Hi all, my name is Dylan Davids, and I just finished my term as a VISTA Leader for Michigan Nonprofit Association’s Pathways to Employment VISTA program this past August. When I began my national service journey back in 2016, I was not really sure what to expect; I was a recent college graduate in a field where all job prospects all seemed unfulfilling. I was looking for something to fill a void in my life, I just didn’t know where to look until a family member mentioned AmeriCorps to me. My first trip to my.americorps.gov was overwhelming, there were so many opportunities to serve in so many places!
 
I narrowed my focus down to conservation work, a topic I care deeply about, and ended up finding AmeriCorps Cape Cod, where I served for two years as a general corps member. After only a year I was totally enamored by national service and knew it was the field I wanted to end up in. So, after my service ended in Massachusetts, I signed up for year three of service and came back to my home state of Michigan to serve as a VISTA Leader with MNA’s program to obtain program management experience.
 
Once my term ended, I was able to realize my dream of transferring from national to civil service. By utilizing the Non-Competitive Eligibility (NCE) I earned as part of my VISTA service.  It is an amazing benefit and I encourage you to become familiar with it and use it! Through my NCE, I accepted a job as a Portfolio Manager with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) here in Colorado. Denver is the location of one of three new regional offices developed as part of CNCS’s Transformation and Sustainability Plan, and our office supports a diverse portfolio of Rocky Mountain states, stretching from Montana to Arizona.
 
My job as a Portfolio Manager involves supporting national service across several streams, Senior Corps, AmeriCorps VISTA, AmeriCorps State & National and AmeriCorps NCCC programs. I serve specifically as the point of contact with CNCS for a variety of programs in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, helping them to expand their reach and impact via technical assistance, outreach efforts, grants management, and more.
 
Though I am only a month-and-a-half into my new job, my experience serving as a VISTA Leader has already been immensely helpful. Besides the obvious familiarity with how VISTA programs are run, a lot of the skills I honed as a VISTA Leader have come in handy in supporting national service on a wider scale. Attention to detail, adaptability, and ability to listen to concerns and find answers are all critical parts of my job, and abilities I developed while assisting VISTAs during my year of service with MNA.
 
Two weeks ago, we had our first site visits to Wyoming to visit some of the programs in our region. Our team traveled to Laramie and Cheyenne to visit Senior Corps and AmeriCorps VISTA projects, as well as to attend an event honoring veteran national service volunteers and volunteers who serve veterans, where Governor Mark Gordon presented attendees with various honors. It was humbling to have the opportunity to meet VISTAs, a VISTA Leader, Senior Corps volunteers, and the staff who support them, as well as to learn about the critical work they are performing in Wyoming to serve their communities and alleviate poverty. I am a “seeing-is-believing” type of person, and the trip confirmed that I do indeed have a pretty cool job. I cannot wait to visit more of my programs in the coming months.  The fact that they are in such beautiful states is a nice bonus.
 
Please take advantage of the opportunities that you have as a VISTA member.  Besides the aforementioned Non-Competitive Eligibility, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to network across the state with other people in similar positions. If you want to work in the nonprofit field after service, VISTA is an invaluable opportunity to get your foot in the door. Take advantage of the opportunities serving provides! Living on a stipend provides real-world context about life in poverty that grounds you in your community and exposes the issues that VISTA service addresses. Never forget that you are part of a community of hundreds of thousands of Americans participating in national service, even though you may be the only one serving at your particular site you are part of a wonderful community that spans the entire country.
 
I’ll end with a request for both VISTAs currently serving, and alumni who come across this blog post. National service only grows when people are talking about it, and word-of-mouth is an incredibly powerful recruitment tool. Please take the time to talk to family and friends about what you are doing as a VISTA and be proud of the amazing service you are performing across Michigan’s incredibly diverse communities! Who knows, you might even inspire the next the next VISTA to apply! As you move on from your year of service into whatever comes next, keep national service in mind as a powerful tool to leverage as you continue to build communities across our nation.

Finally, I would like to thank you for your service, and all you’ve done and will continue to do for Michiganders. Keep getting things done for America!
 
This blog was prepared by Dylan Davids in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of the Corporation for National and Community Service or the United States government.

In 2016, the Corporation for National and Community Service celebrated a special milestone: one million individuals committing to serve with AmeriCorps since 1994, which is when the program began. I still remember this event vividly, it occurred during my first year of service with an environmental AmeriCorps program in Massachusetts, AmeriCorps Cape Cod. Our cohort was crammed into a basement conference room at the county court to watch a planned ceremony where NASA hosted AmeriCorps members across the country in celebration of the milestone (afterwards we received a very informative, and very scary, presentation on tick safety). While I may not have been that lucky one-millionth member, the experience grounded me in the community of national service, a critically under-advertised option for Americans.

I have to admit, my initial decision to serve in AmeriCorps did not come out of some lofty altruistic aspiration. I had just graduated from college with a degree in a field I did not want to pursue and was looking for something- anything- I could do that aligned with my personal interests. But that initial year of service instilled in me a fierce ethic of service that will now never fade. As AmeriCorps members we are told that we do not work, we serve and that is something that has stuck with me. I do not think I will ever be happy in a career that I just see as work anymore, I need something more. This effect, I think, is one of the most important. By immersing Americans of all ages and backgrounds in community service, it teaches us to aspire to more, to want to fight the problems AmeriCorps members tackle: poverty, environmental degradation, economic inequity, disaster recovery, and so much more. I am definitely not serving for the paycheck!

