FEMA Corps Member Brings Sandy's Lessons to White House

by Greg Tucker

(This post originally appeared on the National Service Blog on February 8, 2013.)

The chance to get in on the ground floor and build something new attracted recent college grad Ben Barron to the FEMA Corps AmeriCorps NCCC unit. Last fall his class went to work with the Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery effort in New York, where he learned a lot about himself and the strength of the human spirit.

Barron was on the path to law school when he learned about the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) and FEMA Corps from another student at California State University, Northridge. This idea led to him to join the first FEMA Corps class in July 2012 to begin training as a Team Leader with the new unit.

Change of Plans

Barron's team was on an assignment in New Orleans when Sandy struck the East Coast and altered their plans. Soon, he would be providing disaster assistance to victims of that storm and “sleeping in a hold with 149 of (his) best friends” on a ship docked off Staten Island in New York.

Barron was impressed immediately with the mobilization of people who assembled to provide assistance. As he continued in the recovery effort, Barron was also surprised by the resilience and selflessness he saw as people worked to regain control of their lives.

“I don't know how many times I heard from people who had just lost their homes -- lost pretty much everything they own --say, ‘Can you go down the street and help them because they got hit worse?'” said Barron. “We heard that every day … that sense of camaraderie was the most touching thing.”

Adapting to the Situation

As part of the roving disaster response center, Barron pursued an initiative to use laptops and iPads to register storm survivors for disaster assistance, as well as keep track of the areas that had received aid from other organizations.

Early on, people were borrowing FEMA Corps members' phones to call in and register for assistance because they had no computers or electricity to do so at home. By embracing mobile technology, they were able to make the process more efficient while maintaining face-to-face interactions.

At first, they set up stations at relief centers by tethering laptops to their Blackberry phones to create mobile internet connections. Later they moved to tablet computers.

“The iPads helped streamline the process,” said Barron. “They helped us get people registered in their neighborhood or even at their door.”

Through the program, FEMA reached and documented thousands who may not have received adequate disaster assistance, avoiding redundancy and wasted resources. Barron's efforts brought him to the White House earlier this week to speak at a FEMA Think Tank on innovation in emergency management.

His experience as a FEMA Corps Team Leader has taught Barron about working with a people who have “different personalities, different dialogues, and different objectives.”

“If you are looking for a future in emergency management, FEMA Corps will help you with that,” said Barron. “Where else are you gonna get that opportunity?”

Barron also learned about time management and prioritization, adding that the amount of resolve and the resilience needed to work in disaster relief is something that inspires confidence.

“Don't be afraid to jump in and do something. Being a bystander is not something that's going to get the job done,” he said. “Be ready to be amazed.”

The AMERIBROTHERS and the Wall

Based on the true story of three men on Raven 1 and their epic saga of removing a foundation wall from the ground to make room for post holes for a fence.

Three AmeriBrothers faced adversity this week. Completion of a simple task halted by a wall of stone embedded in the infinite earth. The early morning air filled the breath of the AmeriBrothers giving them life to tackle this ancient wall.  They chipped, axed, and hammered, but yet the wall remained. The afternoon sun beat down its heat on their backs and faces zapping their strength from them and testing their will and still they hammered on. But yet the wall still remained. The day was done, but the battle was not.

Another day came to the AmeriBrothers and with that day came the wall unmoved and unchanged. And so the fight raged on, axe to stone, and hammer to earth. With weary bones and sweaty bodies, the AmeriBrothers powered through the day and yet the wall still remained unmoved and unchanged.

The AmeriBrothers came the next day drained, devoid of strength, and their muscles screaming to rest. They were motivated by only one thought: Today is the day, the day the wall moved. The day the wall will change. This day the wall will fall. Each AmeriBrother gripped their axes and hammers so tight their knuckles turned white. They attacked the wall with a new fire and determination. There was no time. There was no pain. The only sound they heard was metal to stone. Then they each stopped suddenly at once when a marvelous sight came to their eyes. The wall cracked. They looked at each other and smiled. The unspoken thought of victory entered their minds. Today was the day.

Again the sound of metal to stone rang in their ears along with the welcome sound of crumbling rock. The AmeriBrothers hit faster, hit harder until there was nothing left to hit the wall was gone. Nothing but dust, rubble, and invisible memory was to be lost in the dirt. The AmeriBrothers stood among the ruins of their formidable enemy and breathed a great sigh of relief, letting the silence of their victory humble their young and tired hearts. They released their tools from their aching fingers and placed them on the shoulder of the brother next to them. The day was done. The battle was won and the AmeriBrothers stood proud.

