We continue to track news coverage of the role national service participants have played in the Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery effort for the last few months. This week, our collection of stories includes one about two AmeriCorps members who spent their holiday away from home, helping people in New York and New Jersey recover from the storm.

Local FEMA Corps member joins historic disaster response
The Dispatch (Kansas), Jan. 8, 2012
Victoria Celli, a 2012 graduate of Shawnee Mission Northwest, was among hundreds of young leaders who returned home for the holidays following deployments to New Jersey and New York as part of the first class of FEMA Corps, a new federal program designed to provide emergency management experience to young people.

A Holiday Spent Helping (Audio)
Colorado Public Radio (Colorado), Jan. 7, 2012
Taylor Bush and Alex Orange could have spent the holidays with their families. Instead, they chose to head into a disaster zone. The two just got back from the east coast, where they helped residents of New York and New Jersey recover from Superstorm Sandy. Bush and Orange are members of the national service program AmeriCorps, and are based in Denver.

Sandy Warriors to make Ortley whole again
Daily Record (New Jersey), Jan. 7, 2013
Trinity Peterson, 23, of Yakima, Wash., is a member of AmeriCorps, who has been helping to rebuild the Shore since Nov. 29 and now is assigned to work with the Bucket Brigade. “These communities have really pulled together,” Peterson said. “Joan is a great organizer and since we've been here, you can see how much they've gotten done. ... Honestly, it's sometimes depressing, but you have to stay focused on what's to come and what you're doing to help these people out. It puts a smile on our faces to know we're helping out a lot of people who can't afford to have this kind of stuff done otherwise.”

Harvard grad recounts a hectic 2 months in Hurricane Sandy relief
Northwest Herald (Illinois), Jan. 6, 2013
Before there was a particular disaster for which to prepare, Ashleigh Brickley and her FEMA Corps team sorted something like 10 million meals. Brickley, 29, leads a 12-member community relations team of the first-year FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Corps program, a unit of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.

Hurricane rescue centers extend work as pace of recovery drags
Press of Atlantic City (New Jersey), Jan. 6, 2013
AmeriCorps teams and volunteers continue to clean out homes and tear out drywall in the greater Atlantic City area, and are expected to stay into February.

SD AmeriCorps volunteers aided in Sandy relief
UT San Diego (California), Dec. 31, 2012
A couple of years ago, Chalynn Passmore was working at a San Diego Costco but wanted to do more to help others. She got that chance after joining AmeriCorps in the fall of 2011, where she became a leader of a 12-member crew and spent most of this past November and part of December helping out with Hurricane Sandy disaster relief in New Jersey.

This week, nearly 100 AmeriCorps members boarded planes from Sacramento, CA, to New Jersey and New York where they will help residents affected by Hurricane Sandy rebuild homes, remove debris, and manage volunteers. Southwest Airlines’ decision to donate travel to these young leaders made this deployment possible.
 

Last month, Corporation for National and Community Service staff visited several sites in New York and New Jersey where national service members were helping with the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort. Today, we'd like to share two of the videos from that trip.
 

As an AmeriCorps VISTA at Habitat for Humanity International, I spend most of my days planning for events, attending meetings for upcoming projects, and supporting the wonderful and exciting things my fellow Habitaters (coworkers) are doing. Recently, I had an opportunity to see the impact Habitat makes firsthand as we led a project to help homeowners affected by Hurricane Sandy.
 

We’ve been tracking news coverage of the role our national service participants have played in the Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery effort for the last few months. Here are some of the latest stories, including two personal reflections by AmeriCorps members.
 

Growing up, I was fortunate enough to live a different experience than most. My parents were treasure hunters and I spent a majority of my childhood on their boat traveling in the Bahamas. Looking back, I almost feel as if I took those years a bit for granted; I never would have thought that the very boat I grew up on would be lifted and dropped in someone else’s yard. But when Hurricane George came through in 1998, that’s what happened. Little did I know, 14 years later, I would be on the other side of disaster recovery.
 

Millions of Americans will be making the journey to their respective hometowns this weekend to celebrate the holidays with friends and family. Today and tomorrow, a 26-member AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) team will leave Denver, CO, for the East Coast to spend their holidays helping families recover from Hurricane Sandy.
 

When AmeriCorps NCCC member Melissa Ettman was assigned to lead a Sacramento, CA-based team to help with the Hurricane Sandy cleanup in New York and New Jersey, she was familiar with many of the areas affected by the storm. In fact, her 87-year-old grandmother on Long Island was affected by the hurricane and had to live without electricity for a week.
 

As Hurricane Sandy efforts transition from emergency response to long-term recovery, AmeriCorps members are providing vital leadership in communities up and down the East Coast.
 

