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Good Morning CNCS Staff,
After many months of hard
work, we finalized an agreement with the Department of
Veterans Affairs (VA) earlier this week to create VetSuccess AmeriCorps. While this partnership has not yet been publicly announced, I wanted you all to be the first to know.
This new program,
jointly funded by CNCS and VA, will place AmeriCorps members on college
campuses to support student veterans. As they transition to higher education,
veterans face a myriad of challenges; this partnership is designed to
help them stay on track and graduate from college.
VetSuccess AmeriCorps, which is based on the highly successful Washington
State Vet Corps model, combines CNCS’s national service infrastructure with
VA’s veteran expertise. The initiative encapsulates all the elements that the President
outlined in his Memorandum
announcing the Task Force on Expanding National Service (excerpted below). This will build on the great work with veterans that we've done over the past several years. Here are the numbers:
- In this initial year, up to 64
VetSuccess AmeriCorps members will assist VA counselors to reach and
engage student veterans on up to 32 college campuses in 17 states.
- Over three years, this $8.6
million partnership will place up to 440 AmeriCorps members on VetSuccess
campuses.
VetSuccess AmeriCorps members will
begin serving this fall; the funding competition (open to all FY13 AmeriCorps grantees
and subgrantees) has just begun.
Getting this partnership off the ground was truly a team effort across the agency. Special thanks goes to Koby Langley, who nurtured this partnership from the very beginning. In addition, I want to recognize:
- The Next Wave of Service team (John Kelly, Rosa Moreno-Mahoney, Jennifer Hojaiban, Beth O’Connor) and Erin Dahlin, who guided this partnership throughout
- The Legal team (Valerie Green, Edith Shine, Megan McCarthy), who moved mountains to get this deal done
- The AmeriCorps team (Bill Basl, Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi, Rob Glazier, Charndrea Leonard), who provided key programmatic insight
- The Budget team (David Rebich, Anna Briatico), the Evaluation team (Chris Spera, Mary Hyde), and the External Affairs team (Ted Miller, Greg Tucker, Adriana Lopez)
Great work, CNCS team!
This new partnership with VA will make efficient use of federal dollars to provide an integrated, sustainable, and accountable model to help veteran students succeed in college and in life. VetSuccess AmeriCorps represents the best values of our culture by using national service to support the veterans who have given so much to our country already.
Warm Regards,
 From the Presidential
Memorandum on Expanding National Service: “By creating new partnerships between
agencies and CNCS that expand national service opportunities in areas aligned
with agency missions, we can utilize the American spirit of service to improve
lives and communities, expand economic and educational opportunities, enhance
agencies’ capacity to achieve their missions, efficiently use tax dollars,
[and] help individuals develop skills that will enable them to prepare for long
term careers…”
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