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The AmeriCorps Connections Podcast is a space where alumni, members, and partners share how national service shapes careers, communities, and lives. Hosted by AmeriCorps alum Nicki Fiocco, each episode highlights stories of resilience, leadership, and purposeβshowing that while service terms may end, the impact and connections continue.
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250 & Beyond Alex Schwartz FINAL BANNER
Nicki Fiocco: [00:00:00] Welcome to this special edition of the AmeriCorps Connections podcast. I'm Nikki Fiaco, the host of the AmeriCorps Connections podcast. I'm excited to share a special partnership with two 50 and beyond our American story to share a series of short stories from AmeriCorps alums about what service looks like in their communities today.
These voices help amplify, amplify the spirit of service, and remind us that across this country people continue to show up for one another each and every day. So what is two 50 and beyond? Two 50 and beyond? Our American story is a national initiative dedicated to making service to others visible and valued in all its forms by re by reflecting on our nation's history and elevating stories.
[00:01:00] Today to inspire the future, we aim to realize a vision of a nation united through service led by a coalition of leading service organizations. Two 50 and beyond is a call to action honoring our past, celebrating our present, and inspiring the future, helping us respect our differences and transcend our divisions for all of those national service and AmeriCorps members out there.
Let's keep getting things done. I hope you enjoyed this series. Welcome to the special edition of the AmeriCorps Connections podcast. I'm Nikki Fiaco, your host of the AmeriCorps Connections podcast. I'm really excited to share this special partnership that we have with two 50 and beyond our American story.
We're gonna share a series of short stories from AmeriCorps alum about what service looks like in their communities. These voices help amplify the spirit of service and [00:02:00] remind us that across this country, people continue to show up for one another every single day. So what is two 50 and beyond? Two 50 and beyond?
Our American story is a national initiative dedicated to making service to others. Visible and valued in all its forms by reflecting on our nation's history and elevating stories today that inspired the future. We aim to realize a vision of a nation united through service led by a coalition of leading service organizations.
Two 50 and beyond is a call to action honoring our past, celebrating our presence. Inspiring the future, helping us respect our differences and transcend our divisions for all of those national service members out there. Let's keep getting things done. I hope you enjoy this series.
See what happens. [00:03:00] Me, Alex, make magic. Lemme figure out. I'm gonna get you on screen.
Alex Schwartz: Um, well. Awesome. Thanks Nikki for having me, and thank you to the America two 50 team and whoever else is putting this together. I'm not too familiar with the behind the scenes, but I'm happy to play like a small part in sharing my volunteerism story.
So yeah. My name is Alex Schwartz. I'm originally from Wilmington. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 2018, I started a career in service. I started serving with AmeriCorps and CCC as a team leader based out of Sacramento, California. Then I served with AmeriCorps State national program, specifically the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa based out of Brainerd, Minnesota.
And then I served with AmeriCorps Vista. With the American Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming, um, based out of, well all over Colorado and Wyoming. [00:04:00] I then went on to start a career, uh, as an AmeriCorps staff member with AmeriCorps Vista's Member Support Unit, where I'm a member support specialist now. Uh, and through all of those experiences and some other non AmeriCorps or AmeriCorps adjacent experiences in my life, I've relocated a lot.
So I've found myself as a member, at least temporarily of so many different communities across the country and my approach to becoming. Like ingratiated as part of a community to feel like I'm a part of the community, uh, has always, at least in some part, come from service or volunteerism. So, for example, my now fiance worked for the US Forest Service seasonally.
So we moved around every six months for a while there. Uh, and we were in Prospect Oregon. For six months and one of the first things we did was get involved with the local, uh, fire department, local EMT crew and start volunteering this set. My [00:05:00] fiance now on a p on a path to become an EMT. Um, but myself, it was just a way to volunteer and get involved and meet people in the community.
And so we actually live in Minnesota now and we've been here for a little while. And again, I'm trying to find ways to get involved with the community. So I just started literally just that this week, started volunteering at the local youth center. Um, it's just ways, ways to get involved. It's, it's, as somebody who has relocated often, uh, the best way to feel like you're a part of a community is to get involved.
