A Journey to Self Confidence by Serena Gardner
Serena Gardner is an AmeriCorps VISTA member serving at the WELL Women’s Business Center at the University of Montana Serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA at The Women’s Entrepreneurial and Leadership Lab Women’s Business Center (WELL WBC), I am learning valuable lessons about seeking help and perseverance. I am a North Carolina native but spent time growing up in Portland, Oregon before making my way out to Missoula for college. I am a graduate of the University of Montana where I received a degree in psychology, a minor in global public health and a certification in global leadership. When I began…
My Search for Purpose by Noell Evans
Right after I graduated college, I thought I knew exactly what career path I wanted to pursue. I had always been interested in politics both foreign and domestic, and I had always been interested in foreign languages and culture, so it seemed a natural and logical conclusion that I pursue a career in foreign policy. I had been so sure of this, even back in middle school. However, my dreams began to falter after my first internship. I worked as an intern for the State Department, and it was nothing like I had imagined. I never got that spirit of…
On the Fort Peck Reservation by Secret Crushong
Secret is an AmeriCorps College Coach serving at Poplar High School. My first task as an AmeriCorps College Coach on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation was to get to know the students I would serve throughout my time at Poplar High School. To achieve this, I surveyed the junior and senior classes’ interests, skills, and experiences. Using the information collected from these surveys, I could search for specific educational and vocational opportunities that best match our students, and introduce each student individually to the limitless possibilities of approaching their post-secondary goals. This approach includes familiarizing prospective college students with a…
Shocked by Culture Shock, Peeling Back the Layers… by Raymond Knight
While conducting my research for this assignment, I remember thinking that acclimating to this new environment would be a breeze – that I would hit the ground running and adjust with a quickness, from the giddyup. After all, I have lived all over these united states, and through the years visited over a dozen nations. I have experienced so many different places, studied many diverse layers of culture and different ways of living, and have become accustomed to frequently adjusting to changing circumstances. However, months into my service year in Montana, I began experiencing different thought energies and sensations within…
Looking Back on my First Half of AmeriCorps Service by Katherine Fazekas
Downtown Livingston, Montana (September 2022) On August 10th, 2022, I packed my car to begin a 5 day solo journey from Boston, MA to Missoula, MT for pre-service orientation with Montana Campus Compact. Though I had never been to Montana, I eagerly accepted a position as a VISTA with Park County Environmental Council in Livingston. After a tumultuous college experience that consisted of two semesters completed from my brothers’ childhood bedroom and three joint surgeries, I was in need of change. Having completed a demanding degree at a rigorous college with a competitive, intense atmosphere, I felt like I was…
On Community by Amelia Huba
Reading through the archives of MTCC blog posts, there is a stark theme of loneliness/lack of community/feeling unmoored. While AmeriCorps advertises that its programs are community-based and discusses providing opportunities for members to serve in their own communities, every VISTA I know got a relocation stipend, and half of us are from the East Coast. The draw of Montana has pulled people from across the country to tackle pressing challenges that affect cities throughout America. Choosing to address those issues here is a testament to all that the state has to offer, despite the challenges that come with being here….
Talk, Talk, Talk by Olivia Holstine
When starting in an AmeriCorps position, and as we do our service, we get a lot of really good advice. It’s usually putting it into practice that can be hard – weather, location, resources, time, etc. All manner of things can work against us. And the projects are going to be frustrating. There are moments when I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything, that I have No Idea what I’m doing, and it sucks. Sometimes you serve and it turns out to be helpful, sometimes you read a 118-page report and realize later it’s useless to you. It’s a crap…
When Entrepreneurship is Necessary by Anya Smith
Anya is an AmeriCorps VISTA member serving with the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership Lab (WELL) in Missoula, Montana “Men start businesses because they have an idea or an opportunity, women start businesses because they have to.” This (or something close) was said at the first full staff meeting I attended for the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership Lab. It’s a phrase that has stuck with me ever since. I’ve lived in Montana most of my life, and based on my experience, it can be difficult to find jobs here that allow a person to make a livable wage. This is compounded…
My Experience with Service by Francine Tageant
Francine is an AmeriCorps College Coach serving in Missoula. I was first introduced to AmeriCorps when a friend of mine decided to serve in Bellingham, Washington. She was serving at a middle school helping tutor students who had fallen behind in school. I can remember how excited she was when one or more of her students would begin to understand their coursework. My children are now all grown and leading their own lives. I was ready for a change in my life as well. Little did I know that it would be blown up in just a few short months….
