By Zayn Saifullah Serving with College Possible was my first time working in an office bigger than 15 people (in fact, much bigger with 171 staff and AmeriCorps members in Minnesota alone). As a recent graduate, I started out feeling very unconfident in such a comparatively large setting and convinced that my introversion and shyness made me unsuited to leadership. The needs of my service … Continue reading How Service Helps Build Leadership Skills
By Shayla Thiel Stern As one of nine children of Hmong refugee parents, Goachy Yang had not given college much thought. “In the Hmong community, it’s either college or marriage if you’re a girl,” she said. “Applying to colleges just seemed like a hassle, and I thought I would try to just work after I finished high school.” Gaochy changed her mind when her older … Continue reading Her Service Helps Students from Her Own Community See College as a Possibility
By Shayla Thiel Stern Spending a year of your life serving in AmeriCorps is an amazing experience. You might be cleaning up damaged forests after a hurricane, helping kids in low-income areas improve reading and math skills, building a home for a family that otherwise has unstable housing or assisting a person who struggled with substance abuse with resources for recovery. Through AmeriCorps you can … Continue reading How to Live on an AmeriCorps Stipend
An independent study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago recently showed that Minnesota Reading Corps students are accelerating their growth at a rate that would not happen without participating in the Reading Corps program. Data show that students being tutored in reading for 20 minutes a day, every day school is in session, equates to an extra half to full year of schooling. … Continue reading Data Shows Minnesota Reading Corps is Equal to an Extra Half Year of Schooling
By Shayla Thiel Stern Kendra Halbert of Minneapolis had several different professional titles before she joined AmeriCorps, and none of them seemed to fit: Nurse assistant, retail associate, restaurant server, manufacturing line assembly worker. But when she joined the Total Learning Classroom program at Sojourner Truth Academy in North Minneapolis, she found a title with a perfect fit: Scholar Coach. “I just fell in love … Continue reading Serving as a Scholar Coach Has Changed Her Life — and Her Daughter’s Life
By Shayla Thiel Stern Sarah Paulus takes her daily To Do list in stride: Create a resource guide, build and populate a database, visit a state prison… Indeed, this might not be the typical kind of service that people expect from AmeriCorps, but as the first AmeriCorps member placed in the Minnesota Department of Corrections through MORe Corps, Paulus is helping her team fight one … Continue reading A Recent College Grad Serves to Help Inmates with Opioid Substance Use Disorders
Four years ago, school leaders and community partners at Nellie Stone Johnson Community School in North Minneapolis decided to take a new approach to boosting student achievement. At Nellie Stone Johnson, 98% of students receive free and reduced-price lunch (90% and above is considered “high poverty” by the Minnesota State Department of Education). A large percentage — 28% of students — are English Language Learners, … Continue reading Tackling the Opportunity Gap, One School at a Time
ServeMinnesota has gathered some of our favorite recent social media posts about AmeriCorps and service. Follow our social platforms at @ServeMN and #IServeMN to let us know what posts you think are most noteworthy. We loved this post from Danielle Bauer, a newly-minted AmeriCorps Community Volunteer Ambassador at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, who will begin service in this winter wonderland soon. 2. Can’t … Continue reading Service on Social: The Best Tweets, Grams and Posts of the Week
By Christy Ohlgrogge Across the nation, college students are heading back to school to begin the spring semester, and those few months leading up to the summer are a time of both excitement and panic for a lot of students. Those who were like me might realize a little bit too late that they do not have enough internship experience in the field of their … Continue reading AmeriCorps: An Internship Alternative
By Erika Ayn Finch It’s not an exaggeration to say that service and community has shaped Steven Yang’s life since he was a child. The son of Hmong refugee parents, Yang’s family home in Golden Valley was built by Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. His parents – and Yang, when he’s in town – still live in that house with its garage which bears the … Continue reading From Minnesota GreenCorps to Graduate School, Service is a Thread Through His Life
