to them at the time—in each one of their lives. I’ve helped high school students take col-lege classes, organized career days at half a dozen schools, taught basic job skills to English language learners, and helped a group of students get their first jobs. While there’s always room to build on our accomplishments this year, I believe my service has given them many of the tools they’ll need to succeed in their lives after high school.

At the same time, living below the pov-erty line, I’ve learned so much about the Burlington community, the prob-

lems facing our country, and the challenge of alleviat-ing poverty. I know my experience this year has given me skills and knowledge I would have never gained without AmeriCorps, and I hope to carry that experience with me wherever my future may lead. Just as I believe I have left a legacy with my stu-dents, I know they have left one with me, and hopefully both my students and I will be able to look back on our year together and continue to take away lessons from each other well

into the future.

“We often plough so much energy

into the big picture, we forget the

pixels.” – Silvia Cartwright

I have never been very good at

seeing the big picture, but I can

most definitely focus on the smaller

parts. I hop from one planning

stepping stone to the next, trying to

contribute and be an asset to Essex

CHIPS’ legacy. At Essex CHIPS,

our goal is to provide our commu-

nity’s youth with better options to

seek a brighter future. The one

thing my successor will never say

about me is that I am unorganized.

I will be leaving behind many vir-

tual boxes of research and check-

lists. Although my year has in-

cluded projects all over the busi-

ness spectrum, I have found my

niche in event planning. The lega-

cies I have decided to proudly leave

behind are the community events I

have planned. Our community is

everything to us and I try to show

our vast appreciation every time I

start planning.

My event year began with the

Essex CHIPS and Essex Junction

Tree Lighting Celebration. In De-

cember, our community gathers to

celebrate the winter by lighting an

enormous tree that graces the cen-

ter of the 5 Corners. Families in the

area have the opportunity to visit

CHIPS to eat treats, make crafts,

and mingle with their friends. My

hard work and preparation paid off

when several of our parents and

neighbors congratulated me on a

job well done and a celebration to

remember. With my heightened

feelings of pride, I realized that I

could build a legacy through my

planned events. Even though the

events may not happen the same

Christian Chorba

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Linking Learning to Life

Burlington, VT

Christian Chorba shares stories about his service year at the

VYT End of Service Event in July 2011.

Continued on next page.

Marisa James AmeriCorps*VISTA

Essex CHIPS

Essex Junction, VT

Volume 1, Issue 4

way next year, I will be leaving the next

VISTA with all she needs to create a

successful event and through that I will

be remembered.

My favorite event to plan was mine

from start to finish. Essex CHIPS has

community programming for our

youth and for our adults but no events

that can include the whole family.

While given the opportunity to plan a

fundraiser, I also wanted to create an

event that can happen every year and

that the Essex community looks for-

ward to. Thus the Memorial Day Pan-

cake Breakfast was brought into frui-

tion. After months of planning, includ-

ing donation requests and volunteer

recruitment, the day for the event

came, with sunshine and hungry fami-

lies. It was a great day and a success as

well! I can’t wait to hear all about the

2nd Annual Memorial Day Pancake

Breakfast next year and I hope that I

did my part to help both CHIPS and

our community.

2010-2011 Essex CHIPS Team!!

Essex Chips Teen Center celebrated its

25th Anniversary this year.

AmeriCorps*VISTA Marisa James participates in a

fellow members End of Service Presentation at

Silver Lake Park in July.

I hope to leave behind the tools necessary for volunteers and staff to continue In-Sight’s Mission: To teach youth ages 11-18 photog-raphy regardless of their ability to pay suggested class fees. Throughout the last year I have met over 200 youth and countless community members in Brattleboro, Vermont. I was able to fos-ter a safe environment in our classroom and created fine art pho-tography curriculum for youth. I also developed PR materials, enhanced databases and forms and secured funding that will en-able In-Sight programming to continue efficiently and effectively. Through community outreach I met and brought in over 20 new community members to serve as volunteers and instructors at the In-Sight Photography Project. My hope is that youth and commu-nity members will share their positive experiences allowing In-Sight to continue successfully for many years.

"What is Your Legacy of Service in your Community"

John Gardner

AmeriCorps*VISTA

In-Sight Photography

Brattleboro, VT

Collection of photos taken of students

and by students at the In-Sight Photogra-

phy Project in southern VT.

