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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 purpose—showing that while service terms may end, the impact and connections continue.
Tune in each week on your favorite podcast platform to listen, follow, subscribe, and share. Check it out and be part of the ongoing story of service.
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Alex Schwartz Final DRAFT
Nicki Fiocco: [00:00:00] So, hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining the AmeriCorps Connections podcast and we haven't done it already. Please hit subscribe. It really makes a difference in the podcast algorithms. So if you like this content and you want it to continue, I just need you to hit subscribe and share it.
Alex Schwartz: Oh, this was in February of 2019.
The fire happened in November. And she admitted to us that the pants that she was wearing that day were the only pants that she had the whole time, and we just essentially tripled her wardrobe, someone donating it, us being there to organize it in the warehouse, and then the Hope Center there to connect the dot.
There's just one, like we played a small piece and a big puzzle, and I felt that individual impact in that moment. That's one of the main things that AmeriCorps gave me was that perspective, that humbling and out of [00:01:00] body perspective of when you're serving others, you realize how much bigger the world is and how valid your problems are, but also how valid the problems of your neighbors are and how.
Incredibly impactful for both you and the person you're serving, how impactful it can be to participate in service in any way. And AmeriCorps just gave me, it gave me purpose, it gave me perspective, it gave me passion. It gave me the love of my life of both as a person and I guess a career. It allowed me to help people and then the planet, and then helped more people, and then help even more people, and.
Yeah, that just brings me to where I am, where I am now.
Nicki Fiocco: Welcome to another AmeriCorps Connections podcast, Nicki Fiocco, the brainchild of the AmeriCorps Connections podcast, and I'm excited to be back with another AmeriCorps alum, Alex Schwartz, who folks, are you ready for this? And NCCC state and national and VISTA.
And prior to hitting record, he said he's just waiting to his time to serve in AmeriCorps seniors. Alex, I'm happy to have you [00:02:00] with us today. Let's get started with who you are. Number one, and then how you found, how you discovered AmeriCorps and why you were compelled to serve.
Alex Schwartz: Nicki, well, thank you for having me on the podcast.
Big fan, like longtime listener, first time caller. Um, just, I'm very excited to be here and have the opportunity. Yeah, I feel like I could spend an hour on that question and I don't want to, there's a lot of, uh, rich, uh, topics of conversation that we could dive into, but very briefly, my name is Alex. I'm from Wilmington, Delaware.
I was born and raised and educated there, as I like to say, went to the University of Delaware, graduated in 2018 and since. Leaving the state of Delaware. Thanks. In large part to AmeriCorps. I've lived in, I think it's 15 cities in nine states. Yeah. Uh, because I started service right after college with AmeriCorps and NCCC based out of the Pacific region.
I was based out of Sacramento or technically McClellan, California. I was deployed on projects with my team of 12 people to Helena, Montana, Chico, California [00:03:00] Price, Utah, and a Uinta Wasatch National Forest in Utah. After that, after a little gap, I then went on to serve with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa based out of Brainerd, Minnesota, where we served all over the state of Minnesota on various different environmental projects.
And then after another little gap, I went on to serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. For the Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming doing disaster preparedness and training and stuff like that. And then after a little gap, I actually became an AmeriCorps staff member. So I'm actually currently an AmeriCorps VISTA member, support specialist on the VISTA Member Support Unit.
So that's the high level bird's eye, 30,000 foot view of who I am and my AmeriCorps experience.
Nicki Fiocco: Okay. I'm gonna have to just pause for a second because I have so many questions about that. That was a lot, Alex. So. People are tuning into this podcast and they're like, AmeriCorpss, what is this? Some of the stuff that you just mentioned is like absolute gibberish, right?
Let's break it down tier by tier where you discovered AmeriCorps, you got involved and then you went from one thing to [00:04:00] another. So, so let's do that.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, let's do it. Well, first of all, if you're just tuning in, uh, thank you. We're so happy to have you here. If you haven't heard of AmeriCorps, it's a great place to start, but it's just a place to start, right?
I am, yes. I'm one alumni or alumnus, I think is the correct term. Uh, I could talk about my experiences with AmeriCorps, but you're just getting one person's experience. Everybody's just different. And I also should clarify now and throughout the podcast that although I work for AmeriCorps as a staff member.
I cannot represent the agency in any official or unofficial capacity. Again, this is just my personal story, opinions, feelings, and memories from throughout my service experience. So, coming outta college, we'll start back in 2018. Uh, I think a lot of people find AmeriCorps this way. This is not like an entirely unique trajectory here, but I didn't know what I wanted to do.