“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.”

Romerio Scott

Raven 1 Invites Readers to Ask About Joining NCCC

The winter 2013 application deadline (10/31) is approaching!  Do you have questions about joining NCCC?

The NCCC team, Raven 1, invites you to ask your questions on their blog.

Burn out with Raven 1 member Andre as he fights wildfires



Andre checks out the view in Suffolk, VA while on the Phoenix 3 team



Everyone’s done it whether it’s been around a campfire or into a lighter, everyone has stared into a flame and been mesmerized by its overwhelming glow and thought of its unbelievable potential power. It can light your way in the dark, warm your body on a cold winter night, or destroy a life in less time than it takes to blink.

AmeriCorps NCCC offers its members experiences that many of them couldn’t think possible. One of those experiences is to be a wild land firefighter. In the Atlantic Region these selected members are known as the Phoenix unit. Each Phoenix is chosen and trained at the beginning of the term and placed back into their respective teams until they are called into service. Each round eight members are plucked from their permanent teams and placed into the honorable position of a Phoenix. It’s a chance for people from different units of the corps to meet and work together and get a chance to have a break from your permanent teams. (Which I don’t really need since mine is so awesome).

The Phoenix 3 team, which included Raven 1’s Maddi and me, had the privilege to be the first team in five years to go out west to Idaho to fight the wildfires that were raging across the state. In a chartered flight of over 800 firefighters from the east, Phoenix 3 flew to Idaho and started their adventure at the Trinity Ridge fire. When we arrived we joined a world we couldn’t have prepared for. The camp site, surrounded by the beautiful Idaho Mountains, was a sea of tents and commotion, trucks and people moving around, going in and out of tents.

P3 goes west - left to rigt Maddi, Emily, Andre, Rebecca, Liz, Erik, Ben and Bobby

Myself and the Phoenix members were placed in a crew of 80 other firefighters and we were known as the Virginia Crew. An hour into our arrival after being briefed on the plan of action to contain the 90,000 acre fire, we were sent to assist other crews to protect the town of Featherville. After two days of hiking up mountains, digging line, and prepping the town for the worst, we were able to proceed with the burn-out operation. (A burn out is a term of firefighting where a section of land is burned and turned to black to stop the main fire from spreading.)

When the day came to start the burn-out operation, we were so excited but then disappointed because it had been canceled due to weather. Just when we had lost hope the weather changed and the burn was back on. Helicopters flew overhead, drip torches set the ground to flame. Trees torched 50ft into the air and we stood facing the flames and around the town of Featherville, making sure no embers flew overhead to start spot fires and endanger the town. As the night grew on so did the fire. Hours after the fire blazed it grew stronger, and faster, and brighter. It was a sight to behold. Just before the sun rose, we were relieved of watch duty. As we rode in a lime green school bus back to camp, before our heavy eyes gave way to exhaustion, we looked back and saw the amazing power of that which is fire.



A few members of Phoenix 3 fire team pause for a photo- left to right Maddi, Andre, Erik, Robert, Liz and Rebecca

-Andre

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

-Bruce Lee-

Two Ways to Stay Sane with Bird Brains

Team Leader Keiper reflects how her team Raven 1 keeps their sanity in what can be a very stressful environment.

We live together. We ride in the same vehicle everywhere we go. We eat together. We serve together. We joke, we laugh, we bicker. We are Raven One, and “together we R1” is our motto.

Now, for those of you not in AmeriCorps NCCC, this may not seem like a big deal.  But please, oh friend, please take a step back and put yourself in our shoes (or steel-toed boots for that matter). Now, think, you are with the same nine people 24/7. In fact, you might all be sharing the same large room, or have one bathroom between 10 people. That free-time, that moment of solitude that used to be so easily attained before AmeriCorps is mere memories now.

How do we do it? How do we stay sane in this Ameir-world? Well, to be honest, it can be really difficult sometimes. On top of having little free space, you also need to factor in how demanding serving can be, the amount of hours you work, and the fact that sometimes the work is dirty and not so glorious (pulling weeds all day); not to mention being away from family and friends, etc. There are many, many ways I could share with you about how my team remains motivated and does not lose their mind, but I am only going to focus on two.