Embracing Your Fear by Allie Nawrocki
Let me set the scene for you. It is August 2022, and I was about to leave my Midwest home. With it, I would be leaving everything I knew behind. At first, I was thinking I was crazy, flying to a place I had never been before. I had so much anxiety doing it by myself, and I also knew that I would miss my parents, my siblings, and friends. As I looked around, everything was different, and that was a daunting experience. This fear was familiar because I felt the same way when I went to college. I also…
Reflection on My Journey by Anna Waller
Anna is an AmeriCorps College Coach serving at Salish Kootenai College. It has been more than six weeks now since I started my service term as a Montana Campus Compact AmeriCorps College Coach, and I have learned a lot, although I have only just begun. It is my pleasure to be serving the community through Salish Kootenai College’s Upward Bound program, a nationwide initiative with the purpose of providing higher education opportunities to high school students from low-income families and/or parents without bachelor’s degrees. Through this experience, I am learning that community service can take on many forms. I never…
Finding My Way in Service by Emily Montalvo
My time as a VISTA has been, overall, an extremely rewarding experience that has taught me a lot about both my local community and myself. I am serving with the Rural Institute of Inclusive Communities, which promotes equal opportunity for people with disabilities. As someone who has a disability, is dating someone with a disability, and was the primary caregiver for a parent with a disability, the work of the Rural Institute is personal to me. We all deserve the same opportunities, and too often people with disabilities are denied those opportunities. During my service, I have been working on…
Supporting Entrepreneurship in Montana by Sarah Grissom
Serving with Accelerate Montana’s Rural Innovation Initiative (AMRII) has exposed me to the importance of supporting local businesses and entrepreneurship throughout Montana. Stimulating the local economy through business by providing support is important but not the only component that helps businesses and entrepreneurs to succeed. The purpose of economic development is to alleviate poverty by appealing to communities’ entrepreneurial spirit to create a sustainable local economy. However, this comes with barriers for rural or Indigenous people who are not geographically close to resources that could aid them in starting or expanding their businesses. Entrepreneurism and small businesses have always been…
Rollercoaster of Service by Rylie Yaeger
This service year has had its ups and downs, but resulted in unexpected victories. When I first began my term, my supervisor told me, “You will have ups and downs during service. It is normal and everyone goes through it.” As a former AmeriCorps member, she really knew what doing a service year means mentally. Her words have stuck with me for the almost 11 months I have been serving. I went through one of the worst things that life doesn’t quite prepare you for during service. My aunt, my mother figure, passed away and I had to use the…
On Belonging by Amber Peretz
Tomorrow will be my 29th birthday. September 14th. This time last year I was moving out of my apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida and preparing to move to Montana where an AmeriCorps VISTA position was waiting for me at the MSU Billings Native American Achievement Center. At the time of my move, there were some very big questions on my mind- questions that more truthfully stemmed from my heart. There was this feeling that although Florida would always be my home, it seemed to be pushing me away for the time being. My family would joke that it didn’t need…
Sacrifice and Service by Nathan Switchenko
AmeriCorps VISTA member Nathan Switchenko “What’s it going to be then, eh?” was a question I often asked myself after I graduated college-though I had a rather less poetic retort. This uncertainty, during the height of Covid lockdowns, soon reached a head, and pushed me into moving a thousand miles to a state I had hitherto never set foot to serve as an underpaid AmeriCorps VISTA member. Other factors such as a confluence of friends serving or entering service also helped, but the root of my interest was in a desire to prevent other college graduates from feeling the same…
Do Good, Try Your Best by Emily McMath
Emily, our 2021-2022 AmeriCorps Senior Leader, served two terms with Montana Campus Compact Excitement, learning, hesitation, perseverance, grief, burnout, growth, frustration, resolve. My AmeriCorps experience can and will be described in a multitude of ways. After two years, one might think the ability to talk about what you have experienced would be familiar, become habit, but honestly my description changes every time. I reviewed past blogs from my first year of service to see if my opinion changed, if my outlook of the world differed in any way. The remarkable thing is, at the core, it has not. I still…
Witnessing Inspiration Bloom By Jonathan Carter
Jonathan is an AmeriCorps Leader serving at spectrUM Discovery Area, which is located in the new Missoula Public Library. As I enter the penultimate month of my service year, I would like to take a moment to pause and reflect on my experience so far. I’ve found my community impact can be a bit more challenging to measure than that of my fellow cohort members. While their high school and college students are working hard on grades and applications, my zero- to ten-year-old audience is concerned with simply having fun (and learning new things!) at the museum. Ultimately, smiles and…
Investing in a More Hopeful Future by Noah Aukerman
Noah serves with Montana Technological University in Helena at Capital High School “My parents kept me out of school today because of shooting and bomb threats,” a student explained to me. Their absence from school prevented them from attending their weekly meeting to receive the academic mentorship and college readiness services my service site offers. However, this student’s worries were well founded. The day prior, Helena police arrested a man who had made three explosive devices with the intention of detonating them at Helena High School. He was also in possession of three semi-automatic rifles which he expressly intended to…
Service With Snqweyłmistn By Emma Myers
After having completed my first service year at a family shelter, I knew I wanted to continue serving parents and children. That left a lot of room for me to explore and search, but when I saw the opportunity to work with indigenous foster families in rural Montana, everything about it excited me. I was initially intrigued by Snqweyłmistn as a host site for my service year because of how many people they wanted to impact through their programming. They weren’t only concerned with the well-being of current foster families, but also the seven generations of indigenous people that would…