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At an Ethnic Media Services briefing, May 12, speakers \u2013 Josh Fryday, California Chief Service Officer; Lindsay Fox, President and CEO, United Way of Fresno & Madera Counties; Fernando Martinez, Civic Action Fellow, San Jose State University; and Ia Moua, Director of State and National Service, California Volunteers \u2013 explain how this initiative came to being, who’s eligible, when, and how to apply, and why the community service can be transformative experience for students and college campuses alike.<\/p>\n
Josh Fryday provided an overview of the Californians for All College Corps program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are really creating with this program debt-free pathways for our low-income students to not just to graduate with less debt, but also to graduate with professional skills, and professional networks they wouldn’t otherwise have available to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the program works is if a student commits to a year of service and it’s an academic year, while they’re in school, at one of our 48 participating campuses, if they commit to a year of service of doing 450 hours they will receive $10,000 to put towards their education, to pay for school, to pay for everything from tuition, to rent, to books, to food, and any of their basic necessities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt helps filling the gap that a lot of Pell or all Pell grant students in California have to come up with by either taking out loans, they have to go into student debt, which we know is a crisis that’s saddling and crippling many of our young people today, or they have to work at a job that may take away their focus from school and from graduating on time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve created this program with the goal of helping students stay in school, graduate on time, with less debt, but also benefiting the community in significant ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur students across the state are going to be focused in three main areas serving in their community \u2013 one is around climate action and doing everything from planting trees to helping compost and help with food recovery to helping with fire mitigation across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re also going to be seeing our students and our young people focus on food insecurity which we know has drastically increased during COVID, over the last couple years, is continuing to increase as we see ongoing inflation and the one of the biggest needs that food banks have is for volunteers is for the capacity to support communities, and these young people are going to be fulfilling a really important need at our food banks, and around food insecurity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last is, we know that coming out of COVID our young people, especially in our low-income schools are facing increased education disparities with learning loss as a result of COVID and many of these college corps students are going to be tutors and mentors in our low-income schools so our students are going to be providing very meaningful service for our community in a way that, we hope, lifts our entire state, and so we really see this program as being a win-win-win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a win for students for everything that they’re going to receive; it’s a win for the community who’s going to have the help the benefit of this meaningful service; and it’s a win for all of society because we’re going to have a generation of young people now graduating that will have the experience and the understanding of what it means to come together with people from very different backgrounds and very different perspectives to solve problems together,\u201d said Fryday.<\/p>\n
Lindsay Fox said, \u201cAs we begin to emerge from the pandemic and begin to transition to what our world is going to be like, moving forward, we’re confronted with the stark reality of what the college going culture has turned into in many of our communities. We are seeing college enrollment rates, particularly community colleges, go down significantly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Fresno, we are seeing significant dips in enrollment for people of color, particularly black men. Enrollment has gone down quite a bit so a program like College Corps that removes the financial barriers that might be in place that’s what we need for our communities to ensure that we break through this COVID fog that seems to be hanging over so many aspects of our lives,\u201d said Fox.<\/p>\n
Fernando Martinez gave a firsthand account of his experience of participating in this service fellowship service to the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough this program, I have learned firsthand how much local school communities are lacking in areas like technology and access to those STEM-related careers. The fellowship also provides me with the opportunity to help other kids that are growing up in similar situations to myself and to explain, I didn’t even have access to a computer at home until, I think, about high school, because my parents really couldn’t afford it, and we didn’t really know how to use it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny school workout to complete on the computer was done at the library and through their computer labs. Overall, finance and technology was not a focus of my childhood, however, fast forward to today, and I’m fortunate enough to be interning at Robin Hood, a financial investment company this upcoming summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the most meaningful part of the fellowship is the genuine connections I’ve made with the children that I mentor. I’m so glad this opportunity is growing and will be available to even more SJSU students, and I want to say thank you to California volunteers, AmeriCorps and SJSU for making this opportunity possible,\u201d said Martinez.<\/p>\n
Ia Moua, shared her personal experience about the transformative nature of this kind of work. \u201cMy family escaped persecution from the Vietnam War and resettled in the U.S. as refugees when I was nine-years-old, and this incredible privilege gave us a second chance at life.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cOur early days of survival depended on the support of public assistance and my very own personal and professional growth were shaped by the selfless act of teachers and mentors who guided me along the way as I adapted and learned to navigate life in a new country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough my community service experience as a tutor and as a youth organizer not only was I exposed to new opportunities, but I also gained a new sense of community and all of that I think came about because of my service to others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started as an AmeriCorps member, as a volunteer, as a tutor, moved on to work in community organizations and kind of continued that ethic of service, of working and creating and strengthening communities, and it landed me where I’m at today, the director of state and national service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I really find exciting about College Corps, as Josh has mentioned, is that it is a program that really expands beyond traditional national service opportunities that are available through AmeriCorps. For the first time, in the state of California, we are expanding this opportunity to include AB540 eligible dreamers and we’re offering this opportunity on a much bigger scale at the higher ed institution and we hope that this would be a program that can be sustained and can be available to all on colleges and university, having kind of lived through the service experience, I also think that College Corps is unique, and powerful, and different from an internship or a work study experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe program is designed to provide students with the opportunities to get in the trenches and and hands-on opportunity to really work with communities and make a meaningful difference. It’s also designed to give them a lot of support as they’re surveying and it strengthens pathways to education, to employment, and in training, leadership, and the opportunities for them to be able to network. It will really give them lifelong lessons and support and civic engagement that that we believe will live beyond the experience that they have as part of college board,\u201d said Moua.<\/p>\n