The federal Corporation for National & Community Service has awarded three significant AmeriCorps grants to the City of Los Angeles and Youth Policy Institute, recruiting a new generation of volunteers and activists as part of YPI’s place-based approach to fighting poverty. The AmeriCorps Impact Suite will be used to measure, monitor and advance the grants’ impact.
Here are the basic stats on the new effort:
– 119 new full-time AmeriCorps members serving the youth and families of LA’s Promise Zone, Promise Neighborhood, and centers from Watts to Pacoima including a ground-breaking exchange with Philadelphia
– Three major federal grants totaling $4.4 million
– Thousands of kids and their families, getting the help they need to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty
Here’s a rundown of each program:
– For Promise Zones Americorps, lead agency Youth Policy Institute and Mayor Eric Garcetti have partnered with the City of Philadelphia in this first-ever joint grant between two federal Promise Zones. Fifty AmeriCorps members will be placed in schools in the LA and Philadelphia Promise Zones to serve as College and Career Ambassadors.
– The LA Promise Corps will integrate 54 AmeriCorps members into the Los Angeles Promise Neighborhood, placing full-time tutors in elementary, middle, and high schools in Pacoima and East Hollywood.
– And the 15 members of Operation AmeriCorps will connect the mayor’s office with youth and family centers across Los Angeles, including YPI’s Hollywood FamilySource Center, Pico Union Youth Center, and San Fernando Valley YouthSource Center. In this inaugural round of Operation AmeriCorps grants, the Corporation for National and Community Service selected a small group of cities with strategies that were place-based, coordinated with existing community organizations, and led to transformational outcomes.
At this time, America Learns is working with three Operation AmeriCorps programs.