A lot of friends wanted to continue school and grad school. I did not wanna incur any more debt, and a lot of friends wanted to jump right into a career, and I did not know what I wanted to do enough to commit to a career or even a job. So I was thinking about maybe Peace Corps or maybe just traveling for a bit until I heard about AmeriCorps from a friend of mine who was at a, a club that I was in.
He [00:05:00] did Teach For America, which is an AmeriCorpss funded program. And that kind of started my research. I made a little spreadsheet. I was looking into a bunch of different service opportunities, which ones allow me to travel, are they one year, are they 10 months? How long are they? What's the application process like?
Where would I travel? And then I found AmeriCorps and ccc National Civilian Community Core program and I deleted the spreadsheet and I only applied to that program 'cause it had a little bit of everything that I wanted to do since I was aimless. And I had that like wander lust. I wanted to travel. And CCC provided the opportunity to do a lot of different things in a lot of different places.
So what that program is, again, just as an alumni here, not speaking on behalf of the agency, but from my experience, what that program is, you get placed on a team of usually about 10 to 12 service members. You have a team leader. I was actually lucky enough to be selected as a team leader, and that team will spend six weeks or 12 weeks.
On a project in a community doing service with a sponsor organization that defines what that service should be. So we weren't telling communities what they needed. Those, those problems and those projects were defined for us. [00:06:00] And then as a team, we would live together, sleep together, budget together, make dinner together, like food shop together and serve together usually about 40 hours a week.
So my team, for example, we served at a Habitat for Humanity and Helena, Montana for six weeks. It was our first project. We were actually. Building the homes for families who were actually serving alongside of us. It was like outside in the winter in Montana. We were putting up siding, we were putting up insulation, we were putting up eaves, I've never heard of that word before.
AmeriCorps. It's like the little part underneath the, over four or five families in Helena, Montana. They have AmeriCorps and triple CCC members to thank for, for putting those up. I hope those are still there. I think we did good work. Um, but we're technically untrained. We go and we get on the, on the job training.
Um, so I was using power tools for the first time using a nail gun, putting up siding. It was a really cool opportunity. After that. We got deployed on one of AmeriCorps and specifically NCCC project priority type projects, which is disaster. So there was a wildfire we referred to as the campfire in Chico, in Paradise, [00:07:00] California.
Sorry, it wasn't in Chico. It was in Paradise, California. We were staged in Chico. We were doing disaster response and recovery work on this particular disaster. My team was placed at, uh, various different sites, but primarily at a shelter that was operated and run by the Red Cross. There were families and individuals who were displaced by the fire and they were there temporarily living and trying to receive whatever benefits or whatever help that they could, and we helped.
Our job specifically on that project was to connect the dots. We would sit next to FEMA and Red Cross caseworkers, and we would jot down the information that families and individuals would share with us about what they need, what help they've gotten so far. The system that we were inputting that in was the one system that all of the organizations who were there to help had access to.
So before my team showed up, red Cross had their case management information. FEMA had theirs, the Veterans Affairs Organization, housing and Urban Development, they all had theirs. We were trying to unify that so that everybody could work together to help service opportunities I've had in my life, it was six days a week, 12 hour days.
Wow. [00:08:00] Disaster deployment. Yeah. Is no joke. Um, but like I said, every individual's experience and, and every deployment is different. You've heard about one now. AmeriCorps disaster deployment. You've only heard about one. There was actually also a FEMA core team, which. I wanna overwhelm people, so I maybe won't explain that.
Um, but they were also deployed on that product as well, and they were doing different things to support the survivors, um, and FEMA and Red Cross and the other agencies that were there. So this is just what we were asked to do on that disaster at that time. There was a need and we could fill it. And so that's what we were asked to do.
Um, for the second half of that project. Once that shelter actually transitioned, they no longer needed us. We were then primarily at a donation center, uh, in the backend and the front end. So we were doing inventory management. There was a bunch of donations. There was a warehouse and they needed to organize things.
So pants and diapers and food and rice cookers and everything you can think of gets donated to a disaster affected community. And, uh, we were part of a team. We were there as just additional helping hands to, to organize those donations. Then on the front end there, it was called the Hope Center. This was the [00:09:00] organization that we were partnered with there.
They actually really only became an organization in response to this disaster. They bought out this warehouse and they started collecting donations and collecting requests for items that survivors needed. And we would organize the donations in the warehouse and we would help them deliver them to members of the community who needed them in the front office.
And if I can real quick, just talk about probably the most meaningful moment of my service experience. I'm gonna talk. I we're only on project two out of a bunch that I a lot, but this was the moment that I was like, I'm in the right place. This is, this is why I joined AmeriCorps. I had no idea why I was like deleted the spreadsheet and I felt gut like drawn to AmeriCorps.