The first is simple: we want to be here - each and every one of us is passionate about serving and wants to reach out to our country and lend a hand in any humble way we can. This is the backbone of our team - our passion. We know that nothing worth having is easy.

In NCCC team will do a variety of things to stay sane, including growing tails

Moving onto a, well, I guess you could call it a characteristic my team has taken on. We are an eccentric, creative bunch. Maybe I am biased because I love my team, but really let me give you some examples of what I am trying to explain. We use whimsy, humor, and downright ridiculousness as a stress outlet. We have a team gnome named Bach Lava who travels with us wherever we go and sits outside our door steps, protecting us from intruders and chipmunks. Henry has a magical wizard staff that we typically need to make room for in our 15-passenger van. For our weekly physical training we often do yoga, and one of our favorite stress relieves is the laughing baby. It’s a pose you simply cannot do without laughing. Sometimes, Ashley and I pretend we are archeologists when pulling weeds or small trees. We all have taken on different funny “voices” that we talk to each other with. And we have made up elaborate stories about one another and the people we meet, such as the security guard I am convinced is a fox during the day and security guard at night.



Raven 1 laughs during their PT when doing the yoga pose called the Laughing Baby

 Our shenanigans extend beyond our team and we often involve the sponsors and volunteers we work with. One day, Maddi and Cassie found a hidden treasure when we were demolishing a house: a broken baby arm from a small doll. We refer to this as “The Baby Hand,” and it typically makes appearances at the most pivotal moments. Cassie will shake someone’s hand with it or caress their face. It is a real crowd pleaser. But don’t worry; we know how to keep it professional when necessary. Another tradition is “Pig-Tail Friday,” when many members of the team wear their hair in pig-tails and encourage other volunteers to wear them as well. This too, is a crowd pleaser, as well as our famous “caw-caw” and “two-cheers” chant, which we have taught to many of our site supervisors, volunteers, and staff.

Michael receives a gentle caress from 'The Baby Hand' by Cassie

We have a childish excitement about little things, like using a nice clean public restroom rather than our usual Portable Toilet. Or getting to “dress-up” and wear real clothes and make-up out to dinner for a night. Our birthday parties are more extravagant than when we were kids - sometimes with water balloon fights, pin the tail on the aerators member, and a kiddy pool. It is common for me to walk into the house and hear my team singing. Or to be smacked in the face with a banana peel. Or after shopping to find them dancing in the parking lot to an outlandish country song.

We are outgoing, unique, fun, and whimsical. We constantly find ways to make an ordinary experience an adventure, like when we pretend we are in a traveling gypsy band. But most of all, we have become a family. One of our site supervisors, the lovely Margaret from Round 1 in Delaware at the Winterthur Museum, summed it up very nicely, “they are very unusual, but very, very good!”

~Keiper

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” 
― Dr. Seuss

For the Children: Gardens and Robots

Read how Moose 5 helps children in Camden, NJ and Baltimore, MD with gardens and robots


Camden New Jersey Children’s Garden has been truly a great experience for all of us here at Moose 5. During our stay, we worked and built up new gardens for the community and children of Camden, NJ. We harvested vegetables, raised beds, helped out at community events, traveled across the city, and even left our mark on the side of a garden shed, manifesting our efforts into a symbolic tangibility. Whether it was helping the kids learn the hokey pokey (teammate, Cecelia) or dressing up as an anthropomorphic bear for a special event (teammate Justin), Moose 5 got things done in Camden, NJ. 

 


Moose 5 member Laura and Project Sponsor Mike Devlin
survey the row of green

    

Example of the Robots




















Members of Moose 5 with mulch front to back- Justin, Tierra, Ethan, Chris and Laura

 

Members of Moose 5 left to right- Ethan, Alice, Cecelia and Laura



Moose 4 Member Cecelia with Project Sponsor Mike Devlin

 For the final week of round two, we stayed at the Baltimore Hostel, working with the Baltimore Public School system creating robot kits for local children in preparation for an upcoming summer camp program. We constructed models, created shelving for the parts, loaded and unloaded seemingly endless amounts of plastic bins, and sorted, sorted, sorted. Recently, we helped set up and run a robotics completion. As a team, we accomplished our goals and left a great impression with BPS. 

