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Dear Commission Colleagues,
AmeriCorps Week is May 9-16. Coming just weeks after enactment of historic legislation to expand national service, this year’s AmeriCorps Week is a perfect time to shine the spotlight on AmeriCorps to raise awareness and recruit more Americans into service.
One of the big successes from previous years has been Governor’s proclamations. Thanks to the efforts of Commissions and Corporation state offices, last year 25 Governors issued AmeriCorps proclamations. We encourage you to seek proclamations again this year. To help, attached is a draft proclamation, and state-specific data on AmeriCorps members, hours, and Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned since the beginning of AmeriCorps.
The attached draft proclamation has suggested language and includes places where you can fill in state specific information. You should feel free to edit the draft to fit your state’s circumstances, such as adding state AmeriCorps accomplishments or Governor focus areas.
The data on the attached one-pager shows state breakdowns of total AmeriCorps members, hours, and Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned since 1994. The data comes from the National Service Trust and reflect all AmeriCorps members (including NCCC and VISTA) who enrolled between March 1, 1994 and January 31, 2009. Some notes on the data:
- The state breakdowns are determined by the AmeriCorps member’s permanent address as provided to the National Service Trust, or current address if no permanent address provided. It does not necessarily reflect where they served.
- The data includes members who are currently serving and those who exited before completing their terms.
- The chart shows individual members, not enrollments. The total number of AmeriCorps enrollments is much higher than 574,000, because a large number of AmeriCorps members have enrolled in a second term of service. For this chart, we are counting distinct individuals, not enrollments.
In addition to the state data, here are some recent facts about AmeriCorps on the national level.
AmeriCorps Fast Facts
- 574,000: Number of people who have served as AmeriCorps members since 1994.
- 718 Million: Total number of hours served by AmeriCorps members.
- $1.59 Billion: Total amount of Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned by AmeriCorps members.
- 2.2 Million: Number of community volunteers managed or mobilized by AmeriCorps members in 2008.
- 4,100: Number of nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations that AmeriCorps members served with in 2008.
- $5.7 Billion: Amount of AmeriCorps funds invested in nonprofit, community, educational, and faith-based community groups since 1994.
In order to keep track of this year’s Governor’s proclamations, we’d be grateful if you can email a copy of the proclamation to Sandy Scott in the Office of Public Affairs at sscott@cns.gov. If there is a press release that accompanies the proclamation, please forward that as well. He will ensure that all Governor Proclamations and state and local press releases get posted in AmeriCorps Week newsroom. If you have questions, please contact Sandy via email or at 202-606-6724.
We hope this information is helpful. Please check out the AmeriCorps Weekwebsite at http://www.americorpsweek.gov for all the latest tools, resources, and ideas and remember to register your projects on-line so that we can track our collective outreach.
In service,
Lois Nembhard
Acting Director
AmeriCorps State & National
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