Is there some way Community Engagement can help you to remain engaged in your communities after you graduate from Simpson College? If you continue to live in the area, we would love to help you find a way to involve yourself in the community through existing programs or even to start a new initiative. If you are interested in spending time after graduation in a public service career, you might be interested in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness. There are also a number of ways for you to offer a year or two of volunteer service, here are just a few:
AMERICORPS
Mission: AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs that engage more than 50,000 Americans each year in intensive service to meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. AmeriCorps members serve through more than 2,100 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based organizations. They tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, teach computer skills, clean parks and streams, run after-school programs, and help communities respond to disasters. Created in 1993, AmeriCorps is part of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which also oversees Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. Together these programs engage more than 2 million Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service each year.
Contact: Americorps Organization
JESUIT VOLUNTEER CORPS
Mission: Since 1956 more than 7,000 members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps have committed themselves to working with the poor. They have put off graduate school and turned down job offers in order to offer alternatives to people who have few options. Jesuit Volunteers serve the homeless, the unemployed, refugees, people with AIDS, the elderly, street youth, abused women and children, the mentally ill and the developmentally disabled. JVC has become the largest Catholic lay volunteer program in the country.
Contact: Jesuit Volunteer Corps
LUTHERAN VOLUNTEER CORPS
Mission: The Lutheran Volunteer Corps is a year-long, domestic, stipended volunteer program. The tenets of LVC are to live simply, to live in intentional community and to work for social justice while exploring your faith. More than 1,300 adults have volunteered a year with LVC since its beginning in 1979. The Lutheran Volunteer Corps continues to be a life-changing experience for many.
Contact: Lutheran Volunteer Corps
MISSION INTERN PROGRAM (UNITED METHODIST CHURCH)
Mission: The General Board of Global Ministries’ Mission Intern Program is a three-year program offering young adults (ages 20-30) opportunities to develop leadership skills as they participate with faith-based communities around the world in the search for peace with justice.
The focus of the Mission Intern Program is leadership development and social justice. The program involves a 15-month international placement and a 16-month US placement. Orientation and training takes place at the beginning of the three-year term. A mid-term regrouping event takes place between the international and US assignments.
Contact: Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church
PEACE CORPS
Mission: The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then-Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.
Since that time, more than 170,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have been invited by 136 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education, information technology, and environmental preservation.
Contact: Peace Corp
TEACH FOR AMERICA
Mission: Teach for America works to eliminate educational inequity by recruiting outstanding, recent college graduates from all majors and careers interests to two years of teaching in urban and rural schools across the nation. They invest in the training and professional development necessary to ensure the recruits’ success as teachers in the most impoverished communities. The teachers, also called corps members, exceed traditional expectations and lead their students to significant academic achievement, overcoming the challenges of poverty despite the capacity of the school system.
Contact: Teach for America