Despite ongoing attacks in Washington, D.C.,
AmeriCorps is building support in Knoxville
by Jesse Fox Mayshark
When it's raining in Knoxville, the city's storm sewers carry water away
from streets and sidewalks and directly into local creeks and rivers. When
it's not raining, they're not supposed to carry anything. But they do, and
it's often something less benign than rainwater—detergents from overzealous
driveway car washes, pesticides, gasoline, and any number of other pollutants.
The city's engineering department is technically in charge of checking sewer
runoff and identifying the source of any pollution. But there are a lot of
storm drains in Knoxville, and only a handful of people in the water quality
division. So the city relies heavily on CAC AmeriCorps, the local chapter
of a 4-year-old national service program.
"It gives us more eyes and ears and hands out in the field," says David Hagerman,
the city's storm water quality manager. "If they didn't do it, it would cost
a lot more to put the technicians on staff [to do it]."
Hagerman's not the only local AmeriCorps booster—several other local
agencies can point to projects over the past few years that could not have
happened without the strong backs and willing hands of AmeriCorps members.
But even as local support for the program grows—both in dollars and
enthusiasm—it remains under attack in Washington, D.C., decried by
Republicans as a wasteful federal bureaucracy that usurps local volunteer
efforts.
"It just costs us too much," says Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-Knoxville). "I have
great skepticism about this program."
A Clinton Ideal
Most of the fuss over AmeriCorps stems directly from its origins as a 1992
campaign promise of President Bill Clinton. Back when Clinton was still trying
to paint himself as a new Kennedy, AmeriCorps was his complement to JFK's
Peace Corps, a way young people could earn education money and minimal living
expenses while serving as full-time "volunteers" in communities across the
country. The Democrat-controlled Congress approved the program in 1993.
The notion of an idealistic Clinton now seems like some mythological
beast—last seen cavorting with satyrs and unicorns—but AmeriCorps
has survived as arguably its only legacy, despite annual Republican efforts
to kill it. Lori Pejsa, program director for CAC AmeriCorps in Knoxville,
thinks that's because people in local communities see through the politics
to the program's successes.
"Who cares whose idea it was?" she asks. "We probably don't even know whose
idea it really was. The point is, there are problems in our country, [AmeriCorps]
is addressing real needs, it's low-cost, they're getting things done."
Nationally, AmeriCorps is part of the federal Corporation for National Service,
which also includes a National Senior Service Corps of retirees and the student
volunteer group Learn & Serve America. AmeriCorps itself has three
components: hundreds of locally-based community groups like CAC AmeriCorps;
VISTA, a network of community organizers that dates back to the 1960s and
was folded into AmeriCorps in 1993; and the National Civilian Community Corps,
quasi-military volunteer teams based at five campuses across the country.
(Mayor Victor Ashe is on the corporation's national board.)
In Knoxville, AmeriCorps is under the supervision of the Community Action
Committee (CAC), which also administers several state and federal programs
for job training, homeless education, and community nutrition. Pejsa has
headed the local group since its inception three years ago. A former corporate
public relations specialist, she was looking for something more rewarding
to do with her career, and—despite many headaches in the intervening
years—she says she found it.
For her, the rewards are exemplified by the group's annual community-wide
creek clean-up, which it has sponsored in Knoxville's First, Second, and
Third Creeks for the past two years. Last spring, about 300 Knoxvillians
joined with AmeriCorps team members to remove more than 53 tons of garbage
from the waterways.
"It shows that if large groups of people with a common goal come together
and invest a little of their time, what a huge difference that can make,"
Pejsa says. "I think so much of the time, we get disengaged...When you're
a part of something like that, it makes you have hope again."
Doing the Dirty Work
CAC AmeriCorps accepts about 20 recruits a year, who have ranged in age from
17 to 62. Members get a minimal living allowance—$8,340 this year, not
tax-free—plus an "education award" of $4,725 which can be used toward
tuition at any college or training institution. In return, they provide full-time
service from the end of September through the following August. Pejsa just
finished signing up the coming year's members (including some repeats from
last year—members can sign up two years in a row).
Nationally, AmeriCorps works in four key areas: human needs (housing, nutrition),
education, the environment, and public safety. In Knoxville, the group has
evolved into a largely environmental outfit, although it boasts successes
in several other areas as well. Since what AmeriCorps provides is mostly
willing hands, Pejsa says the key to making it work is teaming up with other
local groups that are long on ideas but short on manpower.
