Clara Barton AmeriCorps*VISTA Corps (CBVC)

What is VISTA?
What are VISTA's Program Priorities?
Who are AmeriCorps*VISTA members?
How do CBVC members serve?
CBVC Member Benefits
Sponsor Eligibility Requirements
General Guidelines
Apply to be a sponsor

How do CBVC members serve?
Members are placed at nonprofit organizations, community or faith-based organizations, government agencies and schools to address community needs through capacity building initiatives. Sponsoring agencies develop the project, recruit the member and provide daily guidance and supervision. The majority of the member's time is spent serving with the sponsoring agency. Members attend AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA sponsored training's and activities, become trained disaster responders (as appropriate), participate in National Service Days, and attend quarterly regional member meetings.

Members Build Capacity and Sustainability
In determining whether AmeriCorps*VISTA is the right match for a given organization's needs, think about the kinds of activities members will be expected to perform. The role of the AmeriCorps*VISTA member is primarily to build the capacity and sustainability of the project and community, and ultimately to work themselves out of a position. Below are some examples of the natural progression in the types of service performed by an AmeriCorps*VISTA member. While direct service and capacity-building activities are both integral strategies for effective national service programs, AmeriCorps*VISTA members primarily perform indirect service rather than direct service such as tutoring children, building houses, or delivering meals to homebound seniors.

To ensure we help expand the long-term capacity of our program partners, projects should be built around a three-year timeline for completion. If AmeriCorps*VISTA is not the appropriate vehicle for meeting an organization's needs, consider the Oregon State Service Corps AmeriCorps program. For more information on this program please contact or OSSC office and talk with Jennifer Sedell, AmeriCorps Specialist at (503) 528-5636.

AmeriCorps* VISTA guiding principles:

• Anti-Poverty Focus -- Any private nonprofit organization, educational institution, tribal or public agency with a program idea that is poverty-related in scope can apply for an AmeriCorps* VISTA project. The project's goal should address helping individuals and communities out of poverty rather than focusing on making poverty more tolerable.
• Community Empowerment -- Organizations must ensure that each project engages residents of the low-income community in planning, developing, and implementing the project to ensure that it is responsive and relevant to low-income residents' ownership and self-help initiatives tapping inherent community strengths.
• Capacity-Building -- AmeriCorps* VISTA achieves its mission by assigning members to or ganizations in or der to expand the ability of those or ganizations to fight poverty. Through activities such as fundraising, volunteer recruitment and management, outreach, and collab or ative development, AmeriCorps* VISTA members mobilize community resources and increase the capacity of or ganizations to better address the needs of the communities in which they serve.
• Sustainable Solutions -- AmeriCorps* VISTA members are people power to help organizations address a new or existing program area related to their mission. However, it is crucial to the concept of local self-reliance that or ganizations plan f or the eventual phase out of AmeriCorps* VISTA members and the abs or ption of their functions by other facets of the or ganization or community. AmeriCorps* VISTA projects are encouraged to develop a long-term sustainability plan beginning in year one of the project's existence.