My path to serving with AmeriCorps wasn’t a straight one- nor has it been one I would have expected. Last year this time I was offered a position serving in North Macedonia with the Peace Corps. I don’t think I could have known what the year would hold; I certainly didn’t expect a pandemic, or to return to my college town, to see the inauguration of the first woman vice president of the United States… When the pandemic hit and Peace Corps volunteers were pulled back to the US from their host countries, I was faced with defining an entirely new direction for myself in the middle of a pandemic. Fate found me with an instagram post advertising an AmeriCorps opening with Soft Landing Missoula, the organization I had loved and interned and volunteered with in college. I don’t think I would have done AmeriCorps if it weren’t for the opportunity to serve with an organization I believe in. AmeriCorps is not for the weak-hearted. It takes so much of yourself to serve with so little in return but to see the seeds of your work being sown and growing.

As much as I believe there is honor in the service of a community that does not produce equal profit for one’s well-being, there is something to be said for having the means, the soil, the water, the fertile grounds to lay those seeds. AmeriCorps service is most accessible to those people who have fertile grounds to give their labor to sow seeds of service. Why do we not see more people living in poverty growing gardens? Because to grow a garden, you need resources, you need leisure time, you need fertile grounds to grow. I would not be serving if I didn’t know that I have networks and resources to keep me afloat if I were to face financial, emotional, or physical hardship. Service requires the ability to give without letting your cup go empty. It requires the resources to foster a personal sense of wellbeing in order to serve community wellbeing

What are we meant to understand to be service? Indeed, a radical act of love, a radical act of compassions, extending compassion beyond any measure of personal gain. But is it necessary to give so much of ourselves that our cups are then empty? Service must be a mutually fulfilling act, and I believe the notion that service must be in complete dedication to the other person is failing to acknowledge the oneness of our beings, and that the success of our own wellbeing in service affects the people we serve. The wellness of a public or community servant is vital to the health of the community, and the belief that for-profit entrepreneurs should thrive while public-servants and non-profit organizations suffer and scrape by for doing work they believe in is steeped in capitalist focus on productivity that neglects to take into account the vitality of its community.