AmeriCorps cuts leave people who serve and community organizations scrambling for alternatives
WEST COLUMBIA, Texas — Years had passed since Hurricane Harvey's howling winds and heavy rains tore apart Dan Lee's century-old roof in West Columbia, south of Houston. Then came the knock on his door.
It was Mosaic in Action, a nonprofit that has helped more than 450 homeowners and relies on an AmeriCorps community service program that sends young adults to work on projects across the U.S. The organization repaired Lee's roof and got rid of the mold left behind in Harvey's wake.
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Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education offers Hong Kong's Only Government-Recognized Special Child Care Work Registration within its PGDE(ECE) Programme
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Yahoo
2 days ago
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Court hands a lifeline to AmeriCorps, but its future remains uncertain
Green Bay Conservation Corps workers, from left, Emily Swagel, Zak King and Cailie Kafura, plant native shrubs in Fireman's Park. The work is part of installing a pollinator corridor and a larger land restoration project across Green Bay. (Photo courtesy of Green Bay Conservation Corps) Jake White says he was lucky. A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with a global health major, White was in his second year of an AmeriCorps placement in the Sawyer County Public Health Department, where he helped out with department reports and outreach to the community. Then AmeriCorps pulled the plug at the end of April — cancelling its grants to agencies all across the country. White was in the middle of working with a team assigned to produce a community health assessment for the county when he got the news. Sawyer County kept him on so he could stick with the project, converting his position to a limited-term employee (LTE) through the end of June, when White starts medical school in Wausau. The reprieve also gave him a chance to hand over a second project, on substance abuse prevention, to another community member, White said. The future of that work was one of his biggest worries about AmeriCorps' sudden shutdown. His AmeriCorps experience at the county 'really gave me the foundation for the skills and knowledge I will carry into my role as a physician,' White told the Wisconsin Examiner. The aftermath of the AmeriCorps shutdown didn't go as smoothly for Maxwell Robin. He was placed with the St. Vincent DePaul charitable pharmacy in Madison. 'I did whatever needed to be done,' Robin said — working on computer projects at the pharmacy, filling prescriptions, serving as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients. When the AmeriCorps cancellation notice arrived, the projects he was working on 'got thrown into chaos,' Robin said a week after the notification. Now a federal judge has ordered AmeriCorps to restore its grants and reinstate its volunteers. But all of that remains up in the air. 'Things are just very confusing now,' Robin said Friday. Despite that, Robin has been able to move on. He is waiting to hear back from several job applications. And he still volunteers part-time at the pharmacy, where he developed a strong interest in working in the nonprofit sector. 'We were able to take people who, for whatever reason, had been kicked to the side,' Robin said. The federal judge's order, issued Thursday, includes an injunction ordering the federal government to reverse the cancellation of AmeriCorps grants and projects across the country and to restore those programs, funding and personnel. But program administrators still don't know for sure what will happen and when. 'We are still waiting for official notification from AmeriCorps,' said Jeanne Duffy, the executive director of Serve Wisconsin, in an email message Friday. Serve Wisconsin, based in the Wisconsin Department of Administration, is the state administrator for AmeriCorps. Wisconsin has 25 AmeriCorps programs operating in more than 300 locations across the state — volunteers who are paid a stipend and who work in health care, help with environmental projects, assist in school classrooms and carry out other projects. When the Trump administration canceled AmeriCorps grants April 25, the action caught participants in the program as well as officials responsible for coordinating its work by surprise. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined the federal lawsuit brought by 25 states to challenge the AmeriCorps shutdown. Thursday's order, by U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Maryland, found that the Corporation for National Community Service, the agency that operates AmeriCorps, and its administration 'likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before making significant changes to service delivery, that the plaintiffs will be irreparably harmed if this injunction does not issue, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest favor an injunction.' The cancellation affected programs all over Wisconsin that have worked with AmeriCorps, some of them for years, and the volunteers who have flocked to AmeriCorps looking for experience through community service work. 'It's a tragedy,' said state Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee), who spent two years as an AmeriCorps participant 15 years ago. 'AmeriCorps is about volunteerism. We have limited resources and we have this unlimited need.' In Green Bay, AmeriCorps helped staff the Green Bay Conservation Corps. Founded in 2022, the Conservation Corps has fielded teams of AmeriCorps members each year on projects that have included establishing a pollinator corridor through the city, removing invasive plants, maintaining walking trails and restoring area streams. 'Altogether we've seen over 70 AmeriCorps members come through our doors,' said Maria Otto, the Green Bay Conservation Corps coordinator. 'They're the ones getting the work done.' The Green Bay city council passed a measure covering the rest of the 2025 service year from city funds. 'After two weeks of uncertainty, our entire crew was able to work for the Conservation Corps again' thanks to the funds, said Cailie Kafura, one of the AmeriCorps volunteers. The money will allow the program's work to keep going through August. 