AmeriCorps revitalizes homes, educates students

After three days on the road, 10 members of the AmeriCorps program from Denver arrived in Greensboro, hard hats and textbooks in hand.

They were ready to work.

The AmeriCorps members will spend the next two months living in Greensboro, rebuilding historic homes that are in disrepair and tutoring students who are working toward a GED.

“We chose Greensboro just because of the nature of the work,” said AmeriCorps team leader Angela Young. “We were really excited about being able to rebuild houses and also work with the Youth Build program mentoring.”

AmeriCorps, a national community service program, works with non-

profit organizations and communities. The Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization, which works to provide affordable, energy-efficient housing for Hale County residents, contacted the group.

The AmeriCorps members will work on revitalizing two historic homes and will begin construction of a third, said AmeriCorps member Mike Mariani.

“We’re taking off the weak and the rotting part of this historically significant house, so we can repair it and build an extra bedroom so people can use it and it can better serve the community in the future,” Mariani said.

The house in Greensboro featured a rear addition, which the group will remove before adding extra rooms onto the house. The repairs will also be used to make the house more

|energy-efficient, greatly reducing maintenance costs for its residents.

“I feel like we’re going to make some sort of difference,” Mariani said. “A lot of these areas are being generally ignored, and it’s hard to get contributions for the nonprofit sector. We definitely think that we have a very valuable contribution to give to the community.”

The AmeriCorps members will not be alone in their construction efforts. They are also working with Youth Build, a program that helps Hale County residents ages 18 to 24 study for the GED.

“We work a couple of days a week in the classroom with those kids, doing preparation for the GED,” said AmeriCorps member Bridgette Fortier. “So they will work on a section of a test, it gets graded and then we help them understand what parts they maybe need to work on, what parts they’ve gotten right.”

AmeriCorps members are also getting to know the community through participation in events like church dinners and tours of local industry, said Betsy Rammacia, a community developer with HERO.

“I think the biggest asset of the area is just the people here,” Rammacia said. “The people here are really interested in who comes to the area. So far they’ve been great. I think the next seven more weeks are going to be fantastic.”