An AmeriCorps VISTA’s Journey: Weeks 1&2 – November 18th -29th

On November 18^th, I stepped into the office of my new job as an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteer in Service to America) with the non-profit Connections to Success. AmeriCorps is similar to a domestic version of the Peace Corps, but there are more venues and fields that participants can volunteer with. In addition, an AmeriCorps commitment is usually only one year long compared to the two-year commitment of the Peace Corps. The VISTA differentiation means that my position specifically focuses on the alleviation of poverty in a community through building capacity of current programs and processes.

           

Connections to Success

Image from Google Images

The non-profit organization for which my VISTA program partners with is called Connections to Success (CtS). Connections to Success seeks to break the cycle of poverty through the empowerment of individuals through professional development and access to resources to build careers, as paraphrased from the non-profit’s mission. Connections to Success has four sites in Missouri: St. Louis City, St. Charles County, Kansas City, MO, and Kansas City, KS. It all began when co-founder Kathy Lambert discovered the national organization Dress for Success and began to take in donations for women’s business attire to donate to women who couldn’t afford them for interviews and jobs. Soon enough Kathy realized that women didn’t only need suits, but both men and women needed the resources and professional development to obtain jobs and begin careers to reduce poverty. With her co-founder and husband, Brad Lambert, Kathy and Brad established Connections to Success, which still hosts a Dress for Success chapter, Wheels for Success (a vehicle donation program), Sweet Success (the CtS bakery enterprise), Mystique Boutique (a high-end clothing resale effort), professional and personal development classes, resume and interview resources, job search tools, access to life coaches, mentors and more.

The heart of the organization is very pure – one person helping another to reach his or her goals. And the best part is that the life coaching and professional development doesn’t end when that person finds a job; CtS tries to help the person find the next best job after that. CtS desires for all of its participants to earn at least a living wage of $17.65 per hour for a family of four.

And as amazing as CtS treats its participants, it treats its staff just as well. Because we’re in the Midwest, the staff exudes the cordial, caring and supportive charm of the people in the Midwest. The “how are you’s?” are many but genuine. The other day, I spilled a lot of coffee on my pants during a recognition awards ceremony in front of the co-founders and staff, and although I expected serious looks of embarrassment and humiliation, possibly joking laughter from them, I received more statements of “Oh my gosh!”, “Are you okay?” and “Did you scald yourself?!” After working so many different job and internship positions in DC, I almost forgot that courtesy in the internal relations of jobs could still exist.

The new CtS office allows for more open communication between staff and participants as well as lots of light to flow through the office through the large glass windows. Instead of cubicles, we label our desks as “work stations”, and there are multiple conference rooms and training rooms as well. The zen feeling of the office is very good with spacious area to walk around, open workstations and lots of natural light versus synthetic light.

In addition, my VISTA supervisor regularly reminds the four AmeriCorps VISTAs to make sure to take time to eat lunch and not to stay extremely late for work’s sake. The beauty of non-profits is that there are more flexible deadlines, and they drive their own speed of work. Plus, my VISTA supervisor actually cares that the VISTAs do not get burnt out from working too much. This was my first time at a job where there was a concern for interns or staff to not become burnt out, and because I’m a recovering workaholic, the thought of not working to the grinding bone is almost alien to me. However, this VISTA journey will teach me and change me into a better person, I hope.

           

What do I do?

My job as the program assistant VISTA is to track participants and their performance using the resources provided to them. I have learned the basics of using the online database, Efforts to Outcomes (ETO), and applied my basic experience of Excel to use Google sheets and Microsoft Excel to track participant data there. The most exhilarating part of my work is being able to meet some of the participants in person in classes or Monday night’s Connect (an open night event for CtS staff, participants and participants families to come together for a meal and to hear a speaker) and then to see their progress in the data I put into the computer. People are more than just numbers at Connections to Success; they are unique individuals and are improving themselves and their communities.

How does my job relate to the alleviation of poverty?

A well-known Chinese proverb says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is the motive behind Connections to Success’ mission: “We inspire individuals to realize their dreams and achieve economic independence by providing hope, resources and a plan.” CtS always emphasizes that they empower individuals, not enable them because they cannot do the work for them in the long run. CtS hopes to maintain lifelong relationships with their participants, but they want them to become self-sufficient and independent. The specific emphasis on hope, resources and a plan is the belief that CtS gives its participants classes and resources (Dress for Success, Wheels for Success, job search and resume training, etc.) to help that individual reach their first goals and succeed in reaching the next goals. Some people would call our staff social workers because of how closely some of the staff works with participants, sometimes on our daily basis. CtS calls these staff life coaches. This term has a more positive feeling to it because CtS life coaches give as much space to participants as they would like. Even if a participant remains distant from CtS after a personal adversity (e.g. loss of job, loss of family member, substance abuse, natural disaster, etc.), he knows that he is always welcome at CtS for more resources and that there are people there to lift him up.

Although CtS doesn’t provide its individuals with the basics (e.g. shelter, food, healthcare, etc.), it has partnerships with other organizations like United Way and local food pantries to help network participants to the proper care they need. My VISTA training taught me that poverty isn’t always overt; sometimes, it’s being underemployed and not having access to resources like healthcare and financial literacy. That’s where CtS comes in; the CtS staff can help take individuals from being unemployed or underemployed to earning a minimum wage to eventually earning a living wage.

I recently began watching the show Call the Midwife after a sister’s recommendation. Based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs as a midwife, the show chronicles a new, young midwife named Jenny Lee and her fellow midwifes of the convent Nonnatus House as they seek to assist the mothers and mothers-to-be of one of London’s poorest districts in the 1950’s. In one of the early episodes, Jenny Lee explains to a Catholic priest that she is familiar with poverty after having just moved into East London, but the priest refutes her. He exclaims that poverty isn’t only the lack of access to resources like food, shelter and healthcare, but it also can be the absence of love, hope and faith, meaning the lack of encouragement or having someone believe in you and your dreams.

To hear this definition of poverty in a TV show resonated with me for the next week because I work for an organization that works with some individuals who are overtly poor and others who may be discretely impoverished or disenfranchised. Nevertheless, Connections to Success works with those who may be poor in terms of self-confidence and hope, not ever believing that they could succeed or reach their dreams or not having someone like a life coach encouraging and challenging them to be better. Connections to Success offers resources and life coaching to help individuals become better in accessing their potential and developing that potential into careers. That is why I stand passionately with this organization and why I love my job.