AmeriCorps Week 2022 is March 13-19, an opportunity to recognize the service of the 250,000 Americans engaged in AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps Seniors programs annually. These dedicated citizens help communities across the nation, ensuring students stay on track to graduate, combatting hunger and homelessness, responding to natural disasters, fighting the opioid epidemic, helping seniors live independently, supporting veterans and military families, and much more.
Moss Gray of Tullahoma is currently serving with the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), a 10-month, full-time AmeriCorps program. Founded in 1994, AmeriCorps NCCC strengthens communities and develops its young adult members into leaders.
AmeriCorps NCCC operates out of four campuses, which serve as regional administrative hubs and training facilities. These campuses, located in Sacramento, Calif., Aurora, Colo., Vinton, Iowa, and Vicksburg, Miss., train and deploy new classes of members several times each year. Gray began his term of service in fall 2021 at the Southwest Region campus in Aurora, Colo., and will graduate from the program this August.
As a Corps Member, Gray is completing a series of different six- to 12-week-long service projects in different places across his assigned region as part of a five- to 12-person team. Projects support disaster relief, the environment, infrastructure improvement, energy conservation and urban and rural development.
Before joining the NCCC, Gray attended TN Virtual Academy.
“My love for helping people beautifully coupled with my love of traveling made this seem the best way to start my life as a young adult,” he said.
AmeriCorps NCCC members complete at least 1,700 hours of service during the 10-month program. Corps Members are all 18 to 26 years old; there is no upper age limit for Team Leaders. In exchange for their service, all program participants receive $6,495 to help pay for college. Other benefits include a small living stipend, room and board, leadership development, team building skills and the knowledge that, through active citizenship, they can indeed make a difference. AmeriCorps NCCC is one of hundreds of programs administered by the larger AmeriCorps agency. For more information about AmeriCorps NCCC, visit the website at www.americorps.gov/nccc.