-          Alice, Moose 5 

Baltimore City Schools Robotics Competition Medals

Example of Robots

   

   

For more on Camden Children’s Garden view their blog here.  The Camden Children’s Garden and the NCCC Atlantic Region are also featured in a news clip about Camden Children’s Garden and Michelle Obama’s new book. See it here

The primary goal of the Baltimore City Schools’ 2012 Middle School STEM Summer Learning Program (Robotics) is to provide additional out of school time focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) instruction to help students to gain an appreciation of science and technology, the ability to work in collaborative teams, and to be exposed to research and technical skills as part of the Summer Learning Program at Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools). The City Schools Summer Learning Program seeks to prevent summer learning loss and to increase mathematics proficiency in City Schools’ students. The Robotics Program is integral to helping City Schools achieve this important goal as this program has successfully been used as a hook for students, and has significantly contributed to the success of the Summer Learning Program as a whole last year.

Millions of pieces of robot equipment, thousands of robots and a couple hundred NCCC members

One sponsor shares how, since 2005, NCCC has helped children learn about math and science. Her story explains the process of having an NCCC team from concept to completion, with a lot of hard satisfying work in-between.

Hello, my name is Jenny Beatty, and I am delighted to be asked to write this blog post about my experience working with AmeriCorps-NCCC from a sponsor perspective.  This is a story about making connections, working with volunteer -driven organizations, and inspiring students. 

It’s also about robots and getting things done.

Beatty has worked with many NCCC teams since 2005. 
Here she is with the Southern Reigon's River 1 at orientation at Disney World 2011.

 Since 2005 I’ve been working with NCCC team members out of the Atlantic Region.  I’ve worked with over 250 members over the years. I’ve heard some inspiring speeches at Induction and gotten teary at the Graduations.  I have taken many photos of teams-lots of Buffalos, Ravens, and Moose, and even a River from the Southern Region where we had our orientation on a beach at Disney World. I’m getting older in these photos, but the teams seem to stay the same – usually smiling, often wearing khakis already filled with paint stains, in the joking-around poses. On my desk I have a handmade card from a team that says “You are a rock star” thanking me for sponsoring them.  I smile every time I look at it because how many opportunities are there to ask people to work long days doing hard work and then they write you thank you notes?

So this story is personal as well as about getting things done.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Moose 5. They are headed to Vermont to a remote area a few miles from the Canadian border after spending the past 3 weeks living and working in hot and noisy inner city Baltimore. Talk about transitions! This is the story of how they eventually got here this summer.

Beatty received this thank you card from River 1 of the Southern Region
which she found ironic since she was the one that wanted to thank them.

FIRST Robotics

I first learned about NCCC eight years ago. In 2004 I was hired under a “New Generation Grant” sponsored by AmeriCorps for a non-profit called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).  FIRST seeks to inspire kids to enter the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields and has a menu of programs which all involve building robots. I became a volunteer for FIRST a decade ago while my son was on a high school team, and then was hired by the organization.

Unlike many of the thousands of volunteers drawn to FIRST - I’m not really interested in robots.  But I am interested in students having opportunities to work in teams, and to experience problem-solving – the skills needed to succeed in life no matter what content area.

There were 15 of us hired (we were given the title of Senior Mentor), and we were spread across the US. Our marching orders were to go out and help start new teams, and recruit and support mentors and event volunteers. There were various competitions that needed to happen in Maryland, and I got introduced to the area of “volunteer-driven event management.” I had always been interested in volunteer-driven organizations and public service, had worked for various non-profits and educational institutions, and had been in the National Health Service Corps, which shares many of the AmeriCorps values.

During the Senior Mentor training we were encouraged to forge relationships with the local AmeriCorps programs and volunteer centers. I knew about VISTA, but not the other programs. So I did some research and discovered there was something called “AmeriCorps-NCCC” and the office for the Atlantic Region was right here in Maryland. I made some inquiries within FIRST and discovered that a staff member in California had a written proposal to engage NCCC members for FIRST robotics competitions in the western region a couple of years before. So I figured it was worth the time to submit a project concept form to bring a team on board for a few days to help with an event we were holding in Maryland.   The concept form, and then the full proposal were accepted and that partnership still exists to this day.