'We were doing a lot of work that people maybe don't even know is being done,' said Kafura. 'I know that the work I'm doing, I want to be doing that kind of work in the future. I want to be using my body and my mind for good out in the world.' Lynn Walter operates a nonprofit, New Leaf Foods, that promotes access to healthy food and education in the greater Green Bay area. Founded 15 years ago, New Leaf began working with AmeriCorps five years ago through a partnership with Marshfield Clinic. The clinic deploys AmeriCorps participants on health-related projects around the state. Walter said Friday after the cancellation she was able to retain one of her three AmeriCorps participants this year on a contract basis. A second AmeriCorps member chose to stay on as a volunteer to complete a project she had been working on, while the third needed more paid hours and went to another job. Even with the court ruling, Walter said, she's been told that what happens next remains uncertain. And she fears there's been longer-term damage regardless of what happens in the court case. 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Omokunde ticked off a list of colleagues in politics who came up through AmeriCorps and Public Allies: State Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, former state Rep. David Bowen, and the late Milwaukee alder Jonathan Brostoff, also a former Assembly member. 'When he sees this cadre of individuals who are rooted in community and learning about asset-based community development, diversity and being committed to anti-oppression as well, people who represent all people, he doesn't want that kind of opposition,' Omokunde said. 'He just wants people to go along and do his bidding.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Scientific American
5 days ago
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Tree Planting Efforts Could Actually Worsen Climate Change
CLIMATEWIRE | Carbon markets that fund forest preservation and tree-planting might actually be worsening climate change by increasing risks for wildfires that emit massive levels of greenhouse gases, a new United Nations-affiliated report says. Forests have been seen as one of the most effective places to counter climate change by absorbing carbon emissions. But that's changed, says a May paper from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), an academic arm of the international U.N. In the past decade, wildfires of record-breaking size have erupted in places such as Canada, Australia, Siberia and the Amazon rainforest. This week, forest wildfires forced evacuations of thousands of Canadians in Manitoba and Alberta provinces. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'Forests and peatlands have increasingly transitioned into massive carbon emitters in many parts of the world due to increasing wildfires,' the report says. Climate policies and carbon-mitigation activities 'fail to account for these substantial emissions.' The report highlights weaknesses in a central global strategy for addressing climate change — planting and protecting trees — which has attracted billions of dollars from polluters that fund the projects to offset their own carbon emissions. A large share of the money is paid through the voluntary carbon market, a largely unregulated system that has come under increasing scrutiny over its integrity. Recent major wildfires have been particularly harmful. The 2023 forest wildfires in Canada emitted more greenhouse gases than the total industrial emissions of any country in the world except for China and India, Ju Hyoung Lee, a research fellow at UNU and lead author of the report, said in an interview from Seoul, South Korea. In California, wildfires in 2024 destroyed parts of forests that were supposed to be storing carbon through an offset program under the state's cap-and-trade carbon market. Without systematic monitoring of forest conditions, the paper says, the voluntary carbon market and other policies that promote forests 'may unintentionally exacerbate wildfire hazards.' Planting new trees to absorb carbon could have the opposite effect, the report says, as more heat and increased carbon dioxide emissions from climate change accelerate forest growth while also depleting soil moisture. 'Planting more and more trees in such an environment with the purpose of carbon mitigation will likely increase carbon emissions due to future fires,' the report warns. When the businesses certifying forest projects in the voluntary carbon market consider wildfire risk, they normally look at historical incidents of fires, Lee said. But, she added, 'Forests are changing, and our forests [won't] be like what it was like for the last 20 years." Historical data often leaves out the past five years, which includes some of the worst fires on record, Lee said. As a result, fire risk is typically underestimated by nonprofits such as Verra, which sets standards for and certifies climate projects to be listed on the voluntary market, Lee said. Representatives for Verra did not respond to a request for comment. Concerns about forests and their changing dynamics have existed for more than a decade, Kaveh Madani, director of the UNU-INWEH, said in an interview from Toronto. The report hopes to get the message out, Madani said, that existing forest programs and certification standards were developed using science that's now outdated — and the projects 'can increase the risk of increased emissions, in some cases.' Madani emphasized that not all forest programs in the voluntary carbon market and elsewhere create a wildfire threat. The paper advocates reforming the voluntary carbon market and similar systems to better account for forest conditions and to prevent unintended consequences, including more wildfires. Rainfall, soil health, and expected future droughts and heat waves should be considered before approving forest projects 'as a carbon emissions reduction solution,' the paper says. Satellite observations could identify areas where forests are growing and fuels are accumulating, leading them to be excluded from carbon markets 'due to the potential high emissions in case of future fires,' the paper says. The risk of wildfire and other environmental conditions that could damage forests 'must be included in our planning for the future and the schemes that we have in place,' Madani said.
