PORT TOWNSEND — The four Olympic Community Action Programs’ AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers help the agency for the same reason — to help people.
This year’s VISTA volunteers at the Port Townsend OlyCAP offices work at everything from volunteer recruitment to thrift shop marketing, public outreach and local food resource development.
“It gives American citizens an opportunity to contribute their skills and resources to end poverty in the United States,” said Peter Bedame, operations coordinator for Community Support Service at OlyCap.
VISTA, or Volunteers in Service to America, allows people with knowledge and professional skills to help the disadvantaged.
The national service program designed specifically to fight poverty was founded in 1965 as Volunteers in Service to America and incorporated into the AmeriCorps network of programs in 1993.
VISTA members commit to serve full time for a year at a nonprofit organization or local government agency such as OlyCAP.
Given their skill set, they work to fight illiteracy, improve health services, create businesses and strengthen community groups.
The program takes people with highly valued assets and places them with organizations that can’t afford such assets.
Four on board this year
This year’s VISTA volunteers are Bill Dwyer, RSVP volunteer and work site recruiter; Cristine Annice, Thrift Shoppe marketing and volunteer coordinator; Arnold Phommavong, outreach coordinator; and Leora Stein, local food resource developer.
Dwyer, a retiree and musician who helps coordinate some of the more than 1,000 RSVP volunteers across the North Olympic Peninsula, said OlyCAP is always looking for more Retired Senior Volunteer Program volunteers, who do everything from helping at festivals to coaching start-up business owners.
“We are trying to get more volunteers into government programs,” such as the state Department of Health and Human Services, which has seen budget and state cutbacks, he said.
The program sends RSVP tutors to help students learn.
Annice said the OlyCAP Thrift Shoppe 10632 Rhody Drive (state Highway 19) in Port Hadlock is also in need of volunteers.
The shop has changed its sale day to the first Saturday of the month to compete with other thrift stores in the county.
The store’s staff, through OlyCAP’s Community Jobs Program, trains up to five in need of job skills how a retail operation works. They also learn display marketing and housekeeping.
“We hope to have more events throughout the years,” Annice said of the Thrift Shoppe, which was remodeled in the past two years and has a year-old community garden growing behind it that teaches people food-growing skills.
A community billboard has been installed at the shop, made of recycled windows, and the store will soon have shopping bags made out of used linen.
“That’s just a start of things to come,” said Annice, a Washington State University advertising graduate who hopes to elevate the shop’s presence in the county.
Phommavong is responsible for producing information fliers about programs.
Sharing information
Explaining his job, he said he finds “how best to get information out to the community.”
A sociology graduate from the University of Kansas, Phommavong said he got involved with low-income social issues, and is learning new skills with a nonprofit agency.
He hopes to see if OlyCAP can use social media to network the agency’s message, and hopes to create a volunteer database of skills.
A sociology graduate from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Stein said she worked in community farming there and is now applying that experience in Jefferson County’s local food program for low-income people.
So far she has helped people get in touch with the Port Townsend Farmers Market and the market’s food stamp program to encourage the needy to buy healthy foods.
“I heard AmeriCorps was a great thing to do, and this position is exactly what I hoped to do,” Stein said, adding she works part time for the Washington State University Extension Port Hadlock Food & Farm Program.
“There is so much passion about local food.”
Ken Dane, OlyCAP director of development, said VISTA volunteers “have brought a lot of energy and efforts to their positions.
“They can bring lasting change to the area.”
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.