VISTA Leadering

Well, hello, all!

Welcome to the MCC*VISTA Leader blog.  I'm Liz Bogner and I'm the Michigan Campus Compact AmeriCoprs*VISTA Leader for the 2011-2012.  I've had my share of blogs before, but I've never made one to describe my service.  I'm not entirely sure what this will turn out to be, but I think it will come to be a great reflection tool for my service, as well as a way to show off all of the cool things that the MCC*VISTA cohort is doing.

So perhaps some background information is in order...

So, like I said, I'm a VISTA Leader for Michigan Campus Compact (MCC).  MCC is an agency within the Michigan Nonprofit Association which strives to promote a culture of service within its member campuses.  We're all about civic-engagement and service-learning at MCC.  I lead a group of 18 national service members to help campuses around the state of Michigan to build capacity and develop sustainable programming in order to build that culture of service on campuses.  MCC*VISTAs work in student life and volunteer centers on 12 campuses, as well as at the MCC office in Lansing doing a myriad of things including planning and organizing Alternative Spring Breaks, liaising between student groups and faculty to develop service-learning opportunities, organizing large-scale volunteer efforts, and much more.

Not only that, but as AmeriCorps*VISTA members, each MCC*VISTA has an obligation to addressing the issue of poverty in their communities.  The purpose of getting students, faculty, and staff involved in their community is so that they can become aware of the presence of poverty, hunger, homelessness and other similar issues, and use their skill set to address those issues.  In short, this arrangement is a win-win for everybody--low-income individuals get a leg-up out of poverty and students become more well-rounded human beings.  Cool, right?

So, what I'll be doing here is explaining what it's like to be on the administrative end of all of that--like a case study of "leadering" (not leading, leadering).  I'll tell you the successes, the failures, the morals of the story, and all of that good stuff.  For now though, I'm off.

-Liz-