VEX Robotics

I retired as a FIRST Senior Mentor in 2009, but still do lots of volunteering for the FIRST programs-helping with events and local planning.  About 4 years ago I also started volunteering for a program called the VEX Robotics Competition. Like FIRST, VEX also has students building robots and going to competitions and a great community of volunteers helping to put on both small and large events.

So for the past 8 years I have found myself writing NCCC-targeted flyers for ISP’s and proposals for mini-spikes, helping various groups with robot competitions around Maryland.  NCCC has helped out at almost 20 events.

The teams over the years have provided a ton of support with set up and tear down, and playing many key roles at these robotics competitions.

Corps Members from the Atlantic Region Class 17
help set up one of the competition areas for the children and their robots.

Baltimore City Schools Summer Jump Program

In 2012 Baltimore City Public Schools received a 3-year federal grant (i3 ) to run a 5-week summer school program for middle school students based on lessons learned with a program administered the two previous summers.  The goal is to decrease summer learning loss, targeting students who scored basic on the Mathematics MSA (tests). The plan for summer 2012 included 10 sites involving 400 middle school age students, math instruction and forming lots and lots of robotics teams. And the hook to get the students to come to school was building robots. One of the key elements of the program is to provide exciting competitions for the students.

In March I was hired by Baltimore City Public Schools as a short term contractor, working with the summer school team as the “Robotics Events Director.”  My job was to work with the coordinators for the program, pulling together the pieces needed to run the events – finding venues, recruiting and training volunteers and doing what is referred in the business as the “run of show” (or, the game plan for the day) for what turned out to be one of the larger robotics competitions in the US. Only this competition would feature middle school students who had never been exposed to robotics, and unlike most robotic competitions, these students had only 4 weeks and a couple of hours a day to build a robot to compete.

The first hour of the first day on the job was spent figuring out how to get NCCC involved in this complicated effort. I knew it would be different than most of the NCCC projects, but that it did fit in the target area of urban development and it involved a targeted geographic area – Baltimore City.  The job plan would contain many logistical challenges -but I figured it was worth a try.



There were different components to the project – the events, the summer school and the enormous task that came to be known as “kitting” which involved breaking down the components of the robot kits as they are delivered into new storage containers that could be used by the summer school robot building program.  I saw a role for NCCC in all these areas so submitted a project concept. This was accepted, but then it got more complicated because I found out the campus had vacation and mandatory training time right smack in the middle of the project AND the project was split over Round 2 & Round 3. So the project was split into 2 parts.  The Program Officers in Perry Point were very helpful in walking me through the scenarios that could work with the timing, while I was juggling what needed to happen when and trying to craft a good proposal. 

Kits ready to go to sites

 The proposal was accepted. The Baltimore City Summer School Program Coordinators had never worked with NCCC before so there was a lot of sharing of information that needed to happen to put the plan together. The City Schools Program Coordinators also took on the challenge of figuring out housing and how to best use 8 people; working in pairs, but spread over 10 sites around the city and these sites had varying schedules and would require NCCC moving around by public bus.

I saw clear roles for a NCCC team with events:  set up and tear down and moving the competition equipment in an efficient system; playing a major role with the organization and management of one of the key event roles called “Team Queuing” including supervising other volunteers; as all-around problem solvers; and assisting with volunteer recruitment. And then there was the organization and classification of over half-million pieces of robotics equipment and helping with robot building in the classroom. Unfortunately, the professional development (the week to learn about building robots) was during the NCCC break, but Moose 5 was able to learn as they went. Their training in working together as a team was crucial to the effort.


Student on the practice field with some young fans



This summer was a learning opportunity for all. The feedback from Moose 5 will be valuable in figuring out how to use groups of volunteers in the future – hopefully including future NCCC teams.  I know they were invaluable at the events – 2 days of set up, 2 days of scrimmages, and 1 day of the Championship Olympiad. Moose 5 worked hard: they brainstormed with students, serving as great role models;  did a whole lot of heavy lifting, became proficient at assembling the fields; managed key event positions; unpacked, sorted and labeled tens of thousands of robot parts; and played a crucial role in getting things done. They’ve learned a new vocabulary and made a big difference to the summer school program.



Moose 5 Corps Members, Alice left and Chris right, assist with the robotics

 I hope Moose 5 had some fun. There were members who tasted Maryland crab for the first time, we watched the Olympic opening ceremonies (taped), they got to explore many parts of Baltimore, and we even went bowling.  I look forward to seeing them at graduation in November!