Let’s face it: Not everyone has the desire or the opportunity to go to college and pursue a traditional career in public service. That doesn’t mean young people shouldn’t get the chance to focus on doing good in their community. The federal AmeriCorps program is a great way to create a valuable pool of volunteers to do just that.
Even though it’s billed as a volunteer program, participants receive awards once they complete their assignments. The grants are meant to be used to further volunteers’ education or to pay off student loans.
The award – less than $5,000 – is hardly an incentive by itself to commit to a yearlong project. The partial-year stipends are even less, about $2,300 for between 300 and 900 hours of work. AmeriCorps volunteers are mostly in their mid-20s and make the conscious decision to put better-paying career paths on hold in order to perform admirable tasks.
Last week in the House of Representatives, AmeriCorps faced funding cuts from two different amendment packages. One, sponsored by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), would have cleaved $25 million from its federal grant package, divided between a program focused on underprivileged youth and various programs for the elderly.
Stearns wrote a letter to others on the House Appropriations Committee in which he mischaracterized the nature of AmeriCorps, calling the stipend a contradiction for volunteers.
The other, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), would have removed all $226 million funding AmeriCorps receives at the state and federal levels, effectively ending the program.
Fortunately, neither of the amendments gained enough support to continue up the legislative chain.
Officials for Washington Campus Compact, a service learning organization housed at Western Washington University, said that $27 million in AmeriCorps grants have been spent at state schools. Locally, Everett Community College has seen $847,349 of that money and $583,570 has been used to finance education at Edmonds Community College.
For some people, public service means holding elected office. For others, it’s tutoring adult literacy classes, working in a soup kitchen, doing clerical work for a health clinic or planting trees.
AmeriCorps volunteers do that kind of work because they believe in the causes and take pride in offering their time and skills. Government should commend them and the organization shouldn’t have to worry about having to scrounge for donations in order to operate.
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