AmeriCorps no topic Update

By Aaron Bigler Lefebvre, AmeriCorps VISTA member

When attending Pre-Service Orientation (PSO), members in the AmeriCorps VISTA program learn about poverty. They learn about situational poverty, about generational poverty, about urban and rural poverty, and so forth. During this training, facilitators ask their groups to form a circle to discuss what poverty means to them. They’re asked: what does poverty look like to you?

The answers would no doubt surprise you, and would undoubtedly provoke the conscience to consider unknown situations. As a new AmeriCorps VISTA, when I was asked this question of what poverty looks like, the realization arrived that it was the situation in which I’d been living, though it might not look like the poverty you’re picturing.

They’re asked: what does poverty look like to you?

The answers would no doubt surprise you.

I have a low-vision blindness disability that I developed at the age of 19. I’m a white, middle-class male. A Boy Scout who has always done well in school. Well enough even to earn two English degrees while adapting to a newly acquired low-vision disability.  

After graduating from Rutgers University in Camden, NJ with an MFA in Creative Writing, I began a job search. I searched. I searched some more. I had many interviews. Some, I was unqualified for, while others, I was more than qualified for. On occasion, I was dismissed because I had to disclose my disability. Yes, it’s illegal, but you know what? They gave me the run-around anyway. Why? Because like with many people who experience poverty on one level or another, I didn’t have the resources to do anything about it.  

I began looking for simpler work so that I could pay for my bills, but I realized that wasn’t an easier task because many jobs that require low skill-sets require good vision capabilities. Imagine for a moment, what it might be like to count money without sight, to mop a dirty floor without sight, to operate a ride-sharing service without sight. The jobs that many take for granted and even turn their nose up toward can be entirely out of reach for persons with certain disabilities. Time and time again, I’d heard the word “no” and “disability” and eventually started to believe that I was unable, that I really couldn’t do, that it didn’t matter how much education I had because no one seemed to believe that I had the ability to do the work I thought I could do.

The jobs that many take for granted and even turn their nose up toward can be entirely out of reach for persons with certain disabilities.

With all of these forces working against me, I began thinking of other options, which ultimately lead to the AmeriCorps VISTA program. There, I could gain valuable professional experience without fear of rejection based on discrimination, and I’d be helping others in the community gain their own footing as well.  

NeighborWorks Western Pennsylvania was looking for an AmeriCorps VISTA member to evaluate and redevelop their program delivery model by holding internal interviews, creating client-facing surveys, developing new education and training materials, and implementing a client triage system that would improve the capacity for ensuring client success.  

I applied, interviewed, accepted an offer, and went off to AmeriCorps VISTA Pre-Service Orientation the week before starting my assignment. It was there that, suddenly, the challenges I’d been facing were described and placed into my hands. There, I trained for a full year of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA member who would help combat the many faces of poverty that threaten to degrade society and remove many from opportunity.    

Now in the final stages of my AmeriCorps VISTA project, after working with staff members, attending training sessions and conferences, developing training manuals, workshop materials, client triage protocols, procedures, surveys, outreach materials, and gaining the trust and appreciation of NeighborWorks Western Pennsylvania staff, I can say this: I am able, I can do, I have done, and I will do more.  

I am able, I can do, I have done, and I will do more.  

In the face of an impoverished lifestyle of living on nothing but Social Security disability and SNAP benefits, I’ve shown myself and the world that the word “disability” is a word often reserved for nothing better than demotivating a differently-abled individual. Through AmeriCorps VISTA, I learned that individuals living with disabilities bring fresh perspectives, new ideas, new culture, and new levels of awareness. All of which aid in improving others and organizations.

As both an impoverished individual and an AmeriCorps VISTA working to reduce the effects of poverty in my community, I can say that the VISTA program is indispensable to those without opportunity who need a chance to show what they’re capable of. Without AmeriCorps VISTA, I may never have found the opportunity I needed to show myself and others that I have the potential for making a difference that can change the community and help those in need.

For more information on AmeriCorps VISTA opportunities throughout the country, go to americorps.gov/VISTA.