As of today, I have officially completed my 900-hour Term of Service with the Americorps Students in Service program. Offered through the Evergreen CCBLA (Center for Community-Based Learning and Action), this two-year program will be granting me a tuition award of $2,362.50!

When I first joined this program as a wide-eyed lil’ freshman, I didn’t really have a concept of community work. I signed up looking for ways to fund my education, thinking along the lines of “Oh great I’ll do volunteer work for money! Wooo!” However, this program has proven to be little about volunteerism and much about shaping my Evergreen education and direction in life.

The first place I ever worked for my SIS hours was The Literacy Network, a now-defunct organization through which I worked as a tutor with English language learners. I also facilitated an English discussion group called Talk Times. This experience opened my eyes in a lot of ways to the importance of education, and the ways it can and should be used in our communities.

The following school year I spent two quarters interning at Safeplace, a domestic violence/sexual assault agency and residential shelter. I was mostly inspired to do this because my experience with the Literacy Network and because I knew that the hours I put towards academic credit could be dually counted for Americorps hours. Over my six months at Safeplace, I actively participated in nearly every facet of the agency: working with the children and youth program, fundraising, participating in community outreach and education projects, answering the crisis lines, providing walk-in advocacy, training incoming interns…

(Team Safeplace takes on the Stonewall Youth Bowl-a-thon, 08)

This hands-on work changed my life completely. For the first time in my life I was confronted with issues of oppression and social justice that never seemed to make it into the public school system of my high school years. As I developed my capacity to clearly communicate to a public audience the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault, I learned the importance of cultivating a community awareness that is key to prevention, and saw firsthand how education can and should be used as a vehicle of social change

I learned so much from the people I trained with, the people I worked with, the subject matter at hand. I honestly don’t know where I would be in my life if I had never done this “community studies internship”. Probably not out to change the world, like now is the plan.

The Literacy Network and Safeplace were both huge forces in my life and monumental in making my Academic Pathway in the direction that it has been. It was because of these dynamic experiences in my community and through learning by doing that I came to Gateways, where I have finished the remainder of my Term of Service. At this point on my life, I am extremely passionate and devoted to education, especially as an empowering force for change. I know that this is due largely to the community-based learning I have been privy to at Evergreen, and that Americorps is in part to thank for this. They even paid me in the end.