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.
Bethany Ridgeway of Santa Anna, Texas 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. Ridgeway began her current term of service in Fall 2021 at the Pacific Region campus in Sacramento, Calif. and will graduate from the program in June 2022. She also served with AmeriCorps NCCC in the Southern Region in 2020-2021.
As a Corps Member, Ridgeway is completing a series of different six- to 12-week-long service projects in different places across her assigned region as part of a 5- to 12-person team. Projects support disaster relief, the environment, infrastructure improvement, energy conservation, and urban and rural development. More information about her specific service projects is available upon request.
Before joining the NCCC, Ridgeway graduated from Coleman High School in 2020. “I first decided to join AmeriCorps because I was unsure of what I wanted to do after I graduated high school. When I heard about AmeriCorps NCCC, I knew it was the perfect opportunity for me to experience diversity and to help communities in need. So, after completing an amazing year in the Southern Region I felt compelled to continue my service and join the Pacific Region,” she 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.