Volume 1, Issue 4

Volume 1, Issue 4

I write this article in a bit of disbelief that almost an entire year has gone by. It seems like just yesterday that I was saying my farewells to friends and family back in Michigan. I could have never predicted the events that would be taking place in the year ahead. As an AmeriCorps*VISTA member

with the non-profit Operation: Mili-

tary Kids (OMK) it took me a little

while to fully get into the swing of

things. With my entire year of service

laid out in my VISTA Assignment De-

scription (VAD) I still found myself

wondering what exactly my role was

with this program. It is a bit daunting

to see a full year’s worth of work bro-

ken down in five pages. I remember

reading through my VAD thinking,

how am I supposed to recruit and

manage that many volunteers for that

many hours and am I really going to

lead six presentations on the

“Deployment Cycle?” As time went by

though, such requests began to look

manageable and I found that I often

surprised myself with my capability to

reach these goals. By halfway through

the year I had already surpassed my

volunteer recruitment goal and was

well over halfway on volunteer hours. I

had even put into place a Volunteer da-

tabase, manual, training curriculum

and much more. I now can also say

that I have traveled to all corners of

Vermont to provide trainings for a vari-

ety of community groups and was even

able to appear on television to talk

about OMK.

Every new position comes with its

challenges. I was fortunate enough to

have an amazing Supervisor, Stepha-

nie Atwood, the help of the caring Ver-

mont Youth Tomorrow staff and to be

serving alongside a phenomenal group

of fellow AmeriCorps*VISTA members.

I am very grateful for the help of this

strong support system and could not

have done it without them!

With this past year under my belt I sit

here as a very different person in com-

parison to that new grad I was last Au-

gust. Even with the ups and downs of

the AmeriCorps life I would not change

a single thing from this last year. My

passion for OMK’s mission has only

grown as I have experienced what we

offer to Vermont service members and

their families. I am very proud to say

that I will be continuing my service

with OMK for an additional year and

am looking forward to the challenges

that lay ahead.

I very nearly came to Vermont as

an undergrad at the University

of Vermont. Though I’m sure I

would have received a great edu-

cation and had a blast running

around Burlington, I would have

had a much different relationship

with this city and state. I am so

glad Vermont welcomed me two

years ago as an AmeriCorps

member, instead of as a student.

Not only am I able to appreciate

this place as more than a staging

ground for college fun, I was

given a chance to integrate my-

self into each community I’ve

lived in. Instead of starting from

scratch, as many people do upon

moving into a new city, I walked

into a tremendous network of

service and community-minded

organizations. I feel indebted to

this community for providing me

with service I could be proud of

and excited for, some incredible

friendships and, most impor-

tantly, a way to understand and

assist in alleviating poverty in

Vermont.

After these past two years, I can’t

imagine not finding ways to sup-

port my community. Feeling in-

vested in the place I live keeps

me aware of the opportunities to

serve it. From the informal act of

picking up litter wherever I walk,

to more structured volunteering

with local organizations, giving

back to my community is in-

grained in my life.

Callie Frey

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Operation: Military Kids

Stephanie Atwood (OMK State Coor-

dinator) and Callie Frey at the 2010

AmeriCorps Service Project led by

OMK.

Tasha Marvinney

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Stern Center

Willison, VT

Volume 1, Issue

The first of April snow still covered

the town of Montpelier. Winter this

year was especially brutal, dumping

feet upon feet of the white stuff on

Vermont’s state capital. Yet, a curi-

ous thing was happening at the

Cheshire Cat Gallery on Elm Street.

Strong sturdy flowers began ap-

pearing along the pathway. Red

tulips, yellow sunflowers, and blue

daffodils sprang three feet tall over

night. In the center of each flower

a poem blossomed. The poems

sang of love. Love of family, love of

friends, love of pets, love of home,

and of course, love of bacon.

The flower garden displayed poems

written by local elementary stu-

dents. As the AmeriCorps*VISTA at

the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, I

spent much of March painting

wooden flowers in preparation.

People on their way to work or to

the grocery store encountered the

extraordinary flowers and paused

to read the lines. Poetry was no

longer confined to the bookshelf,

but out in the public sphere where

everyone and anyone could enjoy

it.

The garden was only a small part

of POETRY Alive!, a month long

celebration of local poets in the state

capital. During April there were poetry

slams, poetry workshops, and poetry

readings throughout the community.

