Dear Voices Community,
On Monday, President Trump sent to Congress his FY19 budget. The White House is once again proposing to eliminate CNCS. Their budget includes just $123M to shut down agency operations and start to close out their grants programs. You can read the White House explanation for the agency elimination here. Voices for National Service issued a statement in opposition to the budget proposal, and we’re calling on everyone to make their voice heard in support of AmeriCorps and Senior Corps. Please send an email to Congress using our easy online tool. Or share one of our posts on Facebook and on Twitter .
Thanks to everyone who joined in person and via social media for our 15th annual Friends of National Service Awards on Tuesday evening! We welcomed more than 600 attendees to the event, and our hashtag, #FriendsofService, was trending that evening.
Our award winners were also active on social media posting about their awards and reinforcing their support for national service. Please take a second to RT or like the twitter posts from Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), Rep. Pramila Jaypal (D-WA), Rep. Billy Long (R-MO), Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser (R-LA).
If you visit the Voices for National Service YouTube channel – you can see all the introductory videos we produced for our honorees. Many of you contributed pictures for these videos. Thank you for your help!
Pictures from the evening are available here, and you can see the full list of honorees here.
Below are more highlights from the past week:
- Check out this editorial from the Joplin Globe in response to the President’s proposed elimination of CNCS: Our View: Don’t Gut Service Programs. Thanks to John Albright from the Missouri National Service Coalition for his fantastic outreach to state press in response to the President’s budget. The Joplin Globe also published an article about our Friends of National Service Awards. Let’s continue to build on this momentum to cultivate more press champions of national service!
- Thanks to Points of Light, Teach For America, City Year, Service Year Alliance, and others who issued press statements responding to the President’s budget. It’s vital that we have a chorus of voices calling for expanding investments, not cutting them.
- Thanks to FoodCorps and the Service Year Alliance for asking their networks to email Congress in opposition to the President’s FY19 budget.
- The Corps Network, the State Service Commissions, and Habitat for Humanity were all on Capitol Hill this week calling on Congress to fund national service. The Columbian – a Washington state newspaper – reported on the meetings that Evergreen Habitat for Humanity had with Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell in Washington, D.C.
- Thanks to Carol Davies of HandsOn Central California for submitting this Letter to the Editor in the Fresno Bee highlighting the harm of potential cuts in California: Trump Budget Cripples Valley’s Food Bank, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity.
- AmeriCorps members in Colorado are stepping up to combat the opioid epidemic, and their important work is featured in the Valley Courier. Thanks to our friends in Colorado who are helping create the Colorado AmeriCorps Community Opioid Response Program.
- This week, Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, in partnership with Ohio’s public universities announced OhioCorps, a program that will help high schoolers affected by the opioid epidemic. Speaker Rosenberger is hoping to leverage AmeriCorps funding for this program, which is a testament to the power of national service to help address some of the nation’s most pressing issues.
- The Christian Science Monitor’s editorial board recognized the value of national service and the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, a new federal entity working to find and review recommendations on how to increase participation in service across the country.
- AmeriCorps VISTA member Stacey Steed with the Washington County Homeless Project in Marietta, OH is making a difference in the lives of families facing tough choices between paying bills and doing laundry. Thanks to Stacey and supporters from RSVP at the O’Neill Center for creating the Laundry Project!