And one of the best ways to get involved is to volunteer. Um. So, yeah, I kind of wanted, uh, to talk since I am new to volunteerism in my local community where I live now, I kind of wanted to talk about my volunteer experience in other communities where I've lived in my life, uh, and maybe kind of skirt the question a little bit on what volunteerism and service looks like in my [00:06:00] community and answer it maybe from my perspective of what service looks like across a variety of communities around the country.
So. My service story goes way back, but one of the most impactful moments, uh, that really started me on this journey of service and volunteerism happened in college. I was heavily involved with the residents leadership, uh, the Residence Hall Association, uh, and we were sponsoring a alternative spring break.
So instead of taking a spring break trip to some party town. I went on a service trip with I think maybe 10 or so other members of the, the university residence hall
Nicki Fiocco: community.
Alex Schwartz: And we went to this tiny town in western Virginia called Pu Lasky, Virginia. And on our very first night there, before we started any of our service projects, uh, somebody told us about a, I don't [00:07:00] know if it was a blog post, uh, or a, um.
Or some sort of newsletter, but somebody had written something called We Come to the Bedside. This really stuck with me. I hope that's what it was called. But the concept was we come to this bedside and it was this person, uh, who volunteered in I, I, I believe it was hospice care and her journey of supporting people through this program, uh, involved.
I think she outlined it as maybe three or four steps, and with step one it was like, come to the bedside. Step two, do what you can with what you have. And step three, leave. And I think the important takeaways from this were everybody is really familiar. Anybody who's participated in any service or volunteerism is very familiar with steps one and two.
We, we show up. That's the most important piece, right? Uh, then we do what we can with what we have. Your expertise, your time, your abilities. You do what you can [00:08:00] when there's a problem. Or when there is an opportunity, you do what you can with what you have. But step three is not often talked about, but is super important because at some point you have to leave, even if it's just for the day to go home and, and sleep for the night.
Um, but sometimes you're, you're leaving for good. And so that really stuck with me about thinking ahead so that the work that you are doing, if it's. That important doesn't stop when you leave. You have to plan for your departure. And so I took that from that service experience. We were spending one week in Pulaski, Virginia serving at and like, like supporting a, a hydroponics, uh, lab kind of thing.
Um, supporting an afterschool program, a variety of different projects, all with the knowledge that we were going to leave at the end of the week. Um. And so taking that and extrapolating it through all of my AmeriCorps service opportunities. When I was serving with n ccc, we were [00:09:00] in, uh, Helena, Montana, serving with Habitat for Humanity for six months.
So we showed up. There was 12 of us on my team. We did what we could with what we had. We got some on the job training. Um, but otherwise we just did what we could. Uh, a lot of the local communities showed up as well. We actually ended up helping. The Habitat for Humanity, home recipients build the homes that they would then live in.
So we were serving alongside the people that we were supporting, which was super, just beautiful. Uh, and this picture was actually taken in Helena, Montana, one of the days that we were, we were serving. Um, yeah. But, uh, but then we had to leave, right? So we, we worked with the site supervisor and the project manager to make sure that we weren't leaving a gaping hole if there was something that needed to get done.
All in one, like go. But we wouldn't be there long enough to do it. Then we didn't do that and we shifted our priorities to something else. Right. And then my team spent three months in [00:10:00] Northern California after the campfire, uh, helping the, the local community to respond after one of the deadliest in costliest uh, natural disasters in California state history.
We showed up and we did what we could with what we had, and we got direction from the community. So, so many local people showed up in so many different ways, whether it was just by donating money, by donating time, by donating resources. And then we did what we could within our project description, right?
So we helped work at a, uh, at a warehouse, um, in taking these, uh, donated items, sorting them, and then getting them out to the community and. I've talked about this on your podcast before, Nikki, but this to this day, is one of the most, uh, tangible, um, and emotional moments in my life. I, I was in this community.
