Mentors Make a Difference

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National Service News

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

National Mentoring Month is an annual campaign to draw attention to the need for more volunteer mentors to help America’s young people achieve their full potential. Throughout January, we highlight the important role mentors play in lifting up the country's youth.  

To honor mentors across the country, we participated in the #MentoringSummit2016 hosted by MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership. And we're celebrating the AmeriCorps members and Senior Corps volunteers who provide young people with the resources and support they need to thrive, like a Senior Corps Foster Grandparent who serves as a mentor to elementary schools students in Maine.

Many AmeriCorps programs also help communities plan for, respond to, and recover from extreme weather events. This week, we're putting the spotlight on Resilience AmeriCorps members in North Dakota who are starting their service and PowerCorps AmeriCorps members in New Jersey who helped their community shovel snow after Winter Storm Jonas.

Next month we will focus on innovation, so please be sure to catch an article referencing the Social Innovation Fund’s Pay for Success initiative. 

Thanks and have a great weekend,

Ted Miller
Chief of External Affairs
Corporation for National and Community Service

P.S. – CNCS has a new home. That’s right. We have moved to 250 E Street, SW Washington, D.C. 20525. Come see us if you’re in town.


Mentor and student working together

Mentoring Month: Throughout January, we have celebrated National Mentoring Month and the important role mentors play in lifting up the country's youth. And this week CNCS participated in the #MentoringSummit2016, which brought together nearly 1,000 representatives across the mentoring movement, including practitioners, researchers, corporate partners, and government and civic leaders. 


Foster Grandma Marden helps students at elementary school in Maine (2)

Meet Grandma Marianne: Senior Corps Foster Grandparents are role models, mentors, and friends to children across the nation. Foster Grandma Marianne Marden helps students with their classwork and encourages them when they are working hard or struggling. She says helping the students gives her purpose. Click here to read more about Marianne's story.


Senator Booker and Mayor Camden shovel snow with AmeriCorps members after Snowstorm Jonas

Service in the Snow: Last week, Winter Storm Jonas left communities across the East Coast buried in snow. AmeriCorps programs, like PowerCorps, work with city partners to tackle pressing environmental challenges in the aftermath of these types of extreme weather events. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and Camden Mayor Dana Redd joined PowerCorps AmeriCorps members to help their elderly neighbors shovel snow. 


Resilience AmeriCorps members in Minot will help the community prepare for extreme weather events (2)

Making Minot Resilient: Resilience AmeriCorps members help communities develop preparedness plans and assist local leaders as they address the impacts of extreme weather events. Minot, ND experiences a number of challenges, ranging from flooding to fires. As one of ten pilot cities, Minot will employ Resilience AmeriCorps VISTA members to engage and inform community members, reduce blight, and manage a flood mitigation strategy.  Meet the Resilience AmeriCorps members serving in Minot. 



Maximize Impact: The Social Innovation Fund's (SIF) Pay for Success (PSF) program maximizes federal dollars by working with some of the country’s preeminent social sector organizations that tie funding for interventions to their true impact in the community.  SIF PFS programs address pressing challenges, including criminal justice, child welfare, green infrastructure, and much more. This week we announced that SIF PFS grantee programs are now accepting applications. 


National Service in the News

AmeriCorps

Reading Partners DC AmeriCorps members serve alongside President and First Lady
Reading Partners, January 23, 2016
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama put MLK’s challenge into action at Leckie Elementary School in DC as a way of honoring MLK’s legacy, and to give back to their community. A group of AmeriCorps members serving at Reading Partners Washington, DC, in collaboration with other AmeriCorps members, high school and elementary school students, and parents, served alongside the President and First Lady to celebrate MLK Day of Service. The group spent several hours filling backpacks with books that celebrated Black History Month, eating healthy, and national service. 

AmeriCorps NCCC

AmeriCorps NCCC Restores Tolay Creek
The Patch – Petaluma (CA), January 26, 2016
Starting on Jan. 12th a team of eleven AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) members, known collectively as Blue Seven, will be serving in Petaluma, Calif., assisting Point Blue Conservation Sciences with environmental stewardship projects. For the past three years, Students & Teachers Restoring A Watershed (STRAW), a program of Point Blue Conservation Science, has orchestrated hundreds of students and volunteers to plant native trees and shrubs along Tolay Creek. 

AmeriCorps VISTA

Classes plus AmeriCorps VISTA equals a Michigan Tech Master’s Degree
The Michigan Tech News (MI), January 26, 2016
Martin Aksentowitz is earning his master’s degree at Michigan Technological University. And he’s doing it while assessing the health of forests in Colorado. Aksentowitz is an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) member with the San Isabel Land Protection Trust (SILPT) in Westcliffe, Colorado. When he finishes his AmeriCorps VISTA service with landowners of the 40,321 acres in south central Colorado, he’ll receive his Master of Forestry from Michigan Tech. 

Senior Corps

Changing futures: Mentoring program takes many forms 
The Daily NonPareil (IA), January 24, 2016
Mentoring is credited with helping children become more successful in school and in life, and representatives from local mentoring programs definitely see the benefits. "I think kids that have a mentor are more likely to stay in school, less likely to skip school and more likely to go to college," said Rebecca Losh, southwest Iowa outreach coordinator of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Midlands.

Social Innovation Fund

Rhode Island Genesis Center receives $413K from LISC
Providence Business News (RI), January 22, 2016
The Genesis Center has received a $412,575 grant for the new Bridges to Career Opportunities program from the Local Initiatives Support Corp., part of $11.3 million grant that LISC received nationally from the Social Innovation Fund. The grant money will be used to build up the BOC program within the state, according to a news release from LISC’s Rhode Island office. The money will be given over the next three years beginning Feb. 1.

National Service Blog

I wanted to make a difference
NationalService.Tumblr.com, January 27, 2016
Someone asked me once (or twice) why I was doing a year of service with AmeriCorps VISTA, a national service organization that focuses on Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 resolution to eradicate poverty in our community. It seemed ludicrous for them to think that someone would want to dedicate a year of their life doing something that wasn’t directly advancing their career. That doesn’t make them callous, it just makes them practical.