AmeriCorps *Vista

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 bring low-income individuals and communities out of poverty. AmeriCorps*VISTA members leverage human, financial and material resources to increase the capacity of thousands of low-income areas across the country to address challenges and improve their lives and communities. They leave behind lasting solutions to some of our country's toughest problems.

Goodwill has had AmeriCorps*VISTA projects since 2003. Through these projects the VISTA members have increased capacity for the YouthWorks! program, The Mentoring Coalition, and indirectly Goodwill and other partner organizations. The members have been from the surrounding area, Stephen F. Austin State University students, other areas of Texas (Abilene), or as far away as Indiana and Illinois.

The overall goal of Goodwill's current VISTA project is to create a Family Strengthening Initiative for the entire agency. This project will utilize VISTA members to connect Goodwill programs and community resources to provide networks of support for people with disabilities and other risk factors and their families through the development of family strengthening strategies, such as connections to community resources, job readiness and placement services, job retention and advancement services, youth development, employer relations, financial education, and asset development. The project will also allow Goodwill to provide other grassroots programs that wish to initiate services that fit into the family strengthening framework, with VISTA members to help them build capacity for their programs.

The following are the three current goals of the AmeriCorps*VISTA project.

1. VISTA project activities will address problems identified in the need statement for the low-income population by developing and coordinating family strengthening resources and infrastructure that lead to high quality and comprehensive service delivery for individuals and their families who are striving to overcome the causes of poverty and achieve economic self-sufficiency.

2. The proposed project will strengthen Goodwill's ability to develop family strengthening supports for our most at-risk families by assessing exactly what families in our area need, developing a deeper understanding of the supports currently available to families in our area, creating partnerships to connect these families with needed resources, and developing new and/or building capacity for current programs (both in and out of Goodwill) that support families in overcoming their barriers and getting out of poverty. These will be our general outcomes for the life of the project. In order to achieve these outcomes, Goodwill will utilize VISTA Members, community partnerships, staff time and resources, our current Advisory Council, community members, volunteers, and current and past clients and employees (project beneficiaries) to develop, monitor, and evaluate the project. We are currently planning a series of focus groups, which will, among other things, allow us to begin researching exactly what community members feel families need to thrive in our community, including those gaps in current service delivery. This is the beginning of a new philosophy for the agency.

3. Goodwill recently initiated the TMC MentorCorps project, which is an AmeriCorps*State project funded through OneStar Foundation. The purpose of this project is to provide mentors and mentor coordinators to agencies throughout the region (now in Angelina, Houston, Nacogdoches, and Polk counties) that serve youth and adults considered at-risk. We will work closely with MentorCorps to provide training opportunities (both as trainees and trainers), participation in national days of service, and overall esprit de corps for VISTA Members. Training and technical assistance for program staff is also provided, which will be useful for all of our national service programs and the agency as a whole.