Second group of AmeriCorps volunteers working in the county

In December, Sam Fletcher of Pullman, Wash., and Mark Lisowski of Chicago, Ill., were working for Habitat for Humanity in Conway, an Arkansas community just north of Little Rock. Brittney Donovan of Kingston, N.Y., also was working for Habitat for Humanity, but in Oklahoma City.

Meanwhile, Angelina Jimenez of Denver, Colo., was busy in Pawhuska, Okla., working with the Osage Nation for AmeriCorps. Margaret Water’s, originally from Philadelphia, Pa., was also working for AmeriCorps in Arkansas and Mississippi.

On Friday, Jan. 8, the five of them arrived in Holton as part of an 11-member AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) team for a three-month stay. They’re working with Homestead Affordable Housing to perform various local community service projects and are the second AmeriCorps group to do so in the Holton area.

Under the guidance of team leader Kerry Aszklar of Annapolis, Md., the team has been working on a lot of “indoor projects” during the winter months, but there have been some opportunities to do some outdoors work as well.

“We’ve been doing a lot of home renovation,” Donovan said. “We’ve constructed closets and installed kitchen cabinets.”

“We’ve done a lot of wall patching and painting,” Lisowski added.

Fletcher said he and another group has been working at Banner Creek Reservoir, performing some maintenance projects on signs and picnic tables. Others, including Aszklar, have assisted the Harvesters food distribution group in Hoyt and plan to do so again in the Holton area during the rest of their three-month stay.

AmeriCorps NCCC members are young men and women, ages 18 to 24, who serve 10 months to a year on projects throughout the country and are given the opportunity to focus on youth development, infrastructure, sustainability efforts and other community needs.

Team members receive an education award of $5,775 per person that will enable them to continue their education or reduce any educational debt. They also receive a $4,000 allowance for living expenses, it was reported.

Members of the teams also come from various backgrounds, whether they have just finished high school or are in the midst of their college years. Some, like Aszklar, who is in her second year with AmeriCorps, joined because they wanted a change in their lives.

“I was working at a good job, but I was very unhappy,” said Aszklar, who had been providing team support at AmeriCorps headquarters in Denver before getting out into the field with this group. “I wanted to travel more and meet new people, and so I signed up. My core member year was a fantastic year. I got a lot of hands-on experience in a lot of different places and different areas of work.

Donovan was in a similar situation when she signed up.

“I had graduated college a year and a half prior to signing up, and I was working in a job not in my field,” she said. “I just wasn’t terribly happy. I just had severe wanderlusts that needed to be satiated. I had a history of community service, and I thought it was time to get back to it.”

Lisowski, currently in his third stint with AmeriCorps, said he was encouraged to join while involved in his undergraduate studies. At that time, he said, he was “vaguely familiar” with the AmeriCorps mission and was under the impression that it was more like a “domestic Peace Corps.”

“I wanted to find out more about it, and they were offering positions then and there,” he said. “I think the best way to learn about it is to just go with the flow and try it as it is… It was very difficult work, but very rewarding. I guess the biggest reason why I decided to do it in the first place was that it looked like an alternative to just finding a regular job after graduating and staying in the same place and doing the same thing.”

Others, like Jimenez and Water’s, heard about the program while involved in training with the national Job Corps organization, while some, including Fletcher, were just finishing high school when they signed up.

“All my friends were applying to college,” Fletcher said. “I heard about this from a friend and I looked at it as an opportunity to travel, meet new people and get life skills.”

Upon arriving in Holton, the team members were impressed with what they saw. Fletcher was impressed by the brick streets, while Water’s thought the community was “nice and interesting” and Donovan said the community’s “historical quality stood out right away.”

The next day, the team participated in Second Saturday activities and were even more impressed after getting to interact with area residents.

“Some people will come into a town with a predisposition of a place, especially if it’s a town you haven’t heard about in a state you haven’t visited, and that’s the case for me,” Lisowski said. “But I really like it here. Everybody’s very friendly. It’s been very easy to work here.” 

And there’s certainly a lot of work to do — in fact, as Aszklar put it, “the work doesn’t stop.” Part of their 10-month stint with AmeriCorps involves “service learning activities that we do to learn more about what we’re doing where we are,” she said, as well as independent service projects and other team-building activities that teach them how to be more “environmentally friendly.”

That means the team usually ends up working “until around 8 p.m. most of the time,” Donovan said. Even when the work is done, she added, the community ethic of AmeriCorps “kind of turns all aspects of life into a team activity.”

“We also go grocery shopping as a team, and different people cook every night. There are always things to do,” Fletcher added. “But it’s always fun. When you’re working with a lot of like-minded people, it’s always fun, no matter what you do. And we do get some downtime to hang out and have fun.”

In addition to the work and the travel, team members said that being a part of AmeriCorps has expanded their horizons in ways they hadn’t even considered before signing up.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for growth,” Donovan said. “It’s a great way to understand our country… It gives us some insight into the way other countries see us, and we get to see where they’re correct and where they’re wrong.”

Being a part of AmeriCorps, Aszklar noted, also prepares its participants for the future.

“It also serves as a good stepping stone between where you are as a young person and where you’d like to be. It’s a good developmental opportunity for young people, regardless of what you want to do with your life.”

Other team members include John Casertano, Rockville, Md.; Lainey Castle, Richmond, Ky.; Julia Hamer, Chicago, Ill.; Ashley James, Colchester, Vt., and Daniel Vento, St. Paul, Minn.

Local community members who may need help with a service project can contact Tom Bishop at Homestead Affordable Housing to request assistance from AmeriCorps members while they are working in the county.