AmeriCorps staffers were making America healthy again
By Daphne Miller / Los Angeles Times
A colleague has vanished from my workplace. Her name is Estefanny Casas. We worked together at a clinic in Richmond, in the Bay Area, until a cavalier snip from the federal budget gutted the AmeriCorps volunteer program.
Casas was one of 10 AmeriCorps health fellows in the organization where I care for patients and teach physicians-in-training. In our chronically underresourced and overenrolled clinic, Casas took on dozens of tasks from blood pressure checks to reminder calls; tasks that often went unnoticed by me and my busy colleagues, but made a world of difference to our patients. Now that she’s gone, we all feel the loss.
The AmeriCorps website states that my organization received $250,000 for this year’s funding cycle to cover the $20,000 annual stipend for each volunteer and the cost of a program supervisor. In other words, a sum equivalent to a typical Bay Area corporate salary funded a year’s worth of service, education and career development for 10 young people and their supervisor. Hardly a boondoggle. Nationwide, AmeriCorps supported the work of more than 32,000 volunteers each year.
“I am still in shock,” Casas told me when I reached her at her home several days ago. She had been preparing for a typical workday when word came in from her site supervisor that their AmeriCorps program had been terminated, effective immediately. “None of us were in it for the money,” Casas said. “We were all in it to serve.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-americorps-staffers-were-making-america-healthy-again/