Working together to strengthen our communities is at the core of our national values. New research indicates that this commitment to service burns brighter than ever.
 

The Hurricane Sandy recovery continues with more than 1,660 national service participants deployed in response to the storm and 715 currently serving on the ground and working with the storm’s victims. At this time 407 members of FEMA Corps, an AmeriCorps NCCC unit, have deployed or are being re-routed to New York and New Jersey to support FEMA Emergency Response operations in those areas.
 

Even though there are plenty of distractions around the holiday season, let’s not forget the victims of Hurricane Sandy who are still reassembling their lives in the storm’s aftermath. The Corporation for National and Community Service joins other federal and national agencies in the recovery effort with a commitment that’s used by our Disaster Services Unit: “You can count on us to respond fast and stay last.”
 

As the Hurricane Sandy recovery continues, the Serve.gov blog will highlight some of the best stories from the field. Today we have a personal reflection from AmeriCorps NCCC member Nicole Wojcik, who is serving with team Delta 10 and staffing a donation hotline in New Jersey.
 

As the Hurricane Sandy recovery continues, more stories are starting to come in about our national service members' experiences in the field. Whether they traveled across the country to affected areas or collected much-needed items far from the storm's path, their work continues to inspire.
 

A day designed around the idea of “thanks” is a natural for those who want to give back. And as Americans have opened their hearts and wallets to disasters like the Hurricane Sandy relief and recovery efforts, there are many other ways to show thanks by helping those in need this holiday season.
 

Last week, I led a delegation to New York and New Jersey to visit sites providing disaster assistance to people affected by Hurricane Sandy. Throughout the day, we were joined by local elected officials who are working hard to meet the needs of their communities. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, New Jersey Lt. Gov. and Secretary of State Kim Guadagno, U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), and New York City Councilman Brad Lander each joined us for a portion of the day.
 

President Obama visited with members of FEMA Corps, a unit of AmeriCorps NCCC, during his November 15 trip to survey the Hurricane Sandy damage in Staten Island, NY. A small contingent of the 428 FEMA Corps members currently serving in New York and New Jersey met the President at a Staten Island Disaster Recovery Center as the scene was broadcast across the nation.
 

The work continues on the Hurricane Sandy recovery front in New York, New Jersey, and across the Northeast as approximately 1,200 national service members have been deployed in response to the storm. Read on to see some of the stories about service and volunteerism in the superstorm’s wake.
 

Today's Wordless Wednesday focuses on national service in action as members and volunteers from the Corporation for National and Community Service programs join others working on the Hurricane Sandy recovery.
 

Many members of the national service family are hard at work in areas stricken by Hurricane Sandy, providing services that keep the recovery moving forward. Check out some scenes from the work we captured recently in New York and New Jersey.
 

Many of our AmeriCorps members have made cross-country treks to help with the Hurricane Sandy recovery and cleanup. Now one group from the Washington Conservation Corps has had its transition from working on trail projects to helping at a Brooklyn emergency shelter chronicled in The New York Times.
 

Community HealthCorps Navigators serving through the Institute for Family Health (IFH) have been involved in Hurricane Sandy Relief in a variety of areas in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Jersey City.
 

A six-member crew from the AmeriCorps Cape Cod Fire Corps is currently in the middle of a one-week deployment to the Fort Wadsworth area in Staten Island, NY.
 

As the recovery efforts for Hurricane Sandy continue, the Corporation for National and Community Service will publish a digest of news items that underscore the response of national service participants across the nation. Visit this page regularly to see the latest updates.
 

The devastation left behind by Hurricane Sandy is still being assessed, but there are several ways you can help those affected by storm. The information below is compiled from FEMA. We will update this post with the most up-to-date and location-specific information as it becomes available. Be sure to check back regularly.
 

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. While the worst of the weather is beyond some areas on the East Coast, Sandy remains a very large storm system that continues to pose life-threatening hazards for coastal and inland areas including high winds, heavy rains, dangerous storm surge and flash flooding, and snow and cold weather hazards in some areas.
 

As of Friday, November 2, 877 national service members are in affected states, with an additional 900 more on standby for assignments. These members include AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and 41 of 42 FEMA Corps teams.
 

Hurricane Katrina taught us a difficult lesson about the damage, death, and destruction a massive storm can cause. If there’s one thing we should take from that experience it is that these weather systems are not something to underestimate; you have to be prepared for the worst – especially if you live in storm-prone areas.
 

AmeriCorps and Senior Corps teams are responding in four Gulf Coast states as Hurricane Isaac moves toward the region.
 

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you'll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for arealemergency.