Full-time volunteers make difference in community

By Isabelle Altman
The (Columbus, MS) Commercial Dispatch

Columbus, Miss. (AP) — Four years ago, Tina Sweeten-Lunsford, executive director of the Columbus Arts Council, had a problem. She had a volunteer working 40 hours a week ... for no pay.

She reached out to AmeriCorps VISTA, a national program that pays volunteers a stipend to work full-time with nonprofits, often in impoverished areas. Representatives of the program told her she could get a grant for 10 positions in the area, not just one.

That's how nonprofits in the Golden Triangle got full-time volunteers to help with everything from recruiting part-time volunteers to writing grants and networking with other nonprofits, all for a small monthly stipend.

It's also how Aislinn Noltie became a VISTA volunteer for CAC.

"It's hard work," she said. "It's not an easy job but it is fulfilling. Being able to help your fellow community members is a really good feeling."

Now Noltie is the VISTA coordinator in the Golden Triangle. She works with VISTA volunteers, recruiting them for the program and training them once they've found positions at nonprofits.

VISTA volunteers get many benefits from AmeriCorps that regular minimum wage employees don't, such as grants to help pay for education and childcare. People receiving disability and other government benefits can also volunteer. The only requirements nationally are that volunteers are at least 18 and are citizens or legal residents, though Noltie also requires area volunteers have at least a high school diploma or GED.

CAC's VISTA volunteer this year is Johanna Jones-Owusu, a local 18-year-old who began volunteering with the Arts Council after she and her mother moved from Indiana a few years ago. Now she helps organize events and recruit teachers for arts classes. She plans to use the skills and some of the education benefits she'll receive for her own education at East Mississippi Community College.

"VISTAs in general, I think they make a lot more impact than we know," Jones-Owusu said. "You don't know who they are necessarily. You just think they're a paid person for a job."

Since so many VISTA volunteers are sent to work with extremely poor people in impoverished areas, their monthly stipend keeps them at the poverty level themselves. In Columbus, it amounts to about $11,000 a year.

The idea is to help volunteers identify with the people they're helping, Noltie said.

"It brings you face-to-face with poverty," Executive Director of Contact Helpline Katrina Sunivelle said.

Sunivelle was a VISTA volunteer for Contact Helpline before she became executive director. The Columbus nonprofit answers crisis calls from people feeling suicidal, needing to get away from their homes or just needing someone to talk about problems they're facing when they feel they have nowhere else to turn.

She had been with the nonprofit five years and worked as an office manager in 2011 when funding was cut and Contact Helpline could no longer pay her salary. At the time, Sweeten-Lunsford was recruiting for local volunteers for the VISTA program, so Sunivelle applied.

During the year she served, she helped revamp Contact Helpline's training program for volunteers. As a result, training is more in-depth and interactive, and pushes to reach specific marginalized groups like the LGBT community and veterans.

Now as executive director, Sunivelle works with new VISTA volunteers. Having been one herself, she is able to better relate with them.

"I know the importance of what they can bring to an organization when you give them that freedom to improve the organization," she said. "You really can see the results. I've seen the results."

Each VISTA focuses on a particular area for the organization. The last VISTA developed volunteer pamphlets and Power Point presentations for volunteer orientations. One of the current VISTA volunteers, Etricia Easley, focuses on Contact Helpline's elderly and disabled outreach.

Easley became a VISTA volunteer in November 2015. Before then, she volunteered with Contact Helpline off-and-on.

"I've always like volunteering...doing work to help someone else," she said. "So I called Ms. Katrina ... I said 'I can't take staying in this house.'"

In the 10 months she's volunteered as a VISTA, she's learned more about networking and writing grants. It's been useful, she said, because Contact Helpline has to know what other nonprofits in the area do.

But her favorite thing about it is still working with clients. A month after starting as a VISTA volunteer, she was delivering Christmas gifts to elderly and disabled clients. Her first delivery was to Hamilton on a rainy day. When she arrived at the client's house, a woman was standing out on the front porch waiting for Easley.

"I remember getting out of my car," Easley said. "It was pouring down rain. She was just standing there, but she had this smile on her face."

When Easley walked up to her, the client gave her a huge hug.

"She said... 'Ya'll just don't know the difference that you make. Sometimes this is the only gift that people in my situation might even receive,'" Easley said.

"Right then I knew, 'OK, this is where I'm supposed to be," she added. "I'm supposed to be making a difference in somebody's life."

Noltie is accepting applications from anyone wishing to be a VISTA volunteer until Oct. 20. For more information on the application process or the program, email her at aislinn.columbusarts@gmail.com.

Information from: The Commercial Dispatch, http://www.cdispatch.com

The Gayly – October 9, 2016 @ 12:30 p.m.