I help at-risk kids. Trump hung them out to dry.
The devastating cost of Trump’s war on AmeriCorps.
By Ember from Home of the Brave
I served as an AmeriCorps member at an education-focused non-profit for nearly two years. I, like all my fellow (now former) AmeriCorps members, have a passion for helping others succeed. The agency was created in 1993 to engage Americans of all stripes in meaningful service projects that help improve their communities—camps, after-school programs, home-building, senior services, and more. With federal funding, ultimately it grew to have more than 500 employees and its work impacted millions of Americans every year.
Our service site provided after-school clubs and summer camp for youth in grades K-12, where we taught about our connection to nature, emotional regulation, and how to be a kind, humane person. All of us loved the kids we taught and took great care to make sure our clubs were safe, fun, and engaging places for them to be in. Recently, some of us had even made our plans for the last day of club with our students—plans that would never come to fruition.
On April 28, all of us watched as the management team at our service site quietly scrambled around the office only a couple hours before our programming was supposed to start for the day. Some of us realized what was happening right away, but I think it really only hit everyone when management had us all gather in one room. We were told that the Trump administration had cancelled the AmeriCorps grant for our site, and every other AmeriCorps service site in our state. We were told that all of us were released from our contracts, effective immediately, and that our clubs were canceled.
On a personal and professional level, this was devastating. We were all lucky enough to have a service site that was able to pay us a couple more times after the grant was pulled, even though we could no longer carry out the programming. Not every AmeriCorps member affected by the sudden funding cuts was as lucky, though. Over the past few months, I’ve heard from multiple former members who ended up in desperate situations due to a sudden lack of income.
It’s not only the AmeriCorps members who were affected, though. Every AmeriCorps service site provides an essential service for the community it’s in, whether that be education, disaster relief, outdoor maintenance, or any other act of service. The communities that were benefitting from those services lost support overnight with no warning, and the people who were benefitting from them suddenly no longer had that resource.
For my service site specifically, hundreds of at-risk youth were left with no after-school program. That not only deprived them of enriching and educational experiences, it also hurt their parents and guardians. We mainly served in low-income schools where, unfortunately, after-school programs were often the only childcare that many people could access. Taking that away from working adults with children puts them in a position where they have to choose between working to support their child, or not working so they can be home to watch them. This is especially difficult in low-income communities where a few missed hours of work can mean not being able to afford groceries for the week.
Recently, AmeriCorps was able to give the grants back to some of the service sites they were forced to pull from in April, including my former service site. The grants were only gone for a total of three months before they were given back, but the effects of this will last much longer. And for the kids who were relying on our services, three months can feel like a very long time. This has instilled a sense of fear and distrust in many people who were serving or wanted to serve with AmeriCorps. I expect many of them will never go back, and I expect the administration would be pleased with that outcome.
If you look at online forums such as r/AmeriCorps on Reddit, you can find plenty of heartbreaking stories about how the grant cuts have affected people’s decision to return to AmeriCorps programs, or to join them for the first time. Many people have chosen not to do so, and honestly, I don’t blame them. Doing service with AmeriCorps requires a deep well of love, passion, empathy, and energy to be poured into your program. It’s extremely discouraging to give your all to something, and love the work you do with all of your heart, just to have it completely dismantled overnight. It can feel like none of it ever even mattered.
I loved my time with AmeriCorps. Throughout my service, I learned so much about my community, myself, and what I’m capable of. I made many lifelong friends, and the memories we created together can never be replaced. AmeriCorps is a beautiful program. I fear that it will never exist in the same way again.
Ember is a former AmeriCorps employee and a participant in Home of the Brave, a new initiative highlighting the harms of Donald Trump’s second term.
Never give up on doing good for others just because of one truly evil man who should never have been put in a position of such great power in a land where doing good is encouraged to be second nature. Stay strong always.
These are the type of real life stories that should be shared with GOP. These are the real life consequences from being short sighted.
If this is truly an America First agenda than we should be doing more not less.