After successfully completing their term of service, AmeriCorps State and National members may be eligible for an Education Award of up to $6,095 or equal to the full Pell Grant for the year in which service was approved. Since the program's inception, thousands of organizations across the nation have been awarded AmeriCorps State and National grants.ĪmeriCorps State and National members engage in direct service activities, such as after-school tutoring or homebuilding, and capacity-building activities, such as volunteer recruitment, for the organizations they serve. Each state's Service Commission dispenses funding from the Corporation for National and Community Service to organizations in their states through annual grant competitions. AmeriCorps State operates through Service Commissions in each state, such as Volunteer Florida and the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service South Dakota is the only state without a Service Commission. Grants assist these groups in recruiting, training and placing AmeriCorps members to meet critical community needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. Kennedy Serve America Act authorizes Education Corps, Health Futures Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, and Opportunity Corps programs as qualifying for AmeriCorps programs. Public Land Corps programs and Urban Youth Corps are specifically authorized for funding. Volunteers from AmeriCorps in MississippiĪmeriCorps State and National is the largest of the AmeriCorps programs, and provides grants to local and national organizations and agencies, including faith-based and community organizations, higher education institutions, and public agencies. "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God." There are currently over 5,000 VISTA members serving in 1,200 VISTA programs nationwide. VISTA provides full-time members to nonprofit, faith-based and other community organizations, and public agency to create and expand programs that ultimately bring low-income individuals and communities out of poverty. The program was incorporated into AmeriCorps and renamed AmeriCorps*VISTA to create AmeriCorps in 1993.
AmeriCorps VISTA, or Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), was founded in 1965 as a domestic version of the Peace Corps.