As an AmeriCorps VISTA Leader serving with Michigan Nonprofit Association, I get to see first-hand all of the awesome work occurring around the state in fighting poverty. VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) is a little bit older than AmeriCorps. Initially started as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, it predates AmeriCorps by a couple of decades. All VISTA projects must have an anti-poverty focus. MNA’s program accomplishes this through the double lenses of College Access & Success and Workforce Development, placing 30 VISTAs with MNA members throughout the state doing that critical work. VISTAs also do not directly serve clients. Instead, we focus on capacity building, laying the groundwork for nonprofits and schools by constructing volunteer pipelines, writing curricula, finding funding streams, developing sustainable programs, and more. We have a VISTA in the Upper Peninsula serving with the Mackinac Economic Alliance to bring year-round employment opportunities to residents in an area where much of the work is seasonal and tourism-oriented, as well as a VISTA serving with Atlantic Impact, planning experiential learning opportunities and field trips for students in Detroit who may not otherwise have them. These are just two quick snapshots of what our VISTAs are doing for their communities, their support is critical in building programs that provide the necessary support to help people climb out of poverty into sustainable, and fulfilling, work.

My role in all this is as a peer mentor, providing our VISTAs with opportunities for professional development and support in navigating the myriad of situations that arise over the course of a year of service. It was a perfect fit for me. As someone who has had their life completely change through AmeriCorps service, I now have the chance to help others along that path of service and self-discovery.
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Each year over 75,000 Americans commit to AmeriCorps service, some to give back to their community, some as a gap year between high school and college, and others to gain the skills they need to make a career shift, and all are transformed through the experience. I hope that national service continues to grow as an option for everyone in this country, because it truly does has something to offer to everyone. Three years ago I was unsure in life, not confident about my path forward and unsure about where my passion lay. Today, I feel confident and prepared to continue serving my community, in whatever form and place that occurs next for me.

​Hello everyone! As you all know, I am one of the two VISTA Leaders for MNA’s Pathways to Employment VISTA program. This is my third year of service with AmeriCorps, having previously served two terms with AmeriCorps Cape Cod, an environmental program out in Eastern Massachusetts. Frankly, I couldn’t be happier to trade in my chainsaw and waders for the emails and meetings that this position requires. AmeriCorps has been a transformational experience for me, and I hope that my enthusiasm for National Service and its goals can help motivate you when the doldrums of office life get you down.

I started my first year of AmeriCorps dreading leadership and public speaking, having been a strong introvert most of my life. Living in a house with 12 other corps members will quickly disabuse you of any notions of “introversion” or “privacy” you may have and I was forced to leave my shell. Looking back, I think that is what I really needed at that point in my life. I had decided to join AmeriCorps after feeling incredibly lost upon graduating college with a degree in a field I didn’t want to go into and it really brought me out of that slump. So why did I decide to go from rescuing dolphins to sitting behind a desk? I realized that I might have a knack for it and that working within CNCS might be a viable career path for me, and one I would find fulfilling. This is a great opportunity for me to learn more about the kind of work that AmeriCorps program directors do and if it may be something I want to pursue one day.
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But it has definitely been a transition and I am still learning something new and valuable every day of service. In the first two months of my service here at MNA, I have already received more emails than I got in my previous two years of AmeriCorps (several hundred more, in fact!), and I have had to readjust to wearing “office” clothes instead of my AmeriCorps t-shirt or polo. I have also had to learn to be a VISTA member and VISTA Leader simultaneously, which has been a lot of new information to process. Luckily, I have excellent support here at MNA from both Maggie and Zekiye, who are always up to answer my myriad random questions. I honestly don’t know what I would be doing without them! That’s one lesson you can learn from me: never be scared to ask questions, because most people would rather you do something right the first time instead of screwing it up and being forced to fix it. Another lesson you can take from me is that you can learn to be (more) organized. I thought of myself as a fairly organized person before coming in to this position, but the sheer number of things I have to keep in mind has been a little daunting. So, use the tools at your disposal to keep organized. I now have a OneNote document where I keep track of what I’ve been doing, there is a Trello board for Zekiye and I to keep track of website updates, and I have just starting using Todoist to track tasks.

(Indirect) indirect service, as I’ve been calling it, can be difficult since I’m used to being the one in the schools teaching students, not supporting the supporters of education programs, but it has been rewarding in a different, and more fulfilling way. It has also given me a new perspective on my home state and valuable insight into the problems Michigan faces but also those on the ground fighting to change it. The best part of my service so far has been learning more about what our members are doing, because it is such awesome and important work. Site visits have definitely been the highlight. It gives me a chance to see the space in which our VISTAs serve and learn in-person more about what they are doing. So, everyone, please continue the wonderful things you are doing out there to continue the war against poverty that President Lyndon B Johnson started all the way back in 1964.

It’s very cheesy, but I absolutely love the AmeriCorps pledge and so I’ll end with it as a reminder of why we are all here serving:
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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.