One example is Ijams Nature Center, where AmeriCorps members have helped
with everything from trail and creek maintenance to education programs for
schoolchildren. Next June, AmeriCorps will add 10 part-time members to work
with Ijams' summer camps, which will allow more low-income children to enroll.
"To us, they make a huge difference," says Ijams water quality educator Peg
Beute. "A lot of projects that we might have just talked about and made the
plans for, we're now able to do."
Tim Gangaware, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University
of Tennessee, says AmeriCorps has been crucial in the efforts of the Knoxville
Water Quality Forum, which also includes Ijams, TVA, KUB and other local
agencies. The agencies train AmeriCorps members for a Water Quality Team,
which monitors area watersheds, clearing streams of garbage and replanting
along their banks, and tracking pollution levels.
"We're kind of the big thinkers and they're the doers, and without them we
could not do," Gangaware says. "We could not come close to doing one-quarter
of what we've done."
CAC AmeriCorps members have also repaired 112 homes for low-income families,
laying down new floors, repainting, and doing other handiwork, created health
and fitness programs for senior citizens, and helped the city get rid of
a reputed crack house next to Maynard Elementary School (AmeriCorps members
cleared the lot and planted trees to create a community green space). A lot
of it, Pejsa says, is work that few part-time volunteers would want to do.
"They do hard, physical, dirty work," she says. "They're doing difficult
stuff. I view it as a sacrifice, that they...give a year to giving back,
to serve their community full-time."
But AmeriCorps members say they benefit, too, in ways they don't always expect.
"I was really surprised, because I had only anticipated getting a good feeling
from helping the community and doing good work," says Patricia Adams, who
entered the program last year after completing a master's degree in psychology
at UT. "I wasn't anticipating getting the leadership skills, conflict management
experience, and all of these [other] skills."
For Susan Culbertson, who recently finished her first year in AmeriCorps
and is starting her second, the experience was even more invigorating.
Culbertson, who was referred to the program after applying for government
assistance, says she has quit smoking and eating meat and become aware of
environmental issues.
"Now I wish I could make a career of it," she says.
Costs and Effects
Of course, Republican lawmakers aren't likely to be swayed by conversions
to either vegetarianism or eco-activism. They tend to see the program as
both overly expensive and ideologically suspect.
On the cost issue, as with many government programs, it depends whose numbers
you believe. Congressional critics, including Duncan, quote a General Accounting
Office estimate that the program costs $27,000 a year per member. Given that
only about $12,000 of that goes to the members themselves, critics argue
that the program is administratively wasteful.
"If you really have a truly volunteer program, it shouldn't be costing you
so much," Duncan says.
And that gets at the other common gripe about AmeriCorps: It's substituting
paid service for "real" volunteerism. Critics see a danger of AmeriCorps
discouraging civic and church volunteer groups by fostering a mentality of,
"Oh, the government will take care of it."
As Duncan argues, "We'd be better off giving some in-centives, which we are
doing, for private voluntary efforts."
Pejsa says both criticisms are dead wrong. On the expense count, she says
CAC AmeriCorps' actual per-member cost this year is just $11,750. The higher
Congressional number takes into account all of the money and in-kind donations
AmeriCorps groups get locally, which boosters sees as hallmarks of its success.
Last year, Pejsa says her program got 46 percent of its support from local
sources, with just 54 percent coming from the federal government. If the
federal portion disappeared, Pejsa says, "I think there are pieces of [the
program] that would return, only because people...see the value. But at this
point, we're not ready to completely make it on our own."
As for discouraging volunteers, she says AmeriCorps does just the opposite.
Apart from the annual creek clean-up, members work to bring out local volunteers
in a number of school and community programs.
"There's no way any one group could do every single thing that needs to be
done in this area," Adams says. "We're just a resource."
It's a resource that appears safe for now. Although the U.S. House of
Representatives voted to cut the program's funding in half this year—to
$200 million—the Senate actually increased the funding from the previous
year to $440 million. Dan Kerrigan, spokesman for the Corporation for National
Service, says the group is optimistic its funding will be secured in
Congressional budget reconciliation talks.
"People act like this is a new idea," Pejsa says. "It's not a new idea. We've
had the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps], VISTA, the Peace Corps...The Smoky
Mountains [National Park]—CCC did a lot of that. We all should be proud
of the long tradition of Americans volunteering."
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