The town itself became a walkable an-

thology of poetry. Over 70 local busi-

nesses and organizations participated

in the event, showcasing poems from

over 170 poets in their storefronts,

almost double the number of poets

from the previous year.

Rewind to January when the tempera-

ture hit -20 on some nights and hov-

ered in the single digits during the

day. I sat hunched over at my com-

puter looking up every single major

newspaper in Vermont. I organized

them in alphabetical order and added

hyperlinks that connected to the local

arts editors. Finally, I added a page to

my legacy manual titled, “POETRY

Alive! Call for Submissions Contacts.”

Satisfied that the work I was going to

do was going to be repeated in the

years to come I sent out a call for po-

etry to every major newspaper in the

state.

The poems began flowing in at a

breathtaking rate from all over the

state. And in April the poets began

arriving too. They strolled the capital

streets during Montpelier’s Art Walk

admiring their work, they piled into

Bear Pond Books for readings, and

they packed the Kellogg-Hubbard Li-

brary for the poetry slam. Not only

that, they stayed in our hotels; ate at

our restaurants; and bought merchan-

dise from our stores. A form of cul-

tural tourism emerged. In the feed-

back survey Margaret Lee Ferry, a par-

ticipating poet from Woodbury, VT

noted:

I enjoyed walking around to read poems

in the different windows. I'm not from

Montpelier, so it was a good chance for

me to see a little of it & notice some of the

stores I would have otherwise just

walked by. Seeing the poetry themes for

the different locations was fun, as well

as seeing some by people I've met. I was

with family & had limited time the day

we went down to Montpelier, so I could-

n't see all the poems -- next year I'll defi-

nitely plan on more time.

I hope POETRY Alive! will be part of my

legacy. I want it to grow unexpectedly

like the Budding Poets Garden. I hope

that the month long celebration will con-

tinue in the years to come. I hope that the

VYT AmeriCorps*VISTA who follows me

finds the process easier because of the

work I have done.

Sadie Allen

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Kellogg-Hubbard Library

Montpelier, VT

AmeriCorps*VISTA, Sadie Allen, shares with

the VYT Team a comic book she made at the

End of Service Event in July. Poetry Alive! Flower Garden on Elm St.

in Montpelier, VT

Volume 1, Issue 4

A big part of my service this year has been working with schools to engage their classes in land-based learning. My legacy, what I hope to leave behind is a way for educa-tors to get their students outside, learning in the natural world -- showing them that an outdoor classroom doesn’t have to be an elaborately planned space, that learning happens all around us when we use the land and the com-munity as a classroom. This fits well with the Willowell mission of cultivating and pro-moting synergy between the arts, education and the environment through land-based educational and community activities and with the vision of the Walden Project, “a public school program serving stu-dents in grades 10-12. Run out of Vergennes Union High School with support and guidance from the Willowell Foundation, The Walden project provides students a rigor-ous curriculum that emphasizes writing, philosophy, environmental studies, while supporting student centered-inquiry. The program is modeled on Henry David Tho-reau’s sojourn to Walden Pond where he immersed himself in his ecology to deepen his sense of self, society, and the natural world. To that end, students are encouraged to follow and pursue their own ar-eas of interest with support and guidance from the staff.” The Wal-den classroom is in a Cedar Grove located on the Willowell Founda-tion’s 240-acres of land. I am currently working on two curriculum units that will allow local public schools to incorporate land-based learning activities into their everyday classroom. Not only is this an interest of the Willowell Foundation, but it has been a par-ticular passion of mine for some time. One unit is a high school AP

Environmental Science class through Shelley Snyder and Mt. Abraham High School. This en-tire class will be based around wetlands- the plants, animals, soils, and water that make up this ecosystem. Shelley and I have been working to create an

integrative curriculum that will get the students out on the land as well as learning in the classroom. Another curriculum unit I am currently work-ing on is an elementary level language arts class that will incorporate nature-based activities with in-class learning. One lesson included in this curricu-

lum is called: OF FAIRIES, GNOMES,

AND HOBBITS: IMAGINED

WORLDS IN NATURE. Students will

read books like The Minpins by Roald

Dahl and then go on a magical fairy-

folk hike and looking all around for

“signs” of gnomes, elves, hobbits, or

fairies. Could that hole in the ground

belong to a hobbit? Could that patch

of flowers conceal a school of flower

fairies? They will be encourage to look

high and low as they imagine these

secret worlds with the intention

to broaden students creative and

physical horizons at the same time!

