Philadelphia -- “Heroes Wanted!” a comic book-style video by AmeriCorps VISTA Leaders Josh Proehl and Kathy Young of Olympia, Wash., is the winner of the first-ever video contest sponsored by the national service program AmeriCorps.

The 60-second video tells the story of a young woman who wants to make a difference in her community but doesn’t know how. One day she spots a recruitment poster for AmeriCorps that reads, “Heroes Wanted!” She decides to join, meets scores of people sharing her passion to help others, and finds fulfillment and satisfaction in serving her community.

The top three videos were shown to hundreds of AmeriCorps program directors meeting at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in Philadelphia. A gift from Best Buy enabled the first place winners to travel to the conference to present their video in person. All videos can be viewed at the contest website at http://www.americorpscontest.org/.

“This video contest gave us a chance to tap into the incredible creativity of AmeriCorps members and alums,” said Kristin McSwain, director of AmeriCorps. “We were thrilled with the response and the excitement this contest generated, and look forward to using these videos to recruit more AmeriCorps members.”

Second place went to the video “Be the Change” by Kasey Paulk and Mike Martin Paulk currently serves in the Georgia Personal Assistance Service Corps as an instructor at a day-center for adults with developmental disabilities. The third-place winner was “Changing Lives” by Patrick D. Metzger, an AmeriCorps member with Western New York AmeriCorps.

Thirty-nine videos were submitted for the contest, and they already have been viewed more than 43,000 times. The winning videos were selected based on votes from the public and a panel of judges. The contest was part the first-ever AmeriCorps Week, a national recognition and recruitment event that took place May 13-20 that marked AmeriCorps reaching a historic milestone of enrolling its 500,000 member.

“Josh and I both loved the heroes idea,” said Young, who currently serves as an AmeriCorps VISTA Leader with the Washington Service Corps. “We were at a supervisor meeting and someone mentioned a ‘Heroes Wanted’ poster, and that it had gotten a great response. We just thought it was a great concept—and so appropriate for the work AmeriCorps members do.”

Added Proehl, who just completed year of service as an AmeriCorps VISTA Leader with the Ready Corps in Washington: “I just wanted to showcase my joy in doing service. It is the most rewarding feeling to be able, through video, to engage in a dialogue about what AmeriCorps means to people and hopefully getting new people to join."

The video contest is the latest step by the Corporation for National and Community Service, which administers AmeriCorps, to embrace new media and user-generated content to support recruitment and other programmatic goals. Other recent tools include a blog by an AmeriCorps NCCC team; “in-their-own-words” videos; stories of service, and the AmeriCorps eCommunity.

AmeriCorps is administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, which also oversees Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. Together with the USA Freedom Corps, the Corporation is working to build a culture of service, citizenship, and responsibility in America. For more information, visit http://www.nationalservice.gov.

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