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AmeriCorps helps local organizations
By Ben Holman
Nevada Daily Mail
Organizations in Vernon County are currently hosting a group of AmeriCorps workers, who have been seen around the area lending a helping hand to area businesses and groups.
According to Brett Tempest, the group leader, these young adults are in the area to work on a prairie restoration program at the Gay Feather Prairie in southeast Vernon County. The work, which is carried out on the weekdays, involves cutting down trees that have encroached into the prairie area and doing some controlled burns.
They arrived in Vernon County on Feb. 28 and will return to their home campus in Denver, Colo., on April 8. They are staying at the Bar-H Boys Ranch outside of Nevada. In their free time, they are doing what they can to help out local organizations.
"On the weekends, we like to help out however we can," said Tempest. This past weekend, the team was helping with some spring cleaning at the YMCA in Nevada -- raking leaves, cleaning pillars, picking up trash and other outdoor tasks. During the past two weekends they have helped out in a local thrift shop and have traveled to Springfield to do some volunteer work there.
AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs that takes young Americans and puts them to work meeting needs in education, public safety, health and the environment. The organization, which was created in 1993, employs more than 50,000 Americans each year in service.
AmeriCorps provides workers to non-profit organizations to help make more effective use of resources and volunteers.
These particular AmeriCorps members are part of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps -- a 10 month, full time residential program for men and women between the ages of 18 and 24.
According to Tempest, people join AmeriCorps for varying reasons, but typically the workers are those who are in the middle of their college education or have yet to begin college.
Darcy Kimball, the group's media contact, said that she is half-way through college and still hasn't decided where she wants to go with her life and saw AmeriCorps as the perfect opportunity to do some self-exploration.
"I wanted to do something productive. With this group you get to do various different projects and go to different parts of the country," she said.
The group is made up of young people from all over the country, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and North Carolina are all represented among their ranks.
The group representatives said that they tend to keep their weekends filled with volunteer opportunities so expect to see them around the area, helping out.