AmeriCorps VISTA
In partnership with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), The Campus Compact AmeriCorps VISTA Program mobilizes higher education to improve education outcomes for students who live in poverty. Our host site’s VISTA projects are developed in accordance with AmeriCorps VISTA’s core principles: an antipoverty focus, community empowerment, sustainable solutions and capacity building. Campus Compact, through the AmeriCorps VISTA program, seeks to activate higher education institutions and their partners to work together to make an impact on poverty in their local communities. VISTA members are leveraged to build capacity at higher education institutions and/or partnerships between higher education and their school and community-based non-profit partners that directly impact economically disadvantaged individuals.
Program Focus Areas:
In alignment with the mission and goals of Campus Compact, our AmeriCorps VISTA program concentrates its capacity building efforts in the following education-based focus areas:
Within this priority area Campus Compact supports projects that leverage a VISTA member to enhance access to services and resources that contribute to improved educational outcomes for economically disadvantaged children and youth. AmeriCorps VISTA programs within this priority target new project development in communities with large concentrations of low-income students (e.g., Title 1 schools).
Within this priority area Campus Compact supports projects that leverage a VISTA member to enhance access to services and resources that contribute to improved economic success outcomes for economically disadvantaged individuals specifically in the areas of financial literacy and workforce development.
Within this priority area Campus Compact supports projects that leverage a VISTA member to enhance access to services and resources that contribute to improved food security or opioid addiction prevention/intervention/recovery for economically disadvantaged individuals.
Within this priority area, Campus Compact supports projects that leverage a VISTA member to build capacity for projects that focus on education, economic opportunity and healthy futures for low-income veterans and military families.
Within this priority area Campus Compact supports projects that leverage a VISTA member to build capacity for education and training in environmental stewardship and/or environmentally conscious practices for low-income individuals in low-income communities. This includes education and training programs and service learning.
About AmeriCorps VISTA
Founded in 1965, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) is a federal anti-poverty program designed to provide needed resources to nonprofit organizations and public agencies to increase their capacity to lift communities out of poverty. In 1993, VISTA was incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of national service programs, housed at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
AmeriCorps VISTA supports efforts to alleviate poverty by providing opportunities for its full-time service to create or expand programs designed to empower individuals and communities in overcoming poverty. To learn more about AmeriCorps VISTA, click here.
