Mysteries of the Education Award Revealed!
This man knows a thing or two about the AmeriCorps education award.
AmeriCorps members in NW Washington, you are invited to attend a free training on using your education award, hosted by the Northwest Washington Reading Corps, starring Bradon Rogers, AmeriCorps Education Award Extraordinnaire.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Friday, June 18th, 10:00 am* – 1:00 pm at the Burlington Public Library, 820 E. Washington Ave, Burlington, WA.
We at Serve Northwest Wa are very lucky because we live in the same state as Brandon Rogers, who knows a thing or two about the AmeriCorps education award.
Brandon served with the National Service Fellowship program in 2001, with the task of helping former AmeriCorps members better understand the financial aid process when applying to college. What he discovered, however, was that many AmeriCorps members were actually losing valuable education money and paying ridiculous taxes because of misunderstandings of how the education award should be used to pay for college tuition.
Thankfully for all of us, Brandon changed his project focus to help clarify the rules about the education award with financial aid offices across the country. His study also gave recommendations to the Department of Education and the National Service Trust on how to better communicate with each other so that former AmeriCorps members will be able to maximize their education awards.
If you have recently filled out a FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), then you have seen Brandon’s handiwork. Worksheet C on the FAFSA asks you to report any AmeriCorps income earned in the past tax year, including your living stipend and payments made with your education award. This amount of money automatically gets deducted from your income, which is the amount of money that determines how much aid you will get. So if you were an AmeriCorps member serving from January 1st to December 31st last year, ALL of your income would be deducted, and your contribution would be $0, thus qualifying you for the maximum amount of financial aid. Pretty cool, huh?
If it weren’t for Brandon’s findings and recommendations, many of us would continue to lose out on effectively paying for college. He’s a real AmeriCorps hero.
If you’d like to learn more about how to get the most out of your education award like paying for study abroad programs or buying a computer, then come to his workshop this Friday!
*Northwest Washington Reading Corps and ARRA AmeriCorps members will arrive at 9:00am for our regularly scheduled team meeting.
AmeriCorps: not just for youngsters
“Isn’t AmeriCorps only for young people?”
As an AmeriCorps supervisor, a big part of my job is clearing up myths about AmeriCorps. Over the years, I’ve discovered that there are rumors out there, like this one, which prevent people from applying. My hope, along with the rest of the staff in my office, is to debunk the myths of AmeriCorps service. We affectionally call these AmeriLore.
The biggest misconception about AmeriCorps is that only people between the ages of 18-25 can serve. Although programs exist which only hire 18-25 year olds (City Year, Earth Corps, Individual Placement) the majority of AmeriCorps positions welcomes people of all ages.
In my office, none of our AmeriCorps programs have upper age limits. For this I am thankful because we get a richness of education, skills, experience, and histories among our members.
Consider the team of 81 members we have at Serve Northwst WA: 36% of our members are over the age of 25. On the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act team (ARRA), 50% of the members are over the age of 30. True, the majority of members on our teams are in the 18-25 year old bracket, but our agency represents a wide range of ages. Our youngest member is 18 and our oldest is 66.
Although some of you more mature folks might cringe at the idea of working with someone fresh out of high school, and some of you folks fresh out of high school might think working with someone outside of your age range would be, like, totally horrible; but I’ve seen success in intergenerational working relationships. It is amazing what we can learn from each other. AmeriCorps is a great opportunity for people of all backgrounds and ages to share their skills.
I wish more folks over the age of 30 would apply for AmeriCorps positions. Serving in AmeriCorps is a great way to start fresh, try a new career path, move somewhere different, or do something meaningful during your retirement. A retired human services exec served as a VISTA for four years in one of our school based programs. He made such an impact on his community that a group of students raised money to build a bench in his honor on the school grounds.
Even better is that with the new Serve America Act, there is legislation which makes AmeriCorps education awards transferable. That means that if you aren’t going to use your education award, your child or grandchild can. How cool is that?
Please help us all spread the word that AmeriCorps is for all ages. We want all of you!
Feature: Serving and Surviving
Check out Rosie’s latest blog entry about budgeting and living on an AmeriCorps stipend. Rosie is serving a second year with the Washington Reading Corps. She is also a very talented writer. What a great resource for current and potential members!
Feature: AmeriCorps*NCCC
By Alex Eliason
N-Trip, NCCC, AmeriCorps or Corps Member… Call me what you will. I served my nation for ten months in AmeriCorps NCCC along side with ten strangers from ten places that had never even actually existed in my mind before I met them.
My team, Silver Seven, did things that I never thought I would do with my life. In Lafayette I built homes, not just houses, for Habitat for Humanity. I worked to reconstruct people’s lives after the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, leading volunteers and destroying toxic black mold that seemed ever present in the 9th Ward’s homes. We did the seemingly impossible; we worked to build wetlands in southern California’s inhospitable badlands. Hours spent planting trees, building canals and working to restore a small fraction of a land abused and misused gave birth to acres of fertile wetlands in an otherwise hostile land. Lastly I fulfilled every little boy’s dream and was a firefighter for three brief months in the rugged forests of northern California where I saw massive infernos and, perhaps, even more impressive, the consuming meticulous work it takes to contain the blazes.
I’m proud of the services I’ve rendered for my country, and I cannot think of anyone who would not benefit from such an experience as I had. I believe it is all people’s responsibility to give our strength to those who need it, and I can think of no better place to give our strength than in service of AmeriCorps NCCC.
Alex Eliason currently serves on the Skagit County Community Action ARRA (American Recovery & Reinvestment Act) Team as a Weatherization Conservation Outreach Assistant.
For more information on AmeriCorps*NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) go here.
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