Our domestic Peace Corps
AmeriCorps has cleared many paths (and opened many pathways) in 25 years
A cluster of 20-somethings went whacking, slashing, and cutting brush along a hiking trail through Coy’s Brook Woodlands in Harwich, helping Connor O’Brien from the Harwich Conservation Trust maintain public access to a quiet Cape Cod nook.
“There’s no way we would have capacity to take care of places like this without AmeriCorps,” O’Brien said. “We have great volunteers, but a lot of them are older, and don’t have the training and ability to use power tools and do a variety of things this crew can take on.”
Clearing trail access and open space, unclogging herring runs, supporting shellfish restoration, picking garbage off the sides of Cape Cod Canal, erecting deer fencing, removing debris from Town Neck Beach in Sandwich, joining disaster relief efforts and marine mammal rescues, stepping into individual placements at non-profits like the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown (Claire Williams), town natural resources departments or land trusts (Michelle Morrison, Jen Clifford, and Emily Gilot), committing to 11 months of public service.
That’s what 18 young people are doing on Cape Cod right now. They extend a line of AmeriCorps service members spanning 25 years who have offered more than a million total hours of support spread across every Cape town.
Underappreciated, idealistic, with roots back to 1965, AmeriCorps was created as a part of VISTA, the domestic version of the Peace Corps. Believe it or not, when people join they adopt a pledge:
I will get things done for America – to make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.
I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities.
Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity, I will persevere.
I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond.
I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done.
They often do, and here’s another way AmeriCorps has improved our collective well-being:
“We have somewhere between 50 and 60 alumni who stayed on after their year, moved to Cape Cod and took positions here,” says Kat Garofoli, who runs the program out of Barnstable County. AmeriCorps is one of few entities that reverses a generational flow off the peninsula, attracting young “green” professionals, creating relationships that lead to long-term employment usually with public or non-profit employers.
On cue, a pick-up truck pulled into a dirt parking area and out stepped Mike Maguire, who runs the Barnstable County Cooperative Extension Service, AmeriCorp’s local umbrella.
“That was me,” he said, looking at the crew. “I was in year one, 25 years ago. In the woods back there are benches I installed, they’re still there though the trees have grown up, not much of a view anymore.”
Now Mike is a key, respected player in county government, with two children in Cape public schools.
And Garofoli, who took over the program after years in local land conservation, also is an AmeriCorp alum (from year eight), also raising a family on the Cape.
“The cumulative effect of having a corps like this to maintain places, support local groups, it’s really hard to calculate,” Maguire added. “But I can say it takes us all up a notch. Look at how well this place is maintained. It encourages everyone to respect and appreciate what we have.”
AmeriCorps members live in one of four communal houses, Pocasset, Barnstable, Chatham, and Wellfleet. The Wellfleet house is part of the National Seashore, rent-free same as the others, ramshackle funky in the woods, offered in exchange for Seashore service. Free housing is crucial; members make a stipend of $14,000 a year, so no one is in it for the money nor could cover market rent.
Most come from elsewhere, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, western Massachusetts. Some are local, for example Rob Zielinski, now a paid program supervisor, who was being supervised a few years ago.
Words like grassroots, public-spirited, collaborative, all fit; of course people who enlist are self-selecting, ready to embrace a kind of altruism for a short while in a young life.
Some might call it a sacrifice, others a higher calling. Either way, the example conjures a societal thought:
Imagine the great good that could be accomplished, physical and psychological, political and personal, in every county and state, if one year of service like AmeriCorps was a national mandate.
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As a former Vista volunteer (1975, one of my older sisters was in a Vista in 1969) these programs have done so much good here and around the country. The end product of my 15 months of service was the renovation of 170 units of public housing(most of the units were condemned) and the establishment of a home repair program. On the side I coached a group of teens through their english proficiency at an alternative education center. It would be interesting to see how many folks on Cape Cod and the Islands have participated in the Peace Corps, Vista and AmeriCorp.
My daughter did Americorps at 23…..in Manhattan, working for NY Dept of Human Services making videos. Through that, realized she wanted to go to law school….(I doubted she was up to that.) I was wrong, and now she’s a Public Defender. Point being that there are so many kinds of jobs available in so many places, with so much education to offer. So glad you’re making people aware.