#seniorcorps

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Our Blog has Moved

We have moved our blog to our website at NationalService.gov. Please visit our new blog at NationalService.gov/blogs.

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An Act of Service is an Act of Patriotism

By Barbara Stewart, CEO, Corporation for National and Community Service

September 11, 2001, will forever be known as a day of tragedy. But in the 17 years since, it has also come to represent something else: hope. In the hours, days, and weeks following that fateful day, Americans did what they do best. In communities from coast to coast, Americans came together to help neighbors and strangers alike. This spirit of unity allowed the nation to heal then, and that same spirit can help us now.

Each year, millions of Americans honor the victims and heroes of 9/11 through service as part of the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance. This annual event is an outgrowth of a campaign led by the families of 9/11 to honor their loved ones, turning a day of grief into a day of action. The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is designated by Congress to lead this day of service and remembrance.

The annual call for our country to remember and serve reminds us of the tremendous healing power that comes from simple acts of service. When we volunteer, we discover the roots of our communities and look past the differences that divide us when we work together toward a common purpose.

As the CEO of CNCS, I have the opportunity to see this power of service every day. When citizens give their time to improve the places where they live and serve, they also encourage millions of others to join them, reinforcing the bonds that make our nation strong. Through their service, Americans get to know more about their country, their communities, and the people they serve. They embrace the spirit of the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance. Through service everyday citizens become everyday heroes.

On its worst day, America showed its best. This year’s September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance is a chance to recall the spirit of unity that swept the nation 17 years ago and to pledge your own act of patriotic service. I encourage each of us to come together and create the better tomorrow we all wish to see.

Barbara L. Stewart is the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service. To learn more about how 9/11 Day is a national day of service and remembrance, visit nationalservice.gov/911Day.

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Senior Corps Joins DOJ in Elder Justice Initiative

After working to reap the rewards of retirement, our nation’s seniors are targets for those who would prey on the vulnerabilities that often come with aging. To combat this problem, Senior Corps is partnering with the Department of Justice to support the Elder Justice Initiative to prevent elder abuse.

The initiative combines the use of federal resources, law enforcement, and state and local officials to protect seniors from financial, emotional, and physical threats to their well-being. This is a need that will grow for years based on United States Census Bureau reports that expect continued growth of the 65-and-older population as the Baby Boom generation crosses that milestone in droves. 

Elder abuse impacts a large swath of our seniors as approximately 1 of every 10 are being abused each year, with the majority of these incidents going unreported to authorities. The harm that bad actors cause can be devastating in so many ways. 

Seniors are often targeted because they may be more susceptible to approaches that prey on desires to form romantic relationships, offers of get-rich-quick schemes, harassing calls about false criminal penalties or that threaten physical violence.  

With more than 245,000 volunteers serving through Foster Grandparents, RSVP, and Senior Companions, Senior Corps can be a valuable resource to educate groups and individuals about preventative measures, and to be the eyes and ears that observe warning signs of abuse or disturbing incidents. Each year, Senior Corps makes more than 1,100 grants to local communities supporting the implementation of our three program models at 30,000 service locations.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Department of Justice to expand our work in combatting elder abuse and fraud,” said Deborah Cox-Roush, director of Senior Corps. “From educating seniors on how to prevent fraud to leveraging even more volunteers to join these efforts and working with local law enforcement, our network of more than 245,000 Senior Corps volunteers are ensuring our nation’s seniors have the care and support they need and deserve.”

Our Senior Corps volunteers participate in service and outreach that build strong connections with peers as they serve each other and the community, in addition to reaching seniors who may slip through various social safety nets.  Here are some examples:

Community Action Southwest RSVP – Washington, Pennsylvania | Community Action Southwest RSVP volunteers teach the “Money Smart for Older Adults” (MSOA) curriculum, which is a federally developed instructor-led training. The MSOA curriculum includes lessons about common types of elder financial exploitation, scams targeting veterans, identity theft, medical identity theft, scams that target homeowners, planning for unexpected life events, and how to be financially prepared for disasters. In addition to financial literacy education, volunteers also provide social support and refer seniors to resources that prevent elder abuse and enable them to maintain independent living arrangements.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Stockton RSVP – Stockton, California | RSVP volunteers were recruited and trained to provide valuable information and assistance to at least 700 victims and members of the community to inform them how to avoid abuse. Volunteers are trained to make abuse prevention presentations to their peer groups and participate in outreach events and seminars.