I felt like this moment was it, I had been in the warehouse and there was a request for pants at a certain size. We found as many as we could, you know, we wanna leave some for some people. So we found two pairs of pants. Along with a bunch of other stuff that this person requested that they needed. 'cause their house had burned down.
And then I was also part of the team in the front office that was there when that woman came to pick up these items. And the way it worked was they requested these things, but we didn't necessarily have everything. So we're running through the list. Okay. Did you have [00:10:00] this? Yes. Did you have this? No. I'm sorry not, but we got some of that.
And can you help me out to my car? Absolutely. So I'm helping this woman out to her car with one of my team members. And right as we're putting boxes into her car, she asks, by the way, I didn't wanna ask in there. Did, did you have the pants? She said, yeah, yeah, we actually got you two pairs of pants. And she just started crying.
Nicki Fiocco: Oh,
Alex Schwartz: this was in February of 2019. The fire happened in November, and she admitted to us that the pants that she was wearing that day were the only pants that she had the whole time, and we just essentially tripled her wardrobe thanks to someone donating it. Us being there to organize it in the warehouse, and then the Hope Center there to connect the dots.
That was just one, like we played a small piece and a big puzzle and I felt that individual impact in that moment truly stuck with me. Um, anyway, yeah,
Nicki Fiocco: that was, yeah, there's a lot there. These [00:11:00] transformational experiences happen so young. Because of NCCC and AmeriCorps experiences that you as a person going forward, see the world differently.
So I don't wanna make a bigger deal about what that is because it's your experience and I don't wanna quantify that in any other way. And thank you for sharing that story. That was, that was great.
Alex Schwartz: Nicki, it's the biggest deal. I, it was, yeah, one of the most transformative, impactful, like moments and just experiences in my life.
But think about the, yeah, the flip side of that. Um, right before I got deployed on that project, there was a team leader of another team who. Sorry, this is a spoiler alert getting ahead of myself, but
uh, but he had just been deployed to that community after that disaster and we were transitioning teams and he said something that really shaped my perspective, not just for that project, but just for [00:12:00] life. He told me, you're gonna have hard days. My team ended up working 12 hour days, six days a week. We were living in a communal tent on an Air Force base.
Sorry, I'm an airfield again, yet we live together. We shop together. There was a lot going on outside of our service work, and even our service work can be very difficult at time, whether it's physically or emotionally taxing or both. He told me, this team leader told me, you're gonna have hard days. Just remember that the people you're serving are having the hardest day of their life and have been for months.
And that's something that for me. Again, speaking as myself here, that's one of the main things that AmeriCorps gave me was that perspective, that humbling and out of body perspective of when you're serving others, you realize how much bigger the world is and how valid your problems are, but also how valid the problems of your neighbors are and how incredibly impactful for both you and the [00:13:00] person you're serving, how impactful it can be to participate in service in any way.
So yeah, that was. So that's my first two projects, right? We're talking five months into my first ever AmeriCorps project, or sorry, program and NCCC. So after, uh, leaving that disaster affected community of Butte County, I'll say California, uh, we, my team then got deployed on what's called a split round. So we had two different projects.
Our first project was at a Boys and Girls Club in Price, Utah. Uh, if you're thinking, where is Price? Utah, just imagine the middle of nowhere, Utah, and it's five murders, five miles further into nowhere, like super, like I think a couple hours outside of Salt Lake City was the airport, and we had two jobs there as a team at this Boys and Girls Club during the day.
We would help renovate the facility. They needed new [00:14:00] carpets, they needed paint. Whatever renovations needed, done, needed doing there. And then in the afternoons, after a little break, we would help the staff, the full-time staff there, run the afterschool program. So we were able to support with the youth on various programs that they ran.
Sometimes that meant playing Mario Kart with a bunch of 16 year olds. Right. And uh, yeah. Right. And sometimes that meant like just keeping them out of the. Places they're not allowed. Um, but again, yeah, shooting hoops, uh, again, we're not defining the work that this community needed. We went to a Boys and Girls Club that had applied for and been selected by AmeriCorps to, to host a project.
We did whatever they needed from us as long as it was within policy of AmeriCorps. And then after six and a half weeks of that, my team transitioned to the National Forests of Northeastern Utah, where we were split among two summer camps out there. [00:15:00] YMCA Camp Roger and YMCA Mill Hollow. While on that project, we were technically deployed there to do maintenance, which we did plenty of.
Some of that was like chainsaw trees or making benches or painting porches or help open up the camp. So that was my AmeriCorps and ccc. Experience. It was team-based. It was residential. We all lived together. Sometimes it was in a, on the floor of a basement in a church. Sometimes it was in a communal tent on a airstrip.
