Americorps VISTA

November 30. 2007 is my last day as an Americorp VISTA Volunteer.
My mission has been a simple one...

Help Others Help Themselves

AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) provides full-time members to nonprofit, faith-based and other community organizations, and public agencies to create and expand programs that ultimately bring low-income individuals and communities out of poverty.

Through AmeriCorps*VISTA, ordinary people provide extraordinary service in more than 1,200 projects nationwide.
AmeriCorps*VISTA Works through the members who leverage human, financial, and material resources to increase the capacity of low-income communities across the country to solve their own problems.

When VISTA members complete their service, they leave behind lasting solutions to some of our country's toughest problems.

As I come to the end of my year of service as a VISTA, I can't help but ask myself, "have I left behind lasting solutions to my community's housing problems?"

It is difficult for me to answer this in a positive way. It feels as if I have spent my past year solving problems, but just the average, ordinary problems that anyone could solve.

I have answered e-mails, returned phone calls, scheduled groups, written and mailed out thank you letters, hammered, painted, planned, listened and completed a thousand other small tasks.

But leave behind a lasting solution to my community's tough problems? I have to say no.

Since 1965, more than 140,000 Americans served through VISTA. Today, nearly 6,000 AmeriCorps*VISTA members serve throughout the country—working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, increase housing opportunities, bridge the digital divide, and strengthen the capacity of community organizations.

But not me.

So I have chosen to continue on at Habitat for Humanity Mid-Willamette Valley. There is still much work to be done.
I do think I can make a difference.
A small difference anyway.
I don't have any idealistic or romantic thoughts of what this might look like. I know I will continue with ordinary tasks in ordinary ways, but I remain hopeful that something I do someday will make an extra-ordinary difference in the life of just one child, one new homeowner.

I guess time will tell.

So I am off to bed to get some sleep before I start my last VISTA day, another ordinary day. Perhaps a day to make a difference.