Mississippi Delta Service Corps
AmeriCorps*Volunteers in Service to America (MDSC/A*VISTA)

Mission/Goal

Program Description

AmeriCorps*VISTA is a national service program dedicated to eliminating poverty by helping individuals and low-income neighborhoods make positive changes for themselves. Through AmeriCorps*VISTA, ordinary people provide extraordinary service in more than 1,200 projects nationwide.

MDSC/A*VISTA is funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service (Funding Appropriations through the OMB and the National Department of Health and Human Services) out of Washington, D.C. and has an annual operating budget of over $450,000.00. The program consists of 2 full-time staff and 25 full-time members who are assigned to non-profit agencies throughout the 11 counties of the Mississippi Delta region. VISTA members serve to create and expand opportunities for low income individuals and the organizations they serve, in one of the following areas:

• economic opportunities
• healthy futures
• youth/adult education

Each MDSC/AmeriCorps*VISTA member

• recruits, manages, and maintains community volunteers to assist with projects, and community service days (National Day of Service and Remembrance, Make A Difference Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and National Volunteer Day)
• researches and develops funding resources to ensure project sustainability
• builds partnerships with local agencies, both public and private, for profit and non-profit, to assist with recruiting volunteers, serving on project committees, and project(s) sponsorship
• produces outreach materials for volunteer community educator's recruitment
• recruits volunteers in the community to participate in the marketing and recruiting of the program
• recruits participants from the low-income communities who will benefit from the services of the projects
• coordinates, organizes, and develops needed curriculums, activities, events, programs, and other needed projects to ensure the success of the goals of the MDSC/AmeriCorps*VISTA, and the Corporation for National & Community Service
• assists in the mobilization of community resources
• builds partnerships with agencies and assists in the transference of skills to community residents;
• serves as a bridge with the expansion of the capacity of community-based organizations to solve problems that encourage permanent, long-term solutions to problems confronting the Mississippi Delta

The key component of the program's sustainability plan is in the services the VISTA members provide

• building partnerships and collaborations with community businesses and agencies
• coordinating training-of-trainer (TOT) workshops with community residents
• locating funding opportunities for projects
• recruiting volunteers from the community; and partnering with other volunteers from national service programs

Program Success

Since 2003 the Mississippi Delta Service Corps/AmeriCorps*VISTA program has made a significant impact in the lives of community residents through our three initiatives.

Economic Opportunities

The financial asset development initiative, ASSETS (Acquiring Self Sustaining Economical TipS) has been able to reach more than two thousand individuals to participate in financial asset educational workshops per year. Attendance rosters, evaluations, and surveys are kept from each event. Fifty-three curriculums have been identified to cover a range of financial topics such as personal financial planning, understanding your credit, bankruptcy, shopping on a budget, etc. Sixty-seven professionals from the profit and non-profit community have volunteered as instructors and facilitators for more than one hundred twenty workshops annually. Through the AmeriCorps*VISTA program the Center for Community and Economic Development has developed a more organized ten-month training using FDIC's MoneySmarts curriculum.

The Annual Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium that is held during Youth Entrepreneur Week is now sustained in two school districts. The symposium offers workshops on Money Management, Writing a Business Plan, How to Start Your Own Business, and Maintaining Good Credit from Youth to Adulthood. The Center for Community and Economic Development is establishing partnerships with possible funders to sponsor Class V of the Youth Entrepreneurial Program (YEP . . . I DID IT). YEP...I DID IT! is a four week course developed to provide high school juniors and seniors with skills and hands on experience in becoming entrepreneurs.

MPACT (Mississippians Providing Adequate Career Training) is the program's school-to-work/welfare-to-work initiative. Through the success of the initiative, our first volunteer center has been in operation for six years. The volunteer center operates at full capacity and now provides services in nine Delta counties. Through this collaboration, VISTA members assist TANF recipients register with the volunteer centers and are placed with for profit and non-profit agencies to work at least 20 hours a week. Because of the training and placement offered, more than 400 volunteers have been recruited and have completed the job readiness training, and more than 150 partnerships have been established.

Healthy Futures

The program's health education initiative, WHOLE (Wellness and Health Outreach for the Low-income and Elderly) successes includes: (1) More than three hundred community members have been recruited and trained to be community health outreach educators; (2) more than 20,000 individuals from Delta communities have participated in health workshops, trainings, and/or health fairs; (3) B.E.E.P. (Breast Education and Early-detection Program has over forty annual community workshops where more than eight hundred individuals are receiving health education as a result of the BEEP efforts.

Through a grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation, the MDSC/AmeriCorps*VISTA project is able to expand project WHOLE and add an anti-hunger focus. The anti-hunger focus is a credible effort to help people escape poverty, obesity, unhealthy eating, and not simply make these issues more tolerable. The Center for Community and Economic Development has been successful in implementing the new anti-hunger focus and VISTAs are securing new partnerships with local farmers, farmer's market, and regional healthy eating programs. The members are serving as a bridge with the expansion of the capacity of community-based organizations to solve nutrition and health problems that encourage permanent, long-term solutions to problems confronting communities

Education

The children/youth initiative, GAP (Generations Advancing with Pride) continues its partnerships with twenty-seven schools, eighteen youth programs, and eleven community centers. Approximately 2,000 youth participate in the education programs each year. 60% of the youth in grades 4-9 have increased their reading skills through after school programs, mentor and mentee programs, culture and heritage activities, and also through peer educator initiatives. 50% of the middle school students who participated in the education initiatives exhibited an increased awareness of their role as citizens and demonstrated a quicker acceptance of leadership roles in projects that connect them to the community.

Contact Information

MDSC/AmeriCorps*VISTA Forms

MDSC/AmeriCorps*VISTA Program
DSU Box 3134
Cleveland, MS 38733
 

Linda N. Stringfellow
lstringf@deltastate.edu                                                                   662-846-4332

Beronica W. Hudson
bwilder@deltastate.edu                                                                        662-846-4338