VISTA volunteers to assist CASA, Multicultural Coalition
Posted: Sunday, April 12, 2015 11:44 pm | Updated: 11:46 pm, Sun Apr 12, 2015.
By Lauren Sedam
Starting in June, four new volunteers will be coming to Grand Island to help several community agencies grow.
The Heartland United Way and two partner agencies, Heartland CASA and the Multicultural Coalition of Grand Island, have received a grant to recruit AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers.
Audrey Lutz, the community impact coordinator for the United Way, said this is a first for the United Way, and the impact should be felt throughout Grand Island.
“It’s very exciting, and we’re looking forward to it,” she said.
While the United Way has traditionally helped with fundraising and support for its partner organizations, Lutz said, they have been looking for more ways to effect change in the community.
Through research and discussion, she said, they have identified a problem with poverty, and they discovered the VISTA program as a potential way to help.
VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America, and it works through AmeriCorps.
According to the Corporation for National and Community Service website, the volunteers make a year-long, full-time commitment to serve at a specific nonprofit organization. While they don’t provide direct services themselves, such as tutoring children or building homes, they help organizations develop plans to foster growth in areas like finance or administration.
Lutz, who wrote the grant for the United Way, said the funding they received will last three years and allow them to have 12 volunteers. After the first year, she said, they also plan to have a volunteer with the Boys Scouts.
The volunteers will come from both the local area and around the country, she said, and they receive a small stipend for their work.
Two will serve at the United Way, with one focused on building diversity across programs and organizations and another focused on the Circles program, which helps directly with poverty elimination.
Another, Lutz said, will serve at Heartland CASA, or court appointed special advocates. CASA volunteers speak out for abused and neglected children as their cases go through the court system.
It can be challenging for the organization to recruit volunteers, Lutz said, so the VISTA representative will work to put together a plan to help the organization build its volunteer base.
Jocelyn Schade, the executive director at the Multicultural Coalition, said when the United Way made the opportunity available, her organization was also eager to get involved.
“We are a pretty small office,” she said. “There’s just two of us here, but the demand for our services is pretty high.”
The organization helps new Grand Island residents adjust, provides access to services and uses education to bring the community together on issues of diversity. Schade said she hopes the VISTA volunteer will be able to assist them in developing a plan to do more community outreach and to develop a more sustainable revenue stream.
“What we’re hoping for for our organization specifically is a lot of people don’t know that we are here and don’t know what we do, so for one part, we want more help with reaching out into the community …” she said.
Something like that would allow them to serve more people, Schade said, which is needed.
Lutz agreed. If they are able to build up what organizations can do through the VISTA volunteers, she said, the organizations will eventually be able to do more to help people in need in the community.
“Once we have sustainable policies in place for growth, then we can see elimination of poverty,” she said.