Sabrina Sears

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Willowell Foundation

Vergennes, VT

Sabrina Sears, AmeriCorps*VISTA,

shares a story from her year of service

with Vermont Youth Tomorrow.

Willowell Students participate in an education field trip at the

Willowell Foundation in Vergennes, VT .

Volume 1, Issue 4

Excerpt from What will be your legacy? by Haki Aitoro “…Let us all be remembered For the lives we touched For the people helped For the wisdom we shared For the stories we told For the laughter we initiated For the love we gave For the affection we showed For the good role models we were For the communities we inspired For the youth we guided For the hungry we feed For the needy we assisted For the success we created For the risk we took For the world we changed Let us write down our stories Let us tell our experiences Let us record our tales Let us share our struggles For our children For our grandchildren For generations to see For generations to hear As a source of hope As a source of wisdom As a source of guidance As an example of our legacy So what will you leave?...” This portion of Aitoro’s poem helps me identify the impact my service has had on the groups, organizations, and individuals I’ve had the privilege to interact with during my year of

service. I believe that each of the VYT AmeriCorps* VISTA members has had this kind of impact on their community. I am extremely proud to say that as my year of service is coming to an end; I am leaving behind a legacy of understand-ing, commitment, and a persistence to offer the best quality programming pos-sible to The Chill Foundation. While I will miss the monthly opportunities to reflect upon my service with my fellow Vermont Youth Tomorrow Ameri-Corps*VISTA members, I know we will not soon forget each other. Thank You.

Jenn Ringrose, AmeriCorps*VISTA for the

CHILL Foundation, hangs with participants

of CHILL’s All Girls Skate Night at Talent

Park in Burlington, VT

The legacy I will leave behind in my

community will be one of inquiry and

skepticism. If it’s one thing I’ve tried

to get through to the youth I serve is

to remain objective and observe the

details of the experiments, case stud-

ies or projects taking place. Learning

through observed or testable experi-

ences is the best way to be able to gain

knowledge and understand the world

around us. It’s only through inquiry

that we open ourselves up to learn

from discernable facts and data. And

it’s only with the aid of skepticism

that we can separate truth from fic-

tion. By doing this the youth of Ver-

mont will be on track to regain the

high ground in the areas of Science,

Engineering and Technology and

put our country back in the lead

when it comes to science education

and scientific careers.

Jenn Ringrose

AmeriCorps*VISTA

CHILL Foundation

Burlington, VT

Jamal Cole

AmeriCorps*VISTA

UVM Extention 4-H

AmeriCorps*VISTAs Jamal

Cole and Tasha Marvinney at

VYT’s End of Service in July.

Volume 1, Issue 4

As I am wrapping up my service as an

AmeriCorps* VISTA with the Vermont

Affordable Housing Coalition, I take time

to reflect on all that I have accomplished

within a year and look forward to future

opportunities. I have worked with people

throughout the entire state and helped to

inform them on issues facing the most

vulnerable Vermonters.

With all that occurred and is still oc-

curring in response to changes in federal

funding, many of Vermont’s nonprofits

and agencies have joined together to stay

afloat and take proactive measures to

protect Vermonters who live in affordable

housing or are homeless.

My service at the Vermont Affordable

Housing Coalition played an integral role

in that information process. Though I

didn’t always interact directly with those

directly affected by the economic hard-

ships of life, I kept them in my mind as I

followed and informed our members of

housing information.

By far, my most rewarding experience

this year has been my work in the Brook-

side Mobile Home Park, in Starksboro,

VT. It is here that I was fortunate to be

able to work side-by-side with a commu-

nity to bring in positive opportunities for

the youth in the park. This

has been an ongoing effort for

the past three years, and this

year we succeeded in imple-

menting a summer youth gar-

den program.

I could not be more proud

of the work done by everyone

to bring this idea to fruition. What I

learned most from this experience is

the value of working with a commu-

nity and truly listening and helping to

do what they want to do and what

they need.

This year was not always easy, my

service has been one of my greatest

personal challenges to date, but

knowing that I did not give a year of

my life for nothing is more than

enough reward for me. It is the little

things that I helped with this year

that will matter the most to me, it is

the relationships and bonds formed,

and the mindset of learning from

each and every experience that I will

carry forward.

