Stephanie Muringer - Oh, the Many Things a VISTA can Accomplish in a Year!

6/11/2018

The last time I checked in for a blog post, the winter semester at Delta college was starting to wrap up. The Life Skills courses Delta staff, students, and myself were facilitating at an alternative high school in Saginaw also came to a close in April. Three of the twelve students who participated in the Delta College scholarship workshop were awarded scholarships to attend Delta. This workshop was very rewarding to help the students frame their experiences and selves in a positive light. All of them struggled to talk about themselves positively, so when Delta staff help them to craft compelling personal narratives they began to realize their own value and agency to define themselves. I also bid good luck and farewell to some of my best student volunteers as they graduated from Delta College at the end of April. In my capacity as volunteer coordinator, I was able to write letters of recommendation for them to use in searching for jobs.

Despite transitioning into a slower spring semester, May proved to be a busy month for me. The University of Michigan hosted the Ending Gender-Based Violence conference that I attended to learn about reducing the potential for sexual harassment and violence on Delta College’s campus. While I do not believe I have time to develop and implement a student-run prevention program before leaving, I am hoping that perhaps Delta’s new AmeriCorps VISTAs can take up the project. Delta’s Educational Opportunity Center, run under a TRIO grant, was able to secure five year-long VISTAs and ten summer associates. I was able to conduct training with the five year-long ones and share my experience serving at Delta.

For my VISTA Year Initiative project, supporting Delta’s student food pantry, I was able to attend Bay County’s Emergency Pantry Network’s meeting at the Bay County United Way. Here I met Mark Memorand who was allowed me to add Delta’s student food pantry, Saginaw Valley State University’s student food pantry, and the community pantries under Bay City nonprofit Back to the Bay all to the ever growing list of pantry recipients of the NALC Stamp Out Hunger postal food drive. Thanks to Mark and volunteers, Delta and SVSU report that they will likely not have to purchase any food until fall semester begins. Back to the Bay was able to receive nearly two thousand pounds of food, and some was immediately put out into the community to use. Soon, they will have nearly twenty five new pantries out in the Bay City area that will be able to be completely filled before getting placed at host sites.

So far in June, I have presented at the MI American Council of Education Women’s Network annual meeting and helped students and VISTAs work on a civic engagement project. For the rest of my time at Delta I anticipate training the new VISTAs, and continuing to support the planning for a Project Connect event in Saginaw. The civic engagement project advocates for access to free sanitary products for students at Delta. The project, SACE Cares PERIOD, was started by AmeriCorps VISTA Zekiye Salman. Donations to support this project are taken year round through the office of Student and Civic Engagement. I was very happy to connect the students to this option for their class project, and I was also able to place one of the summer associate AmeriCorps at the table as well for his first day. Project Connect is a resource fair for homeless, low-income, and income restrained folks in the community. I am working with the Food Access Collaboration Team of Saginaw to recruit vendors, find a location to host the event, and get free items to give away. Kayla Petz of United Way of Saginaw County and Nicole Luczak of the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan invited me to this group, and it has been very rewarding to work on improving safety networks for the Saginaw region.