AmeriCorps Week at the NAC

Last month my fellow AmeriCorps members and I attended a conference on volunteerism. During a short discussion session I noticed another conference attendee eyeing the dark goggle tans lining several of my coworkers’ faces. After a moment of hesitation he leaned over to one of my conspicuously tanned friends and, with a slight frown of incredulity, asked, “How can you be an AmeriCorps member and still have so much time to ski?” “It’s part of my job,” she laughed, “I teach skiing and snowboarding to people with disabilities.” He glanced again at the other National Ability Center AmeriCorps and, with a smile, asked, “Can we switch jobs?”

This second week in May is AmeriCorps week, a time when the nation celebrates volunteerism and, particularly, AmeriCorps members. As an organization, AmeriCorps isn’t particularly well-known. Unlike programs like the Peace Corps or the Red Cross, AmeriCorps could still stand to benefit from slightly improved brand recognition. In fact, when describing AmeriCorps I most often refer to it as “the domestic Peace Corps.” In short, AmeriCorps is a government-sponsored service program by which U.S. citizens work for one-year terms as full-time volunteers within the country. Without AmeriCorps, the nonprofit world would be a very different place. Each year nonprofit organizations in the fields of health, homeland security, education, and the environment benefit from the work of 85,000 AmeriCorps volunteers; a combined contribution of over 144 million hours.

Out of this massive number of volunteers, the National Ability Center benefits from the work of six. Not a very large number in comparison, but we six volunteers have moved from across the country for the opportunity to provide a plethora of services the National Ability Center would otherwise be unable to offer. As AmeriCorps we teach horseback riding lessons, coordinate volunteers, teach waterskiing in the summer and alpine skiing in the winter, we give presentations and recruit participants, help maintain the ropes course and belay participants on the climbing wall. We do a little bit of everything.
AmeriCorps members don’t make much in terms of income. Nonetheless, as our friend at the conference would tell you, National Ability Center AmeriCorps have some of the best jobs out there. Two of our members are Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialists and one intends to study occupational therapy; they’re learning invaluable information for their future careers. The rest of us simply revel in the novelty that playing outside can not only be considered work, but that it actually makes an extraordinary impact on the lives of others. And this, of course, is the true draw of serving an AmeriCorps term.

AmeriCorps member Adena Miller, from California, works with a little girl named Sarah Barber in the NAC’s hippotherapy program. Sarah was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a condition that causes her muscles to continuously shrink. The NAC’s hippotherapy program is conducted by an occupational therapist who uses horseback riding as tool to build muscle tone and motor skills in patients. Since beginning hippotherapy, Sarah has become the first SMA patient her doctors have ever known to gain muscle mass.

Not only does Adena work with Sarah in hippotherapy on Tuesdays, but she also teaches her swimming lessons on Monday nights. “Sarah and I have a unique bond,” Adena says, “In swimming I’ll ask her to do something five times and she asks, ‘how about three?’ She’ll look at me and I just look her back in the eyes until she grins and says, ‘Let’s do ten!’” Working with Sarah has reinforced Adena’s goal to pursue occupational therapy as a career and it has helped Sarah progress in ways her doctors had never imagined to be possible.

For people with the time to serve, a one-year AmeriCorps term is not only an opportunity to give back, but it is also a chance to explore new interests, build relationships with people you would never otherwise know, and enjoy the freedom to connect to a community in a way no other volunteer or career experience could possibly offer.

Happy AmeriCorps Week!
Libby Falck, National Ability Center AmeriCorps Member