The AmeriCorps Job Ready Project will place 15 full-time AmeriCorps members at 12 community sites throughout the region to increase career awareness, job readiness and career exploration skills of north central Massachusetts residents. The project will address the region’s high unemployment rate through job preparedness and career exploration activities designed to assist three distinct target populations: high school and middle school students; college students and alumni; and the economically disadvantaged unemployed, those who are underemployed, and dislocated workers.
If you have any questions about the program or the application, please contact:
Ms. Fagan Forhan
Director, Center for Democracy and Humanity
Mount Wachusett Community College
444 Green Street, Room 279
Gardner, MA 01440
Telephone: 978-630-9595
Email: fforhan@mwcc.mass.edu
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. John Chetro-Szivos
Professor of Communication Media
FitchburgState University 160 Pearl Street
Fitchburg, MA 01420
Telephone: 978-665-3261
Email: jchetro@fitchburgstate.edu
|
Questions about AmeriCorps Job Ready can also be directed to:
Shelley Errington Nicholson our Assistant Director at 978-630-9219.
Why Become an AmeriCorps Member?
AmeriCorps members serve in a network of more than 1,000 local and national nonprofit organizations throughout the country to improve communities and better the lives of people. Since 1994, more than 150,000 members have served in communities like ours. Members work on different issues and in different communities on locally identified issues. They are all tied together by being AmeriCorps members and focusing on meeting community needs.
Adventure
AmeriCorps is an adventure—a way to put idealism into action. AmeriCorps lets people live up to their dreams—to help children learn, protect the environment, or bring needed services to a low-income community. There are opportunities in AmeriCorps for anyone who’s willing to do something special, something unique, something exciting.
Experience
AmeriCorps is a real-life education and work experience wrapped into one. Members learn teamwork, communication, responsibility, and other essential skills that will help them for the rest of their lives. And they gain the personal satisfaction of taking on a challenge and seeing results.
Benefits
AmeriCorps Job Ready Program members earn a living allowance of $12,500, health insurance, student loan deferment, education and training. After they complete a full-time service term (usually 10 to 12 months) they receive a $5,305 education award to help pay for college, graduate school, vocational training, or to pay student loans.
Strengthening Communities
As an AmeriCorps member, you will set an example of caring and community spirit that America needs. Our country has difficult problems and big challenges—too many children are falling behind their classmates; many families don’t feel safe in their own neighborhoods; and others can’t afford decent housing or health care. During your term of service as an AmeriCorps member, you won’t solve these problems single-handedly—but you will play an important role in bringing communities together to help solve these and other problems. You are carrying on an American tradition of service that dates back to our nations’ founding more than 200 years ago. Americans have always found ways to help others and make our nation stronger—through military service, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Peace Corps, and in other ways. The 250,000-plus Americans who have served in AmeriCorps have done what other generations of Americans have done before—taken an active role as citizens to make a difference for themselves and others. What happens next is up to you.
AA/EEO and Reasonable Accommodation
AmeriCorps Job Ready Program is available to all without regard to race, color, national origin, disability, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, or other non-merit factors. Anyone believing he or she has been subjected to discrimination on these grounds by the AmeriCorps Job Ready Program may contact Mount Wachusetts Department of Human Resources at (978) 632-6600. Reasonable accommodation, including the provision of informational material in an alternative format, will be provided for qualified individuals with disabilities upon request.
This program is made possible through a federal grant, funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service through Massachusetts Service Alliance.