UW alumna Abby Holzinger joined AmeriCorps after she graduated in May 2003 because, as she puts it, “There was an obvious need for someone to do something about the problems that are not being taken care of. Being young and having just graduated, I figured this was my best opportunity to take a year out to do something for others and explore new places and service opportunities.”
Holzinger is not alone. The University of Wisconsin is one of the highest volunteer contributors to the service organization AmeriCorps and its supporting organizations.
Yet while many students are willing to volunteer their time and energy to combat issues such as poverty, illiteracy and hunger, the U.S. Congress recently crippled AmeriCorps by declining a $100 million appropriation for the program Sept. 19.
Without this supplementary funding, AmeriCorps will be forced to dramatically cut back the programs it offers and the number of volunteers it can support.
This lack of funding comes at a time when AmeriCorps has never been more valuable. As many states struggle to handle budget crunches, AmeriCorps volunteers are the cheapest, most effective stand-ins when tutors and paraprofessionals are cut from public schools, when programs to care for the poor or elderly are cut or reduced or when costly natural disasters occur. Organizations that use AmeriCorps volunteers include Teach for America, Habitat for Humanity, Save the Children and the Red Cross.
AmeriCorps volunteers are a valuable resource for a bargain of a price. They spend 20-40 hours a week tutoring and mentoring youth, building affordable housing, teaching computer skills, cleaning parks and streams, running after-school programs and helping communities respond to disasters. In return, full-time volunteers receive up to $4,725 to pay for tuition and loans and a yearly living allowance of $9,300. Clearly these young, ambitious individuals don’t join the program for the money. The pay they receive has volunteers living on poverty-level wages similar to those of the poor they strive to help. However, without this stipend, only the very wealthy could afford to serve. With it, the average college student can volunteer their time and energy while making just enough to live on while putting a little toward student loans or further education.
Critics of the proposed funding for the program argue that AmeriCorps’ budget problems are a result of its own past funding decisions, which involves enrolling too many volunteers last year compounded by complex fiscal problems, including poor budgeting. But it is important to remember that President Bush’s promise in his 2002 State of the Union address to expand AmeriCorps by 50 percent (to reach a goal of 75,000 volunteers) led to an accelerated pace of AmeriCorps recruitment by Bush appointees in order to meet his goal. This, in turn, led to a need for increased funding that was simply never supplied.
Despite his promises and former outspoken support of AmeriCorps, President Bush has remained mysteriously silent on the recently proposed $100 million supplemental bill. Republicans in Congress opposed to giving money to this service organization received no coaxing from Bush to support it. The White House even officially declined to support the bill, with a spokesman declaring that the AmeriCorps situation is “not considered a disaster or an emergency.”
Lawmakers must realize that they are not simply denying funding to a government agency.
Not only will tens of thousands of would-be volunteers be denied a spot in the program, but the individuals they serve will be left without help as well.
This fall thousands of children nationwide will be left without the tutors and mentors that could help to keep them focused on education and off of the streets. Thousands of homeless individuals will not receive the clothes, food, haircuts and other personal hygiene products that AmeriCorps programs provide. Fewer volunteers will clean up after natural disasters and help comfort the families affected by them.
While the Bush administration is quick to point out that it has requested $433 million be appropriated to AmeriCorps in fiscal 2004, the lack of funding until then could prove detrimental to the programs AmeriCorps supports. One example of this is Jumpstart, a program that utilized 1,200 AmeriCorps volunteers to teach and mentor 4,500 low-income preschoolers last year. Without additional funding from Congress, 78 percent of Jumpstart’s programs will be unfunded.
The lack of funding and support for AmeriCorps is a national travesty. By standards in Washington, $100 million amounts to mere purse change (especially considering that $100 million amounts to less than one-hundredth of a percent of Bush’s tax cuts). Yet this funding could support and replenish a program that provides valuable services to hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.
Considering all that this program does every day in America, it does not just need additional funding. It deserves it.
Kari Bellingham ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.