Sometimes it was in the summer camp itself. Various different housing experiences there. And then. AmeriCorps and NCCC, uh, at least when I was serving, we had these priorities for teams that allowed leadership opportunities for members of the team. So we had a vehicle and safety coordinator that would do the safety checks every week.
We had a media person and one of our representatives, one of our leadership opportunities on the team was a life after AmeriCorps rep, because as we. [00:16:00] You've both mentioned, uh, AmeriCorps is a temporary experience. Each project is temporary and your service term is temporary. You're supposed to move on at some point, and I personally have yet to figure out life after AmeriCorps.
As I mentioned, I continued serving, so yeah, so a couple months later, so actually I'll go a little on a little tangent here. So I had met someone while serving in AmeriCorps and NCCC was the team leader of another team. Her name is Megan Schwab, and we had started up a little something and started dating sort of long distance, right?
Because when I was deployed to Montana, she was deployed to Catalina Island. When I was deployed to California, she was then deployed to Utah, and when I was deployed to Utah, she was deployed to both Oregon and Washington. And then after that. 11 month service opportunity. We didn't know each other enough to move in together.
[00:17:00] We did a little road trip together and we like back home, or not technically home, but moved elsewhere. Then she started serving with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa. It's an AmeriCorps state supported program, and she was the crew lead of a team doing environmental work. Fast forward a couple months into her service term, we actually moved in together, which a side piece of of context, this was peak COVID.
This was August, 2020. So I moved in with her and her parents and I was looking for jobs to do, and eventually I realized she's only got a couple months left in her term and they're having a retention problem. Her entire team went back to school in the fall after serving all spring and summer. So she had nobody on her crew except for herself.
So they allowed me to apply for a. A partial term, I believe is what they called it. And for a little over three months, I was a crew member of a Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa team. [00:18:00] We were doing environmental stewardship work for this project or for this program. We were not residential, so we all lived on our own.
We did not like budget together and eat together and everything. This was strictly about showing up to do service during the day on a schedule. And each week for this. Particular program. We had a different project, so we were chainsawing and weed whipping and heck sawing and. Whopping and treating chemically invasive species.
I spent most of my time getting rid of buckthorn, which is an invasive species up here in Minnesota. We would cut it out and then we would spray it with a chemical so that it doesn't grow back, and again, this was defined by the project sponsor. Again, we're not going into these communities and doing what we think is right.
Usually it was the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Another local sponsor that was telling us what to do and how to do it. One cool project, we helped restore a native [00:19:00] prairie land that had become privately owned and used for other purposes, and then it transitioned back to ownership by the state and we restored it back to its native habitat.
It was just a super cool project of just like I learned how to use a chainsaw. I learned how to use it safely. I learned how to take it apart, clean it, put it back together. I learned how to maintain it, and then I learned how to go out and cut cottonwood trees out of a prairie land because they don't belong there, and so that the native prairie chickens can roam free again.
So it was like a cool little three month service experience I think. Backing myself up a little bit, coming outta college, I talked about being aimless, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. It's one of the things that drew me towards AmeriCorps and and NCCC specifically in the first place because I would get a variety of experiences.
I could maybe, I hope, find out what I wanted to do with my life. At the time, I thought I would fall in love with some project that I was on. It turns out I fell in love with [00:20:00] AmeriCorps, but we'll get there as well. I think a huge. Sorry, I just, real quick, I'm gonna say a huge part of finding out what you wanna do is finding out what you don't, and that's what Yes.
Nicki Fiocco: The best experiences is learning what you don't want.
Alex Schwartz: Exactly. And, and the biggest part of that, that I think you, you touch on, I really want to double down on, is that experience tells you these things you can't necessarily know. Mm-hmm. Just by guessing and projecting. And sometimes you can, right. Um. But it's so important because it grows you as a person.
Yes. While still showing you what your boundaries are to try these things. So I spent three months learning how to operate power tools out in the wilderness, and I can tell you now for certain that that's not what I want to do with, but it's cool that I know how to do it now. Yes, I know how to do it safely if I ever do decide to do it.
But the really awesome part, Nicki, let me tell you this. My fiance, Megan, came out of this experience and [00:21:00] said. This is what I want to do. So she went trees. She went and worked for the US Forest Service for five and a half years, about 10 seasons on trails crew work. She worked on trails in Colorado, California, Oregon, and Arizona.
She did chainsaw work. She on 300 foot tall trees in Oregon. She did rock work in Sedona, Arizona because she found her passion through this. And it's the precise thing I don't want to do, which is great. Like you said, I, I'm not gonna go chainsaw down that tree in the backyard, but my fiance will, he loves it.
So coming out of that experience with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, when I was doing environmental work and invasive species work and came out of that, and I was not quite. Ready to commit to something. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I'm sitting there and my fiance is just so passionate and immediately starts a career with the US Forest Service.
