Answering the Call to Service
Commissioner Benepe with Parks & Recreation’s VISTAs.
Earlier this year, Mayor Bloomberg launched NYC Service to inspire volunteerism across the City. The NYC Civic Corps was created in partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service and its AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program. The AmeriCorps VISTA program is a national service program designed specifically to fight poverty. Volunteers serve for a year at a nonprofit organization or local government agency, working to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses, strengthen community groups, and much more. They receive training on how to develop sustainable volunteer opportunities and programs so their efforts have a lasting impact. The NYC Civic Corps is the largest type of VISTA program, and the first program in the nation to specifically address a municipality's need for sustainable-impact volunteer programs. Eight VISTAs have been placed at Parks as part of the NYC Civic Corps to work on projects in Central Recreation and MillionTreesNYC.
Kate Rimsky, Alessandra Szulc, and Lindsay Tague are Central Recreation’s VISTAs. They are charged with the task of creating sustainable volunteer opportunities and programs. Kate comes from Port Washington and went to Union College in Schenectady, NY, where she majored in art history and English. Kate is “happy to be given the opportunity to hopefully improve volunteer participation at the recreation centers.” Alessandra, or Alex as she likes to be called, is a native New Yorker who studied medieval history at Johns Hopkins University and was drawn to the health aspect of the program. “I am looking forward to expanding health initiatives in the recreation centers through volunteer programming in areas such as fitness and nutrition,” she says.. Lindsay, who also went to Johns Hopkins and received her degree in public health, is excited about creating opportunities for volunteers across the city. Lindsay says, “I love working with Recreation and have enjoyed seeing many of the recreation centers that make up the Parks department!”
Gina Baldwin, Karina E. Cuevas, Emily-Bell Dinan, Ethan Mulligan, and Paula Silverman are MillionTreesNYC’s VISTAs. Their primary mission is to create a tree stewardship program. Gina relocated to New York City after receiving her degree in French and political science from the University of Idaho. Working with the outreach program at the Queens Botanical Garden, Gina wants to “energize folks in Queens to contribute to the greening of their communities and get to know each other better in the process.” This is Karina’s second time being a VISTA; she belonged to the first class in 2003 when she worked with the American Red Cross in Greater New York as a community outreach/emergency preparedness coordinator. Karina feels lucky to be placed with the MillionTreesNYC program this time and says she hopes it will be a model program for other urban areas to follow. A Queens native, Emily-Bell has been involved with community gardening since childhood and studied political science, history and Chinese at Hunter College. Emily-Bell is working with MillionTreesNYC to “encourage stewardship, community greening, and ensure that New York step into a more sustainable tomorrow.” Ethan was inspired to become a VISTA by President Obama’s call to service after graduating from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A. in political science. He believes “going green” is key to America’s economic future and is eager to develop a stewardship program to help New Yorkers learn how to care for the City’s trees. After ten years of being an editor at Parade Magazine, Paula was inspired to service by Mayor Bloomberg. She says, “it’s great to feel like you are making a tangible, quantifiable difference in combating pollution and climate change and contributing to the beautification of the city through the MillionTreesNYC campaign.”
Written by Adrienne Meryl-Stern
QUOTATION FOR THE DAY
“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
Toni Morrison
(1931 - )