Our elders have earned the right to enjoy their golden years in security and be protected from fraudulent schemes. We congratulate our Senior Corps members for joining this important Elder Justice initiative to raise awareness of this issue and use all the tools at their disposal to keep seniors safe and secure. That is why we hosted a series of webinars and are making resources available to our community.  Visit our resource page here to learn more.

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#SeniorCorpsWorks: A Senior Corps Foster Grandparent in the Classroom

By Olivia Gentile, via Reblog from The Grandparent Effect

What if every classroom had a grandparent?

Kids need love. Grandparents are good at giving it.

That’s why an army of them is being recruited by the superintendent of schools in Syracuse, N.Y., where too many students have been getting suspended and too few have been graduating.

Soon, a “foster grandparent” will be stationed in every first- and second-grade classroom in all 18 elementary schools in the city. Superintendent Sharon Contreras is hoping the volunteers will enable more kids to build “a positive connection with an adult in the school building,” which will in turn improve their attendance, behavior, and grades.

The national foster grandparent program, which is overseen and funded by the federal government, matches volunteers ages 55 and over with children who need a mentor, a tutor, or both. There have been foster grandparents in the Syracuse elementary schools for decades, but, until recently, their ranks were thin, as in most school systems.

So far, about 115 out of 131 first- and second-grade classrooms have been staffed, according to Beth O’Hara, the director of senior services for Peace Inc., which operates the foster grandparent program in Syracuse and is working with Contreras to expand its presence in the city’s schools.

Volunteers—who needn’t actually be grandparents, but who are usually called Grandma or Grandpa by the kids they’re working with—commit to spending at least 15 hours a week in the classroom to which they’re assigned, and they’re asked to serve for at least a year.

Though they receive a small stipend, “they’re not doing it for $53 a week,” O’Hara says. “They’re doing it because they want to make a difference.”

Steve Walker, 63, a retired pastor, is volunteering at Dr. King Elementary School under second-grade teacher Caitlin Melvin, and he helps out however she needs him to, he says. Often, that means keeping the kids in order so she can stay focused on instructing them.

“I say, ‘We’re called Team Melvin.’ [And] I’ve convinced them that when they mess up, they affect the whole team. So … if two or three of them mess up I say, ‘Guess what? Y’all messed it up for the whole team. So you guys don’t get recess.’”

But he always gives them a chance to earn it back, he says, and his first priority is to “show them love.”

“Because I know at home, a lot of them aren’t getting any love; they’re not receiving love. Some of them come to school so mad, so frustrated, and so angry. So when I see them I say ‘Good morning’ to them. I’ve taught them [that] when they walk in the classroom, as soon as they open the door, they are obligated to say ‘Good morning.’ So if they don’t, I make them go back out the door and come back in and say ‘Good morning.’”

Ann Calderone, 65, a retired library clerk who assists in a first-grade classroom at LeMoyne Elementary School, spent much of the fall providing one-on-one support to a recent immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The little girl couldn’t speak English well enough to work independently, and the teacher had 24 other kids to worry about, so “Granny Annie” sat with her for weeks and helped her along.

About 20,000 students attend the Syracuse public schools, about 80 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Roughly 20 percent receive special education services, and about 10 percent are refugees. The high school graduation rate is only about 60 percent.

O’Hara and her staff at Peace Inc. are in charge of recruiting, screening, training, and placing the volunteers, who then report directly to teachers.