I don't know what I want to do, so I figured I would round the bases [00:22:00] to third base and go to AmeriCorps VISTA at my third branch of AmeriCorps service where I applied to a bunch of different postings. VISTA is a unique AmeriCorps program, very different from NCCC and Conservation Court, Minnesota and Iowa.
I applied directly to a bunch of different projects that I then interviewed with them directly, not with AmeriCorps, but with the place that I would be serving, and I ended up getting selected to the Colorado and Wyoming chapter of the American Red Cross in their disaster services unit. That might not be what they call it, but it's their unit that was dedicated to disaster services.
Mind you, this is April, 2021. So it's a little over a year into like peak COVID-19. Mm-hmm. Um, and for some context, if you can't tell listeners, by the way, I'm a very high context sharer. I'm gonna talk your ears off about all these things. So for some context about my project, [00:23:00] there was this national shelter survey system that was employed by the Red Cross because when a disaster strikes.
That's not the time to go find a place that can host these survivors, these displaced individuals. Like in California, we were on a, a fairgrounds that had a preexisting agreement with the Red Cross and with the state or county government so that when the disaster strikes, we know what our capacity is for housing displaced individuals.
Oh, that makes so much,
Nicki Fiocco: that makes so much sense. Yeah.
Alex Schwartz: Right.
Nicki Fiocco: Yeah. So what you're talking about is like pre logistics.
Alex Schwartz: Yes. I'm just
Nicki Fiocco: going riff here just for,
Alex Schwartz: go for it.
Nicki Fiocco: I, I was the director of the governor's office in Maryland.
Alex Schwartz: Yes, you were.
Nicki Fiocco: Whatever, whatever. I was, and it was during the pandemic and we had A-C-O-V-I-D vaccine site that stood up in Prince George's County and.[00:24:00]
I think it was at like a parking lot. In, in or a fairground. And so I, what I now is registering to me. Yeah. Is that, that was Cree organized. If there's something that this space will be designated for a federal government, something, yeah. Yeah.
Alex Schwartz: Is that, yeah. I mean, put
Nicki Fiocco: any words to
Alex Schwartz: that. And that's the, I mean, that's the amazing part.
You, you don't necessarily have to see or touch every piece of the puzzle. Yeah. You, you play your part and you don't always think about how the sausage was made or how the site came to be. Right. And so before 2020, the American Red Cross, at least in Colorado, Wyoming, and Wyoming, that used a spreadsheet for this.
And some paperwork that was saved in PDF files on someone's computer. So these agreements would be signed between, let's say a church, for example, and the [00:25:00] Red Cross. Yeah. And it would say, yeah. We have this many square footage. We have a kitchen. We have, we're 80 a accessible, they have 120 some odd questions so that they knew what their capacity was when a disaster strikes.
And then in early 2020, they unveiled a brand new version of this that was map based. You could zoom in on a map and you could see exactly how many shelters, how many facilities, how many people they could hold the square footage. All those questions was in a map, right? Super cool. A few people were trained on this program, training the trainers because these people were going to pivot and train the rest of the Red Cross staff so that we can upload what we already have in the system, and then we can continually maintain our shelter operational like capacity in this map.
And then a pandemic struck. During the pandemic if people needed to be sheltered because they were displaced from a disaster. The Red Cross did not use what they call [00:26:00] congregate sheltering. They were not putting 50 cots into a church. They were putting people in hotels and motels and keeping them separated and isolated for health reasons.
So nobody used this system. It was for congregate shelter agreements. So a year went by, everyone forgot how to use it. Hi, my name's Alex. I'm the new AmeriCorps VISTA member for the Red Cross of Colorado and Colorado, and how can I help? And they said, uh, there's a system, learn it, and then train us. So that was the bulk of my service work as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with the Colorado and Wyoming Red Cross.
So I was learning how to use their new map-based system. Then I was putting in the backlog of information that they had in a spreadsheet. Then I was training the rest of the Red Cross chapter on how to use it. Then I was going out into the community and doing some shelter surveys, whether they were from new shelters or existing shelters that [00:27:00] they wanted to resurvey every few years.
So, and a, a great word for it, a great phrase for it is capacity building.
Nicki Fiocco: Yes. Um, which
Alex Schwartz: brings it back to this is what differentiates AmeriCorps VISTA as a program. So again, from my personal experience, and you can also find this information on, on the website, right, or in the governing documents, AmeriCorps VISTA does not do direct service accepted very specific circumstances, but generally speaking, AmeriCorps VISTA members.
Assigned to capacity building projects. So when I was with the Red Cross, I was not volunteering on disasters. I was not working with the community of survivors directly. I was building the capacity of the Red Cross. Specifically of Colorado and Wyoming to then carry out their mission. And so that's what AmeriCorps VISTA members, myself included, do when they get assigned to a project.