Sunny Leporati

AmeriCorps*VISTA

VT Affordable Housing Coalition

Burlington, VT

One snowy evening in March at ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, I learned much more about the community than just what lurks at the bottom of Lake Champlain. Here are a few of the things I learned: 1) Collaboration works. Mobius , a mentoring development organization, did an excellent job with the event, providing dinner and entertainment. Mentors and mentees from many pro-grams in Chittenden County, includ-ing my program Community Friends Mentoring, enjoyed the event. 2) VISTAs work well together. I teamed up with Mobius VISTA Benji Thurber to help run the event and collect quotes from mentors

for press releases. 3) Mentees who are 6 years old are much faster than mentors who are school principals. Both had a great time at the event. 4) All kinds of different kids like macaroni and cheese and cookies. Salad is debatable. 5) Free events are good. Free events with free dinner are the best. 6) Adults like mentoring because it provides them with the oppor-tunity to play. 7) There are many wonderful, car-ing people in the community who volunteer with Community Friends Mentoring and other pro-grams. There are many more who don’t know about local opportuni-ties. It’s up to people like us to find them and give them that chance!

This night summed up

the year pretty well for

me. I spent most of my

year behind the scenes,

writing letters, collect-

ing donations, editing

newsletters, running a

resource blog, etc. All

the duties I performed culminated

into events such as ECHO Science

Night, and I was able to see men-

tors with their mentees smiling

and having fun. I worked with

other great programs around the

community to provide kids with

more opportunities. It has been

an honor serving the great state of

Vermont, a place I had never vis-

ited prior to my year of service.

This year’s crop of VISTAs made

more positive changes than I ever

thought possible, and I hope the

tradition continues.

Ken Ward

AmeriCorps*VISTA

Community Friends Mentoring

Burlington, VT

Volume 1, Issue 4

I’ve only been a VISTA with the City of Montpelier’s Planning and Community Development depart-ment for a short time, and have spent the vast majority of time fig-uring out how to do the things I’ve been tasked with doing. So what will I leave behind when I complete my term of service? I’d love to say that I’ll leave behind some deep impact on the future happiness and sustainability of the Montpelier community, or even of some small group of people, or a few individu-als. My hope, entering my term of service, was that I could contribute, if even just in a small way, to creat-ing a better Montpelier in the fu-ture.

Collaborating with the Central Ver-mont Food System, I hoped to help provide access to healthy, local food to everyone in the region. Helping the develop of the City’s new zoning code, I hoped to leverage as much public input as possible to create a code that, generated as it was by community members, provided for a future Montpelier that matched the wants and needs of the people that live here, as they themselves articu-lated these wants and needs. With Montpelier’s Capital Area Neighbor-hoods groups, I hoped to engage more diverse groups of people in the civic process and thereby build com-munity and better community gov-ernance. As I now approach the end of my ser-vice here, however, I can’t say with confidence that I’ve done a great deal of the above. The goals I articulated above are large, and to know whether I’ve accomplished them, even in a

qualified way, is a bit beyond me. What I can say, with some confi-dence, is that I’ve done my best, with only a handful of lapses, and I’ve worked hard on projects that I’m passionate about. I tried to speak up when I thought some-thing could work better, or could be more fair, and I tried not to do so until I was relatively sure that it would be helpful. I think I’ve main-tained a sense of humor, even when things weren’t going as well here, that helped me to stay positive. And I’ve developed tools that I hope may help our office to work better and to provide better sup-port for the kind of development that is wanted in Montpelier. My legacy of service, I hope, re-flects the above: that I’ve generally done a pretty good job on things the community wanted me to work on. If they made a difference in the sort of big way articulated earlier, then I count myself lucky.

Isaac Lawrence

AmeriCorps*VISTA

enVision Montpelier

Montpelier, VT

VYT VISTAs Tasha Marvinney and Mike Schlegelmilch gather round to listen to Isaac Lawrence’s End of Service Presentation.

Volume 1, Issue 4

As this Vermont Youth Tomorrow A*VISTA Program year

closes, the VYT staff wants to bid a warm farewell to our

fabulous 2010-2011 team. It has been an honor to travel

the road to social justice with this diligent, steadfast, and

caring crew. As folks disperse to graduate school, non-

profit jobs, and a second year in national service, we want

to thank them for their passionate dedication to improving

the lives of those on the downside of privilege. We look

forward to seeing all the good that they will do in the

world.