I was organizing donated materials, and on this particular day I was helping walk [00:11:00] some of these donated items out to somebody's car who was going to receive them. And as we were walking out, she was asking if we got everything on the list of what she needed. And we didn't have everything. Um, this was the Hope Center in Northern California, in Butte County, and they worked with what they had.
And so the person asked us if we had, you know, I think it was, um, like a rice cooker. We had a bunch of those. Yes, we had that. Um, do we have any more shirts or, um, I think baby formula might have been something she asked for, but one of the things she asked for was pants and her size. And yes, actually my team was able to find two pairs of pants at her size at that warehouse, and she just started breaking down, crying, uh, and it hit me, um, really hard.
And I, you know, I didn't ask, but she shared with us that those were going to be the second and third pair of pants that she owned since the fire, which had happened three months prior [00:12:00] that we were able to help her. Live in the world with dignity again and with another pair of pants. And it's, it's a prime example of doing what you can with what you have.
These donated materials were donated by someone that I've never met, that she never met, but we were able to be there to connect the dots and so many people made that happen. Um, that to me like is the essence of service, of showing up doing what you can. And then after three months of that work, my team and I, we had to leave.
We had to go onto our next project, which was with the Boys and Girls Club of Salt Lake City, Utah. But we were at one of their like branch locations in Price, Utah. Um, we were renovating the facility and helping with the afterschool program doing what we can with the time that we had, uh, and then we had to leave.
So we made sure that we didn't start, like, we didn't tear up a bunch of carpet and then leave. We had to have that exit in mind. So when we did the carpet renovation project, we did [00:13:00] that one of our first weeks there. So we were able to tear up carpet, fully replace it before we left. Um, so it's keeping those things in mind.
Right. And then I moved on, our last project was with two summer camps in Northeastern Utah, uh, with the YMZA Roger and Camp Mill Hollow. And again, you know, you show up and you do what you can. So my team was able to help out a little bit with like maintenance and trail maintenance and building maintenance.
We were able to actually help open one of the camps because even though it was the middle of summer, it was at a high enough elevation that it was still covered in snow. Um, so we helped open the. And then we helped run the camp as much as we could. But again, we had to leave. And this time it was in the middle of the camp summer, so we were leaving in the middle of a program.
Um, but we did what we could with what we had. And then two of my team members actually after graduating from AmeriCorps and CCC, went back to the camp to continue being involved. And so I think that really [00:14:00] speaks to something that I hope people who are watching this feel is that. I've been a part of a lot of communities in my life, and I've served those communities however I can, and I still carry a piece of them with me to this day.
I go back and visit when I can. And in the case of two of my members from N ccc, they actually went back to continue serving that community, um, for the rest of that summer. And, and I think that's, that's like the power of of service is feeling like you're a part of something, feeling like you're a part of a community and feeling that, um.
Like dual purpose of, of being present and being active, being a member of a community and being a, like a productive member of that community. Um, and giving, giving back as much as you can. You get shelter, you get friendship, you get a sense of, of community, and then, and then you give [00:15:00] back again. However, however you can.
I continued my service journey, like I mentioned earlier with uh, the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa. And again, this was one of those, you show up, you do what you can, and then you leave. We did week long projects. Sometimes they stretched into other weeks, but usually we would show up. We would be there to treat invasive species and remove them as best we can.
We would pick a plot of land and we would do as much of that as possible, and then we would have to move on. And with this particular journey, with this particular service experience, this was a community I had no experience in. And in this case, I wasn't serving people. I was like serving the land. And so that was a very interesting way to feel like a part of a community because I wasn't like my other service experiences where I went and served alongside the members of the community.
I was not doing that here. I was serving in the middle of the woods. [00:16:00] Two other people. Um, and that was it, like all day, every day. Um, but to feel like you're, and remind yourself that you're a part of a larger ecosystem, there was some symbolism to that. So one of our big projects was re repairing, um, a native prairie land and restoring it to its native habitat.