They build the capacity through indirect service. It's training, it's dashboard work, it's the backend [00:28:00] data management. These are the things that AmeriCorps VISTA members engage in. Then when you complete your term of service with AmeriCorps VISTA like I did, you get access to a benefit that no other AmeriCorps program gives you.
Peace Corps gives it to you if you're ever applying for a federal job through USA jobs.gov. Yeah. They ask you a bunch of questions on your application, and one of the questions is almost always, did you serve within the last year or three years, depending on the job you're applying for with AmeriCorps VISTA or Peace Corps?
If you click yes to that and you can provide the documentation to back it up, then you get non-competitive eligibility. It's basically bonus points on your application. Again, speaking as an individual here, I'm not representing the federal government. Or the agency, but that's how it works. It bumps you up in the line a little bit.
It doesn't guarantee you a job, but it makes it more likely that you'll at least get an interview. And so I used my non-competitive eligibility and two and a half-ish years of service with [00:29:00] AmeriCorps in a variety of programs to apply to about 75 jobs with the federal government. I heard back from very few of them.
This is typical if you've applied for federal jobs, you know that to be the case. I was interviewed for and did eventually accept the position as a member support specialist for the VISTA Program. AmeriCorps VISTA. Again, just a small branch of the agency that is AmeriCorps places members in the field to do indirect capacity building work.
It's not necessarily team-based. It often is not. It's not residential, and it's a 365 day commitment that comes with all these benefits, like non-competitive eligibility. The one particular way that AmeriCorps VISTA, AmeriCorps VISTA, I'm gonna get in the weeds here, so I apologize in advance, but one particular way that AmeriCorps VISTA is super unique is that your day-to-day tasks [00:30:00] schedule leave.
Everything that comes with normal service work or even job work, is all administered by the organization that you're serving with. So I had a supervisor at the Red Cross who gave me my tasks every day or week, who checked in with me, gave me my performance reviews, gave me my schedule if I wanted to take leave, I went through them.
Stuff like that all went through the Red Cross. But my benefits were administered by AmeriCorps VISTA, my onboarding and training for the AmeriCorps side of stuff. It was from AmeriCorps VISTA and as an alumni of the program, alumnus of the program, if I wanted to access my non-competitive eligibility or if I had any additional questions, I went through the VISTA Member Support Unit.
So now fast forward a little while, that's what I do now, I'm an AmeriCorps VISTA member support Specialist on the VISTA Member Support Unit. I cover three different regions, the mountain region, the North Central region, and the West region. And if any members, applicants, or [00:31:00] alumni. Sometimes even project sponsors have any questions that relate to what I do, I can an help answer those questions.
I'm also the one going into the system and like activating people for service and exiting them at the end of their service once I verify that everything's been done correctly. So you have that two pronged supervision as a VISTA member. You've got AmeriCorps VISTA Member Support Unit for AmeriCorps stuff, and you've got the agency or organization that you work for and you serve at.
For your day to day. And so now I'm on that side of things. And Nicki, if I can sum it up for our listeners real quick. This is like, let's
Nicki Fiocco: do,
Alex Schwartz: this is the shortest way I can explain it. I started after college aimless. I thought maybe AmeriCorps would give me purpose and direction, so I joined N Triple C where I did direct service helping people in communities.
Then I went on to serve with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota, where I did direct service helping the planet. Helping the environment. Then I went on to [00:32:00] serve as an AmeriCorps VISTA member where I helped the people. Who helped the people. Mm-hmm. 'cause I was doing indirect capacity building. Yeah. Work for the Red Cross.
Now, as a VISTA member, support Specialist, I'm helping the people, VISTA members who help the people, their projects, who help the people. So I went from helping people and the planet to helping people who help the people. To helping the people who help. The people who help the people. And that's the trajectory of any career, right?
You get a little higher on the ladder, you have a little less direct work to do typically, but you have a broader impact as a result. And so my. Backwards way into this career that I had no idea I would fall in love with has been about serving people and the planet, and I ended up finding my soon to be wife through it.
I found a career through it. AmeriCorps also a benefit of all AmeriCorps programs. If you successfully complete it, you get an education award, you can earn up to two of them. Since I've served more than two terms, I've only earned the [00:33:00] maximum amount of two educational awards. Thanks to that I'm also now debt free.
They paid off about 65% of my student debt. I paid off the rest since then. Man, AmeriCorps just gave me, it gave me purpose, it gave me perspective, it gave me passion. It gave me the love of my life of both as a person and I as a career. It allowed me to help people and then the planet, and then helped more people and then help even more people.
