Ionia County AmeriCorps takes part in at least four major projects each year. Some of these include Make A Difference Day, a statewide ‘Signature Service Project,’ a monthly reading project called F.R.E.E.
(Families Read Every Evening) Movie, the Water Festival (a water ecology/education program open to youth in all the 5th grades in Ionia County), and Promise Daze (free summer camp for about 100 youth in grades 5 through 8).
Russ Mawby Signature Service Project – Habitat for Humanity
The Signature Service Project is an annual event held in various areas throughout Michigan. In June 2003 Ionia County AmeriCorps members helped build homes, plant gardens, and clean parks in Battle Creek with the Habitat for Humanity program. In June 2004 they assisted Habitat for Humanity in qualifying for the 2005 Jimmy Carter Work Project by completing a blitz build of 4 houses in Benton Harbor. In June of 2005, Jimmy Carter will come and oversee the building of over 400 new homes in a single week throughout the state. Mr. Carter will be coming to Benton Harbor and Detroit to dedicate the newly built homes.
A former Ionia County AmeriCorps member, Sharon, won a contest with her design for the 2003 project tee shirts. Sharon and another team member, Pam, model the shirt in the photo on the left.
The lower picture on the left shows the combined effort it takes to ‘raise a roof’ on a new storage building for one of the homes. AmeriCorps members from across Michigan helped these projects to be such a great successes. In 2003 the members were housed at a military base, and 2004 they were housed on a college campus. This is truly a wonderful opportunity to get to know others as they serve in a noteworthy project.
The Water Festival
Each year the Ionia County AmeriCorps members assist 8th grade students from Palo Community Schools in teaching 5th grade students from throughout the county at an ecology event called the Water Festival. In their schools the 8th graders study the properties of water and about water life. The AmeriCorps members mentor the 8th grade “teachers” on the day they teach the 5th grade students.
The 5th grade students rotate in small groups through interactive stations directed by the 8th graders and the AmeriCorps members. This project is a partnership among the 6 local school districts, rural schools, private schools, Bertha Brock Park, the Ionia Conservation District, the County of Ionia, and the AmeriCorps team.
Among the activities are guessing the students’ weight in water (top photo on left), writing poems about water, and determining the proportion of water on the earth surface (bottom photo on left). Participants have great fun as they learn about ecology.
F.R.E.E. Movie
Ionia County AmeriCorps members partner with elementary schools, pre-schools, home schoolers, and the Ionia Theatre to form the F.R.E.E. (Families Reading Every Evening) Movie project. Calendars are given to children in preschool through upper elementary throughout all 6 school districts, Head Start, preschools, private schools, and home schooled youth in Ionia County.
The children track the number of times they read with a family member outside of school. They may use the completed calendars as passes for their entire family to go to a movie at the Ionia Theatre free of charge. The children are encouraged to define their families as whomever they believe are their support people. Thus, special friends, mentors, foster families, grandparents, and other relatives may attend with the children. The AmeriCorps members staff the theater (concessions, greeter, tickets, seating, clean-up, stocking).
There are two showings for F.R.E.E. Movie each month on the third Saturday. Ionia Theatre’s generous partnership in this project is noteworthy and greatly appreciated.
Make A Difference Day
An AmeriCorps member serving in Jean K. Harker Middle School in Saranac coordinated a Make A Difference Day project. This “Rake and Run” project included 21 students (ages preschool to early teenage) from the elementary and middle schools in Saranac. There were parents, AmeriCorps members, and a teacher serving with the students as they filled 100 large trash bags with leaves from 7 different yards of senior citizens in the community.
The rakers celebrated afterward with a lunch of chips and hot dogs complete with their coveted purple M&M’s provided by the caterer of the meal, their principal.
As it can happen when holding an outdoor event in Michigan, the weather that day proved to be drizzly and chilly, but everyone armed with rakes and trash bags had a great time.
Community members were very pleased with the outcome of the event. One senior citizen whose lawn was raked said “It is wonderful to see adults and kids working together to help this community.”
