College Grads Say Service Matters

By JESSICA SCHONBERG

Twenty-two-year-old Jada Drew’s post-college job doesn’t officially start until July 30.

But the Guilford College graduate has been making plans for a literacy education program at the college all summer.

Drew is an AmeriCorps N.C. Campus Compact VISTA. Campus VISTAs are placed at colleges throughout the state to try to increase campus participation in service work.

VISTAs provide a variety of services, including coordinating disaster response teams and planning on-campus service projects and events.

Their goal is to make students take responsibility for improving the quality of life in their communities.

“Our VISTAs graduate college and instead of moving on to some great big corporate job, they decide to spend a year of their lives giving back to their communities and helping others,” said Juliet Thomas-Burras, VISTA leader and special projects coordinator for N.C. Campus Compact.

Drew said she is excited to form partnerships and get the whole community involved in her project.

“With AmeriCorps, one of the main focuses is poverty, so I want to incorporate a lot of public policy learning with literacy,” she said.

“Helping the children learn about the things they’re going through, but helping them learn how to get out of it through literacy.”

Campus Compact VISTAs have the choice of receiving a smaller stipend or a larger educational award at the end of their year of service.

Rachel Hutto, whose service at Greensboro College will end this month, saw the program as an extension of service work she did in college at Appalachian State University.

“I was able to use a lot of my experiences and the skills I gained there as a student leader here,” she said.

Rather than doing hands-on service work like in other AmeriCorps programs, a large portion of a VISTA’s job is to recruit volunteers for service projects and events.

“My job is to inspire other people to be engaged in the community,” said Hutto, who will head to graduate school in the fall.

Between August 2006 and March 2007, VISTAs generated 14,866 volunteers.

Rico Thompson, a UNCG graduate who will serve at N.C. Central University in Durham, said he wishes more people had the heart to help others.

Thompson said he would like to work toward stopping youth crime and lowering dropout rates.

“I just want to see what I can do, what I can change,” he said.

“I want to see if I can make a mark on the county of Durham.”

(c) 2007 Greensboro News Record. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.