So they were species that were considered invasive for that area. So this land to be restored to native prairie land, we needed to remove all the cottonwood trees. So by removing all the cottonwood trees, I apologize, I don't know all the ecological, uh, steps to this. But by removing all the cottonwood trees, we allowed certain species to flourish and prairie native prairie chickens to return to their home habitat.
And so, like the larger symbolism of that is, right. So you, you move to a community or you've lived in a community your whole life. Even if you serve a part of that community that does not impact you directly, [00:17:00] you are still improving the community and the society that you live in, your neighborhood, your backyard.
Um, and I think there's some beauty in that, like cascading impact of what you do for the neighbor that you've never met before and you may never see again. Um, could echo. Throughout the community and in a very roundabout way, um, still improve your life. And then after my service with the Conservation Corps, I served with AmeriCorps Vista, uh, with the Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming doing disaster preparedness and training.
And so this was all about making sure that when disaster strikes, the community is ready to respond. Uh, and so by preparing and training. Uh, and making agreements with local nonprofits, um, we were able to make sure that if not, if when disaster strikes, uh, the community is ready to respond on its own right, that, uh, they would then [00:18:00] need to do less of asking, um, external resources for support.
Although you always, you always need help. And when you do need help, it's important to ask. Um. They were more, um, their capacity was built up as a local, local entity to be able to sup to support themselves. And so I know there's a lot of little nuggets in there. Um, but essentially what I'm here to share today, uh, is that you are able to feel like a part of something bigger than yourself.
When you are actively serving your community, even if it's a community you're brand new to, even if it's a, if it's a community that you're only in temporarily spending time, serving that community will make you feel good. And if you're doing it right, it will make the community stronger. Whether that impacts you or not.
When we, when we build up our capacity as a community, we build up our [00:19:00] country. We build up our neighbors, we build up ourselves. And I, I've just always taken that original thought to heart where we come and we show up. That's the first step. If you don't know where to show up, ask anybody. Ask the people in the, at the, in the restaurant sitting next to you, ask your coworkers.
Ask your neighbor. Uh, show up. Showing up is the first step. Doing what you can with what you have. And I think I'll add another layer to that of like being ready to learn, being willing to be trained specifically by those that you are helping, because we don't do anybody any good if we show up and define a problem for a community that we're not a part of.
So let the community define the problem. Do what you can. Show up, do what you can to help and then be ready to leave. If that [00:20:00] service opportunity is something that you want to, to continue being involved with that is incredible. If you find something that you are, think you're going to be impacted by for life, that's incredible.
You're still gonna have to leave at the end of the day. Uh, you're still gonna need to take breaks. You're still gonna need to step away. You're still gonna, you, you know, it's not gonna be a 24 7 experience. So, um, I'll reflect on one more thing real quick. Um, so growing up in Wilmington, Delaware, my dad actually got pretty involved and the way that he got involved was with the Boys and Girls Club through their Big Brother, uh, little Brother program.
So essentially there was, um, like a member, a youth member of the community. Um, we had never met them before. We did not know anyone in their family, any of their friends. We were not connected to them in any way. Uh, but my dad signed onto this program, uh, to be a mentor for this kid. Um, he had, [00:21:00] he had living parents, or at least a mom.
I don't, I don't think his dad was in the picture. Um, but she wasn't able to provide the support, the mentorship, the guidance that, that this kid deserved. And so they had signed up for this program and so did my dad, and he got paired with this kid and they still talk. I mean, my dad, at first it was like helping make sure that he could get to and from like soccer practice.
And then eventually throughout the years it was helping him apply to colleges and then it was helping him get a job. And then they, they still keep up. So these are, these are experiences in your life that if you show up, you do what you can, and then you make sure that you're ready to leave. You don't have to leave, but service, service is a force multiplier where you benefit, where the people that you're serving benefit the community at large benefits and the country benefits.