The federal government is providing $400,000 annually for the expanded program, and the Syracuse Board of Education is kicking in $350,000 per year.

Most of that money goes toward compensating the volunteers, O’Hara says.

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Join us as we recognize veterans who have continued their service to America as AmeriCorps members and Senior Corps volunteers, as well as national service participants supporting veterans and military families.

During the Veterans Day holiday, in ceremonies across all 50 states, we will honor and recognize AmeriCorps members and Senior Corps volunteers who are military veterans and also those who are serving veterans and the veteran community by highlighting their continued service and by also presenting them with a specially designed National Veteran Corps pin.

National service members and volunteers have served more than 780,000 veterans and military members in VA clinics and hospitals, veteran service organizations, and at nonprofits and public agencies. In addition, more than 23,000 veterans served in their local communities applying leadership abilities and skills acquired in service at veteran service organizations and nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, Teach For America, and others.

To learn more about #VetCorps visit our new website NationalService.gov/VetCorps.

Thank you to all the veterans and those who continue to serve the veteran community that have and continue to serve.

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Beginning Strides

An observation that I have made during my school visits and assessments is that schools in rural communities are kind of on their own little island. There is usually a 20 minute drive to the next town, or any sort of community supports to help their homeless populations. This to me is troubling and problematic as a VISTA…. How are these families getting the resources they need to provide a safe and productive education for their children? Another observation that I made during my visits is that Wisconsinites are in full practice of the mid-west polite. This is a good and bad thing. The good thing is that schools are always willing to help children and families when a student self-identifies as homeless. The bad thing about the mid-west nice is that we are too polite to put ourselves in someone else’s business. We are afraid of uncomfortable situations because we do not want to offend someone, or hurt their ego/feelings. If these families are out on the island of Small-town USA, with everyone ignoring their situation because they are afraid of being rude, could that come across as ignoring the issue? Or providing the invisibility with a cloak that this family is used to wearing? Could ignoring the issue because of fear be perpetuating the cycle of poverty in our communities? I am going to be bold and say yes.

We as a community we are only as strong as our weakest link, and if we are letting our children sink to the bottom when we should be building them up and inspiring them to build a future that we can all be proud of, then are we really educating our children?  I heard great advice, and I am not sure where I heard it from: as an adult you have the power and the privilege to be who you needed as a child. Can you recall how many times you were asked as a child what you wanted to be when you grew up, and asked why? How about asked how you planned to get to that goal? Children need mentors to help form the maps to their futures.

As I said previously, rural schools are on an island and it takes some effort to move around to different communities for the resources that they need. Homeless students and their families need a resource that is easy to access, and that is where mentoring for students experiencing homelessness comes in to play. I am trying to figure out how to facilitate a mentoring program to the rural districts who have a small homeless population. These districts have identified very few homeless students, and have about 2-3 identified students at any given time. In order to increase graduation rates, and make students college and career ready, I plan to provide graduation coaches to students who qualify to receive benefits under the McKinney-Vento Act. The challenge with rural communities is that there is not a strong resource of young volunteers available like there is in metropolitan communities. A solution to this lack of young people could be Intergenerational Mentoring.

There is an interesting project with the Seniorcorps branch of Americorps: The Foster Grandparent Program. Description:

This program is part of Senior Corps, a network of national service programs that provide older Americans the opportunity to put their life experiences to work for local communities. Foster Grandparents serve as mentors, tutors, and caregivers for at-risk children and youth with special needs through a variety of community organizations, including schools, hospitals, drug treatment facilities, correctional institutions, and Head Start and day-care centers. In fiscal year 2003 more than 30,000 Foster Grandparents tended to the needs of 275,000 young children and teenagers.

 I want to model something like this in our communities that have a plethora of older adults who are retired and willing to volunteer. This mentor could provide a different perspective on situations that could arise in high schools across our region. These mentors have been there and done that and survived to tell about it. I think this would be a great opportunity for the children in our community who are experiencing homelessness, but it could be beneficial for the older adults as well.