Personally, I think the expansion of AmeriCorps would rock. I served as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer a few years ago, and it was an invaluable experience.

But this would also be good news for whole the Oregon Trail Chapter. You may not know this, but we administer a pretty extensive AmeriCorps program here. We have:

– An AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Emergency Services. (You may know her as blogger Kate.)

– 15 more VISTAs around the state.

– An awesome quartet of Oregon State Service Corps volunteers who travel to schools and businesses teaching emergency preparedness. (Among these is blogger Nate.)

– One brave OSSC volunteer on the coast working with our Clatsop Service Center. (And, yep you guessed it, Nicole is now blogging).

– And more than 50 other OSSC volunteers serving in non-profits throughout the state.

If you want to learn more about the next Presidential administration’s plans for national service, they have a page dedicated to the issue on their brand new site.

One more note: Having just come from a great diversity workshop today, I’m particularly struck by this quote from Mrs. Obama, “The notion of AmeriCorps is that service doesn’t have a degree or race or an age on it… the Harvard Law student is going to learn from the 18-year-old with the GED. And if you’re on a team together and you have to sit together and work on a project, then that’s going to hammer that home.”

Okay, that’s it folks. I’ll see you next Tuesday! (I’m going on a short vacation to a vegetarian chili cook-off. Yum!)