Uh, that's as many little [00:22:00] nuggets as I feel like I could share right now. Nikki, I I just thank you for giving me the opportunity. Um, I don't know if I even touched on anything that you wanted me to touch on. So are there any follow up questions or anything that. That you wanna discuss.
Nicki Fiocco: That was great, Alex.
That was just such a great reflection of how volunteerism in different communities is different and the needs are different. And the, the biggest, you know, obviously the biggest difference was when you were serving at the Boys and Girls Club and during the fire, 'cause you were serving people and then you're serving the forest.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah.
Nicki Fiocco: Right. And I, I like how you brought that in because. A lot of times we don't think that, like picking up trash or getting rid of invasive species impacts the community, but, but it actually does. And I think I might know why cottonwoods are really bad, but that, that was a great reflection. Um, I guess the final question I'll just say, but I, I feel like you touched on everything, but in your new community, you said you sought out.
This experience. [00:23:00]
Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm.
Nicki Fiocco: Um, what are you hoping most to get from this experience in Minnesota? You said you
Alex Schwartz: were Yeah, yeah.
Nicki Fiocco: With the Boys and Girls Club, right?
Alex Schwartz: With the youth center. Yeah,
Nicki Fiocco: the youth center. So what are you hoping to bring to the, and also we don't ever wanna say we get something back from volunteering, but we do.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely. No, absolutely. Um, and that's a great question. So. First, I'll talk a little bit about how I found it. So I got, you know, we moved to this new area and knew nobody and weren't getting to know, like we were not meeting a lot of new people. Uh, but I found a Facebook group called like the Happenings of the local Town, and I That's cool.
And I joined it. That's where I really started putting my ear to the ground and figuring out what actually goes on in the community. I found a local line dancing class, like found a bunch of cool things to do through there, and this opportunity was posted on there to volunteer at the local youth center.
Um, and that just felt like all roads coming [00:24:00] together because. Service and volunteerism has been a motivating factor of everything I've done, basically in my adult life since college. Um, but I've been in this new area and I realized that I wasn't becoming a part of the community, um, except through like Facebook and I wasn't, uh, making a lot of friends and stuff.
So I applied and I just, I would love to volunteer. I would love to show up and do what I can with what I have. Um, and so what I'm, what I'm hoping to give to the, the community and to the youth and to the youth center, I can't really speak all that much to, because I think you don't know what you don't know.
I'm gonna show up and see where my skills, background, and experience can be beneficial, but all that I want to be is a positive impact. I just want them to feel like by having me volunteer. Their organization was improved. And that could be through my direct impact with youth. Um, it could [00:25:00] be that I fix their computers.
I don't know. Like I, I just want to show up with an open mind and see what holes I can fill with my skills and background and experience. And then I want to offer that. And what I'm hoping to get out of it is kind of two things. One is just. A sense of community. I hope to meet more people. I hope to get to know them on a deeper level other than like waving to them when I see them and I kind of recognize them.
So I give 'em a nod, but I don't really know their name. Um, I'm hoping that this opportunity, like I actually get to meet people and get to know them, and they get to know me, and they get to feel like this is becoming home. I think that's one of the main things I wanna get from this. And the other thing I wanna get from this is I just want.
To feel like my community is stronger. Uh, I don't know what that looks like yet. I don't even think my community is weak in any particular way. Um, but I, [00:26:00] there's this, um, there's this Jewish teaching. I was, I was raised Jewish. I, I cannot say I'm super religious anymore. Um, but there's a element of the teaching that has really stuck with me.
Um, and it's just this concept in Hebrew called Tikun Ola. Roughly translates to repairing the world, right? Leaving it better than you found it. And better is a subjective word. So when you're serving a community, ask them what better looks like and do what you can to work towards that better. So I hope that through this opportunity, I find out how I can make the community better, and then I hope that I do that in some small way.
Nicki Fiocco: That's wonderful. And folks, that is the through line from a service year, a national service year into life after, uh, into community service and, and other and, and beyond. So Alex, thank you so much. This was [00:27:00] wonderful.