And yeah, that just brings me to where I am, where I am now. Um, and I. So I, I got selected to be a part of that cadre and I actually, I got to do a lot of what we call blue sky work or steady state work. This is disaster supporting work that happens when there's not an active disaster. So I was helping update flyers and information and policy and, and stuff like that, but actually also got the opportunity to deploy on another disaster this time in a staff capacity back when the Maui wildfires hit in 2023 in Hawaii.
We deployed a bunch of [00:34:00] AmeriCorps teams and a bunch of different programs, and I actually got the opportunity to be the last AmeriCorps staff member there to help wind down our operations and transition out of the community. So I got to, as an AmeriCorps staff member, I got to see that kind of next level up and support the teams that were on the ground liaise between them and the community that needed their help.
Then wind down. Could
Nicki Fiocco: you speak a little bit to what the AmeriCorps members were doing? Oh, absolutely.
Alex Schwartz: Absolutely. Yeah, Maui. So this was, yeah, this was in, in Hawaii? Yeah.
Nicki Fiocco: Oh, Mau. Oh, these are the Maui fires. There are so
Alex Schwartz: many fires I can, I'm like getting them mixed up. Mau. We probably also deployed people to Malibu, but I can't speak to that personally.
So yeah, when I was deployed as the staff cadre to Maui. In, I think November and December of 2023, the teams that we had on the ground at the time were running a donation center along with a local nonprofit. [00:35:00] This was a, um, completely vacant old Safeway site. Um, and their pri primary project, they did other stuff here and there.
They spent one day supporting the governor and something that he was doing a, a donation drive or something. But our primary project, what they were doing six days a week for 12 hour days, um, was in this vacant Safeway. They had turned it into, and I say they, I mean AmeriCorps, along with the local nonprofit and a bunch of local volunteers, they had turned it into a donation center where all of the.
Donated items were organized into aisles. It almost looked like a Safeway. And I'll drop a picture. Mm-hmm. For you, depu. Yeah. But these aisles had, so one aisle had like household goods, one aisle had food, one aisle had baby items, one aisle had, shoot, I wish I could think of something like in the moment, underwear we everywhere.
Exactly. And the way that this donation center ran, which was different than the one that, [00:36:00] uh, I, uh, supported in California. Is people would come in, we would, I say we, our members would, or the volunteers would verify that their address was impacted by the disaster. 'cause you have to, we're we here to support disaster survivors?
That's so important. If, if they were unhoused for another reason, this donation site actually did offer support. They were just very limited in what they could get true. But if you were impacted by the disaster, you
would, you would get a dedicated volunteer who would come shop with you and help you get.
Whatever you needed. Based on the daily limit, we only have X amount of, let's say, bottles of water today. So you can only get up to two packs or three packs, or one pack depending on the day. And depending on what you need, how many people are in your family would also impact what you were able to get.
And you would walk around with a cart and you would get the combination of what you needed and what was available that day. And another quick, very impactful, uh, story from that opportunity. As a [00:37:00] staff member, again, I wasn't doing the direct service. I was organizing liaisoning writing a bunch of reports.
Compiling information, right? Finding service opportunities for them maybe outside of the warehouse, since that was their typical service site. But if somebody needed us, they were there. I represented AmeriCorps at a bunch of really high level meetings. I did not belong in. Like the governor had a weekly meeting and the people who would speak, man, it, there would be like the daily updates, sorry, I'm going on a tangent.
Um, there would be daily updates, right? And it would be like the governor. The mayor, the National Guard, the Weather Service, AmeriCorps. I'm just like, I did not belong here. Um, but I would share out what we were doing 'cause we were part of a much bigger, you're there to get information, you're there to share information and Yes, exactly.
It's, you're part of a bigger puzzle and the, you don't have to necessarily know how the pieces fit together, but somebody does and you're, you're a part of that. And when it comes to disaster, it is so wild how quickly things move and how. Much of almost an equalizer. It is [00:38:00] when you show up on a disaster, whether it's part of AmeriCorps or Red Cross, or as an individual volunteer, your experience, your expertise, and your capabilities are put to use however, like they see fit.
And so on. This, on like the wildfire in, in Hawaii, in Maui, I was writing my reports for the day, one day doing, staying in my lane, doing what I need to do, but a need came up. Nobody else could fill. Nicki, I know sign language. I don't know it super well. But when two deaf survivors who had no hearing came into the donation center at Safeway, none of our members and none of the local volunteers or other staff there knew sign language.
I was able to help these people individually. It felt nice to help when I can. That's not perfect a SL, um, but those are the words. And then another quick story. 'cause we love tangents and I'm so [00:39:00] stuck on this disaster topic right now, but it's really making me think, talking about doing what you can when you can.
