Hasta la VISTA

Before he started his AmeriCorps*VISTA term at Highbridge Community Life Center, Joe Ryan had never edited a newspaper. But after discovering that two local groups were meeting separately about children killed by vehicles in their Bronx neighborhood, residents decided a paper would be the best way to improve communication. So Ryan gathered publishing software. Then he compiled an editor's note, an account of "the DOT's lame excuses," and a list of numbers for residents to call, and the first issue of Highbridge Horizon went to press in December 1998. Neighbors sent copies to local officials. "Three months later," Ryan recalls, "we were able to write an article about speed humps being installed on Anderson Avenue." Today, a Highbridge resident edits the paper; neighbors can go to a journalism "boot camp," where they learn to write articles.

This is VISTA at its best. Founded in the early 1960s, Volunteers in Service to America was intended to be a domestic Peace Corps. Its goal was eliminating poverty in the U.S. through a mix of "inside leadership and outside skills"--the latter from college students committed to social justice; the former, from residents who understood their communities' resources and needs. VISTA work consists not of direct service like tutoring or building houses--that's the stuff of AmeriCorps, its sister program under the Corporation for National Service-but community organizing. Its founders, John F. Kennedy appointees, spoke of "giving poor people back their citizenship" by empowering them to change their communities.

Almost 40 years later, this War on Poverty program is still crucial to low-income communities. While there is no typical VISTA assignment, VISTAs today are still performing, for a stipend of about $9,000 a year, the mix of community organizing and institution-building that Kennedy's think tanks envisioned. New York currently hosts 60 VISTA sites, with 135 volunteers doing everything from setting up adult literacy programs to teaching people in poor neighborhoods how to become tenant organizers.

At Highbridge, the volunteers are central to the nonprofit's work. "If we had no VISTAs," says Highbridge executive director Ed Phalen, "we would lose a certain amount of touch with the community. We'd lose the power to test out programs and see if they have some promise, meet some need. It's a major link with our community."

Now, however, that link is increasingly strained. Sweeping management changes have hurt VISTA's presence in New York. In September 2000, VISTA moved its New York City office to Albany, leaving New York one of the few large cities without a local office; Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco all have them. Regional VISTA directors used to be closely involved in matching up prospective volunteers with suitable organizations; now, organizations have to pore through rudimentary online applications themselves. Together, these changes have made it harder to recruit VISTAs from poor urban neighborhoods.

The city is already paying the price. In 2001, the feds gave New York State enough money to place 200 VISTAs in community organizations--200 "service-years," to be used for new and returning volunteers.

Normally, New York State fills all its slots, and even takes extras from other states' allotments, with New York City accounting for 60 percent of the state total. But that year--the year after the move--New York City's VISTA postings declined for the first time in more than a decade, and New York State fell 23 service-years short as a result.