What is AmeriCorps Week?

AmeriCorps Week is an annual event designed to:

• Bring more Americans into service
• Salute AmeriCorps members and alums
• Thank community partners

The first-ever AmeriCorps Week, in 2007, was a huge success, with more than 200 events taking place in all 50 states, including an Oval Office event with President Bush (click here for other 2007 highlights). We’re aiming to make the 2008 AmeriCorps Week—which is taking place May 11-18—even bigger and better, and that can happen only if as many AmeriCorps projects, members, and friends participate as possible.

What Can I Do for AmeriCorps Week?
Whether you’re a project director, member, alumnus, partner, or friend, we encourage you to take part in AmeriCorps Week 2008.

Last year, members and alumni made presentations to student and community groups during AmeriCorps Week. Grantees staged open houses, service projects, volunteer fairs, and recruitment blitzes. And local officials and elected leaders served as AmeriCorps members for a day.

In other words, there is no prescription for marking the event, and we strongly encourage you to use your creativity to devise new and different ways to demonstrate the powerful impact that AmeriCorps is making in your community.

http://www.americorps.gov/about/americorpsweek/index.asp

AmeriCorps Week 2008 Idea Sharing Calls

AmeriCorps Week is coming May 11-18. To help you plan and promote your AmeriCorps Week event or presentation, we are setting up a series of conference calls where you can learn more about what’s going on and share ideas with headquarters and your peers from across the county. The schedule of topics is below, and you can join them all or choose what’s most interesting to you. These calls are a chance to get the latest updates, ask questions, learn about resources and materials, and best of all brainstorm with your peers about ways to make your AmeriCorps Week event a big success. Whether you are an AmeriCorps member, alum, project director, commission staff, friend, or supporter – whether you are state, national, VISTA or NCCC – we hope you are planning to mark AmeriCorps Week and we invite you to these calls. Please note that all calls will take place on Wednesdays starting at 1 P.M. EST and lasting until 2 P.M.

The dial-in number and passcode will be the same for all of the AmeriCorps Week 2008 Idea Sharing Calls.
Dial-In Number: 1-800-857-2166
Passcode: 9247010
Call Leader: Ms. Susan Rice

Schedule will be forwarded to all members.

Time to Ride!

From June 1-7, 2008, Kate (Santa Monica Safe Corps Member) will be bicycling in AIDS/LifeCycle. It's a 7-day, 545-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to make a world of difference in the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS.

This ride will be a very difficult challenge, but it is for a great cause. Please take a look at her homepage and read about her journey, and help support her as she strives to reach her goal.

www.aidslifecycle.org/6156

Southern California Cesar Chavez Day

Habitat for Humanity was our choice of projects to help the community and even though they were not building any homes at the moment they welcomed our help. At first they wanted us to paint a trailer they use out in the field but, when they went to their paint section they found that the entire collection of paint was all mixed up. So a new task was presented to us. To go to their Oxnard store and re-arrange their paints by brand, type and color. A simple sounding plan but, when presented with the many cans and the way they were set all over the store it proved almost Herculean. The team got to work at once pulling the cans both large and small down from the shelves, arranging them and setting them up. As we were working away customers were coming in and several had comments like “now I can find things I need” and, “I will come her again.” The people in the Habitat for Humanity Store were grateful for our work and when it was done, the paint section now resembled something one might find in a hardware store. The more things they sell, the more homes they can build.
By: Richard Senate

Bay Area Cesar Chavez Day

On Monday, March 31, 2008, Luis Hinojosa, Michelle Roman, Kim Mai Nguyen, Adriana Garcia, and Cynthia Hsu spent the day packaging, preparing, and serving food!! What better way to spend a day- working with food! We started the day at Second Harvest Food Bank where we packaged two huge bottomless bins of carrots. While packaging bags of carrots to be distributed to individuals and various soup kitchens and organizations, we laughed over stories of Adriana and Cynthia as childhood bullies and befriended our fellow carrot packers. The time passed quickly and the next thing we knew it was time to head over to Loaves and Fishes, a soup kitchen operated out of St. Patrick’s School in San Jose.

When we arrived the kitchen was full of staff and volunteers busily preparing the meals to be served to the 200+ eager diners who would arrive later in the afternoon. A couple of us were assigned to fruit salad preparation while others were responsible for setting up the dining hall. Many of the volunteers were regulars and were eager to get to know us newcomers. Shortly before 4:00pm, we saw the crowds outside just waiting for meal service. There was an interesting and colorful mix of diners that afternoon- singles, couples, and families of all different backgrounds. The diners seemed to be more than satisfied with their meals and many of them came back for seconds and even thirds- especially for the cookies!! While serving meals, the aroma from the food, particularly the chicken noodle soup, stimulated our appetites, and after cleaning up, we decided to grab dinner together at the vegetarian restaurant across the way- a perfect way to end the day!

By: Cynthia Hsu