And so way back on my second ever project with AmeriCorps as NCCC team leader with, uh, in the shelter that we were talking about earlier, um, there was this one really profound moment where my team was deployed to this shelter for, I wanna say. Five weeks, possibly six weeks. And in disaster, things move very fast.
Red Cross, for example, typically deploys volunteers for like up to two weeks. Fema, I think it's 10 days, depends on what you're doing and who you are and yada, yada. But there was this moment where somebody came to me to ask for help, whatever it was, this person needs such and such, how do I find this person?
And I realized like in this room, in this moment. I had the most experience in this shelter. In this shelter in this moment as a 23-year-old team leader. I was the one who could help. And the person I was helping was like the vice [00:40:00] president of operations of AmeriCorps, American Red Cross National, and he was like asking me for help.
Who am I? But it's just, that's what happens on a disaster, especially when you are a seasoned veteran of five weeks, which is really not that long in the grand scheme of things, but on that disaster, in that moment. I was the veteran. I was the the person who had been around the longest.
Nicki Fiocco: You know what I, I follow.
We're gonna have to land this plane 'cause this is gonna be forever. Yeah. Go on forever for this.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I think we could,
Nicki Fiocco: I think the last point that you just said is that I'm the one in the room that has the most experience and the person is looking at me for some experience. That's why we can't lose AmeriCorps.
Everything that you have said over the last. Long time is a reflection of the things that you can do. So let's land this plane.
Alex Schwartz: Do you mind mind if I, real quick, I, I'm just gonna throw something out there. I'll know if this is like the [00:41:00] bow that you're looking for. Um, but I was doing some, some reflection and some, dare I say math earlier today because I've just given our listeners and you and myself personally, a bunch of.
Qualitative data, a bunch of personal stories about my personal experience as a member, as a leader in various different AmeriCorps programs in various different communities as a staff member, as a disaster cadre member. These are all stories, but I want to, I wanna put some number, like some numbers to it and some context to it.
So I did some math ready. I spent 336 days serving with NCCC 105 with the Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, 365 days with AmeriCorps VISTA for a grand total of 806 days in a service status with AmeriCorps. Then since then, I've spent 1,207 days as Amer as an AmeriCorps employee, as a staff member with AmeriCorps VISTA for a [00:42:00] grand total of 2013 days with AmeriCorps.
That's five and a half years. I did the math 5.515 years with AmeriCorps. I went on to do the math. I did. I've been alive for 10,997 days, so AmeriCorps has been my life for 18.3% of my life as a service member, as a staff member. It's gonna continue. I'm marrying someone I met in AmeriCorps. I was helping people, then.
I was helping the planet, then I was helping people who help the people. Then I was helping people who help the people, help the people. And I have no idea where my story or your story or AmeriCorps story is gonna go from here on out. But it's gonna be a part of my story forever. And this podcast is gonna live on forever.
I wanna share one more thing because we talked about it before we hit record. I meant to do it. Did you know Nicki? You do, because, uh, we talked before we hit record, but did you know that it's AmeriCorps VISTA's 60th [00:43:00] anniversary? AmeriCorps is only like 31 years old, but the VISTA Program and the AmeriCorps Seniors program.
Actually came into existence before AmeriCorps. Yeah, AmeriCorps became the umbrella agency, but VISTA's actually 60 years old. And I have some swag to represent that and prove that. And I wanted to post that because while I've only been alive for 10,997 days, VISTA's been around for a lot longer than that.
And at at a large scale, AmeriCorps is able to do so much more than. Us as individuals are able to do. But if we're able to share our story, broadcast it, get it out there one at a time, thanks to people like you and your podcast, then maybe people will start to catch on to AmeriCorps being a, a pretty cool thing that helps the people who serve in it and helps the people in the communities that are served by it.
And I just am grateful to play a, a really small part. In that puzzle, um, and acknowledge that AmeriCorps has given me and been such a huge [00:44:00] part of my life. So thank you for the opportunity to like share and just like I could talk about this forever and that don't often get the opportunity too. So, so thank you so much, Nicki.
Nicki Fiocco: No, we always share forever about our service unit, about everything I know, and that was absolutely super amazing. Well, we're gonna close it out here. Thank you so much for everybody. And if you're here and you've listened to the entire podcast, you might as well subscribe because that changes your algorithm.
Subscribe.
Alex Schwartz: I don't know where the button is. It takes
Nicki Fiocco: your ER algorithms in your YouTube channels or whatever, and then you might get like positive stuff. So let's look for positive stuff. Yes, this was absolutely amazing. I can't wait to find out where you are in. Three months from now. So for now, we're gonna sign off and thank you so much for listening to the AmeriCorps Connections podcast.[00:45:00]
Alex Schwartz: Thank you.
Nicki Fiocco: Take care.