Volume 1, Issue 4

Volume 1, Issue 4

Tyler Farry—Basement Teen Center

John Powell—Big Heavy World

Heather Simson—The Hub

Meredith Sabens—CityScape Afterschool Program

Audrey Sager—The Collaborative

Erin Christiansen– Franklin Grand Isle Bookmobile

Jessica Murray—Howard Center

Kelsey McCabe—Howard Center

Michael Riley—In-Sight Photography

Alexa Daudelin—Kellogg-Hubbard Library

Kelsey Boss—Linking Learning to Life

Forrest Matthews— Paran Recreations

Kristen Cole— VT Affordable Housing Coalition

Kaelyn Modrak—VT Youth Conservation Corps

Julie Nicholson—VT Youth Conservation Corps

Sarah Swanke—City of Winooski

In June VYT placed 17 Summer Associate A*VISTA members

at innovative, youth-focused organizations around Vermont

to build the capacity of summer programs serving low-

income youth. VYT Summer members support programs that

enrich the lives of youth and provide both behind-the-scenes

capacity building (fundraising, volunteer recruitment, data

bases creation), as well as direct service (developing curricula

and leading activities). VYT Summer members are support-

ing experiential learning programs that focus on community

service, environmental stewardship, recreation, gardening,

nutrition; literacy, academic enrichment, job skills, life

skills, arts, and youth-run enterprises.

Volume 1, Issue 4

AmeriCorps*VISTA members serve through private organizations and public nonprofit agencies,

addressing issues related to poverty--such as public health education, the environment, employment,

and public safety--by developing and mobilizing resources that create long-term sustainable benefits

at a community level. Focus is on resource development and capacity building and NOT on direct

service. AmeriCorps*VISTA members are not employees; they are part of national service.

Focus of AmeriCorps*VISTA

VYT, a statewide national service program, places 30 A*VISTA members at innovative commu-

nity-based organizations, schools, and state and municipal agencies to actively and effectively ad-

dress poverty-related issues. VYT members build and strengthen systems that support exciting and

meaningful opportunities and programs designed to develop skills and experiences necessary to

transcend and avoid poverty. The efforts of VYT members —

-involve youth in the life of the community through community service and mentoring;

-help young people, including refugees, succeed in school and build job skills;

-provide opportunities for youth to learn about sustainable agriculture and environmental

stewardship;

-support youth from military families with parents deployed overseas;

-address homelessness and provide safe, affordable housing;

-create opportunities to learn about and practice good nutrition and exercise habits; and

-sustain viable and diverse out-of-school programs that promote developmental assets and

help young people avoid poor decisions and unhealthy lifestyle choices.

VYT members design curricula, recruit volunteers and mentors, increase funding, create opera-

tional systems, and develop connections within the community. Through their efforts VYT members

not only help communities understand and value the investment in youth, but also make a real and

profound impact on youth.

VYT service and training is designed to ensure that members gain important professional skills

and experience, as well as build and reinforce their belief in the power of community service.

Vermont Youth Tomorrow AmeriCorps*VISTA Program 2011-2012


A*VISTA Leader – Lauren Pyatt

Assistant Director – Meghan Jaird

Director - M. Kadie Schaeffer

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 802.229.9151

Website:

http://sites.google.com/site/vermontyouthtomorrowavista/


Washington County Youth Service Bureau/

Boys & Girls Club

P.O. Box 627 / 38 Elm Street

VYT Accomplishments for 2009-2010 • 18,638 = number of youth benefiting from programs supported by VYT members

• $856,895 = amount of cash grant, and in-kind donations procured by VYT members for youth-focused, anti-

poverty organizations

• 15,974 = number of hours provided by 1,593 community volunteers and mentors recruited and managed by

VYT members

• 695 = number of public relations documents developed by VYT members

• 5,752 = number people who attended the 157 presentations VYT members made to community groups and

organizations

• 254 = number of operational systems (e.g., databases) developed by members

• 27= number of community service projects implemented by members in which more than 563 community

members participated

• 83= number of curricula developed by VYT members to promote job skills, civic engagement, and healthy life-

styles

vyt voices summer 2011

Documents