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Virginia C apitol C onnections, Winter 2015
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What could be accomplished in your community with at least
10 additional pairs of hands, dedicated to one project, for 12
months? What compelling community need could be met?
This is the question that Fran Inge, Director of the Division
of Community and Volunteerism Services, asks of leaders across
the Commonwealth of Virginia. When local governments and non-
profits identify projects and programs that need to be planned,
implemented or expanded, Inge is quick to suggest that AmeriCorps
be considered.
In Virginia, AmeriCorps is managed through the Virginia
Department of Social Services (VDSS). As the Virginia Service
Commission, VDSS accesses AmeriCorps funding from the
Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), and
then makes it available to meet community needs. AmeriCorps
focuses on education, economic opportunity, services to veterans
and military families, healthy futures, environmental stewardship,
and disaster readiness and recovery. Funding for special initiatives
is occasionally made available, as well. Examples include
programming to recruit and train volunteers, and programming
designed specifically to help veterans complete educational or
vocational training using their GI benefits. Virginia’s current
portfolio of AmeriCorps State programs includes educational
programming from pre-K through high school and beyond,
financial literacy training, anti-hunger support, job readiness
training, and trail maintenance on public lands.
Inge is quick to point out the multi-level benefits of AmeriCorps
programming.
“First, there is the community benefit— the school children
who are tutored or mentored, the veterans who fully utilize
the benefits to which they are entitled, the households with
additional income because individuals completed training
programs. We (the Virginia Service Commission) also expect
AmeriCorps –A Community Resource Available Statewide
By Amanda S. Healy
our host organizations to ramp up their volunteer recruitment
and management efforts, so the community also has the
benefit of new, trained and engaged volunteers. Second,
there is a benefit to the host organization, whether public
or private. The host organization gains valuable experience
in managing a federal grant, and in overseeing a program
requiring high accountability with very specific, ambitious
outcomes. The third level of benefit is to the AmeriCorps
members themselves. They gain valuable leadership and work
experience, make great contacts and join a nationwide cadre
of national service participants. Moreover, upon completion
of their terms of service, AmeriCorps members have an
educational award made available to them (or their children or
grandchildren) to put toward existing student debt or for future
educational or vocational training.”
In addition to AmeriCorps, which is high impact, long-term
direct service, with relatively low cost to the host organization,
CNCS offers other national service programs. AmeriCorps VISTA
is another high impact, long-term, and low cost anti-poverty
program supporting organizational capacity building and indirect
service. The National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) is geared
toward direct or indirect service through high impact, short-term
and low cost projects. CNCS also sponsors Senior Corps, which
uses the skills and talents of older citizens in Foster Grandparents
and in Retired Senior Volunteer Program.
Inge urges anyone interested in finding a solution to unmet
community needs to visit , or call (804) 726-
7065. “The needs of your community,” says Inge, “may be met by
AmeriCorps and national service.”
Amanda S. Healy is the AmeriCorps Program Manager for the
Office on Volunteerism and Community Service in the Virginia
Department of Social Services.
As Virginia’s deeply divided political
culture embarks on another year of
frustration and gridlock, I’d suggest
lawmakers spend some time on a matter
nearly all Virginians can agree on:
breaking the insane tyranny of Iowa and
New Hampshire over the presidential
nomination process.
Granting these two small and
unrepresentative states disproportionate
influence year after year has never made
any sense for either political party.
Furthermore, it’s bad for Virginia and for the other 47 states
basically forced to consider as potential presidents only the top
two or three finishers who have performed best in Iowa and New
Hampshire.
Virginia shouldn’t have to act alone. A number of other larger
states, particularly Michigan and Florida, have chafed at the
outsized influence of those two breathtakingly unrepresentative
jurisdictions. The Old Dominion can and should take the lead
in breaking a system that unfairly advantages two small states
deserving no such advantages.
The fact-based case for Virginia’s first-ness is wide-ranging.
First of all, the state is far closer to America in miniature than those
two places—or, for that matter, Nevada or South Carolina, two
other highly favored states on the presidential nomination calendar.
Virginia has its ideologically liberal northeast and a replica of
Silicon Valley in Northern Virginia. The Commonwealth has its
own Sun Coast and an industrial heartland in Hampton Roads, and
a variety of politically and culturally distinct urban and suburban
communities along I-95, I-66, I-81 and I-64. Many other regions
of the state are populated by farming communities and small towns
that call to mind the Great Plains or the South. It has substantial
numbers of Christian conservative voters and Tea Party supporters
as well.
But there’s more. Population statistics demonstrate the
demographic advantages of the Old Dominion over the first two
nomination states. Virginia’s population is about 69 percent white,
as compared to more than 90 percent of the residents of those two
politically favored states. (The national population is about 72
percent white). In presidential elections, Virginia routinely comes
very close to the national division of votes.
To make the case even stronger, many of today’s Virginia voters
came here from somewhere else, and many of them are active-duty
or retired military families. They add an unusual regional diversity
to the state electorate—another reason why the Old Dominion
deserves to be at or near the head of the line. Other states can and
should make similar cases.
Iowa and N.H. try to sell the rest of the nation on the idea that
they represent that last vestiges of Norman Rockwell’s America,
where deliberate, sober voters offer an allegedly grateful nation
their carefully considered preferences. In fact, the current process
is more Norman Bates than Norman Rockwell. Iowa often favors
an extreme candidate and N.H. generally turns to a well-funded,
media-friendly candidate. (Plus Iowa demonstrated in 2012 that it
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Nomination Reform 2016 By Stephen J. Farnsworth
V