National Service Days

We're excited to remind you that we have a few national service days that you need to participate in during your VISTA year! These are fun days for you to get involved and perform some direct service.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

The state will be organizing an MLK Day project in January, and we encourage all of you to get involved. I believe it will be a hygiene item drive, and when we have specific details, we will pass them along to you. You are also welcome to do another project for that day or week, and please let me know what your plans are.

AmeriCorps Week:

Another service week during the year will be AmeriCorps Week in May. We will send you more details on our project’s activities in a few months.

Make a Difference Day:

This is coming up on October 23. This is not a required service day for you to participate in, but I wanted to let you know what the Utah County VISTAs are planning for that day. The VISTAs here are planning a Halloween Carnival for the Nebo Legacy Mentoring Program, and it will be held on Friday, October 22 from 5:30-7 pm at Taylor Elementary School in Payson. We will have different booths with games and activities, and the mentoring program will provide pizza. The students who are mentored are in 4^th and 5^th grades and are at-risk youth. This will be a great opportunity for our VISTA members to enjoy some direct service and spend time with the youth. We cannot cover the mileage for our VISTA members outside of the Utah County area to attend, but everyone is invited to participate. If you would like to participate, please let me know!

VEP VISTA Training

On June 15, all of the Volunteer Empowerment Project VISTAs gathered from across the state for a VISTA training. Topics included: life after VISTA: resumes and interviewing, strengthening supervisor relationships, evaluation and goal setting, VISTA Barriers, and Influencer training. It was a great day of learning, connecting, and socializing. Here are some photos from the event:

Jeremy, Amy, Stephanie, and Russell

More introductions with Sully, Rachel, Kayla, and Jill:

Barry, Carol, Kristin, and Sonali:

Lunch was a nice break from the training.
Here are Aly and Heather grabbing some pizza:

Lee and Jeremy:

Enjoying lunch outside:

Stephanie and Sonali:

Matt and Jill:

A training discussion between Allen and Jeremy:

Stephanie and Kristin:

Russell and George discussing projects:

Influencer training by Justin from Vital Smarts:

Thanks for your participation! We appreciate all of your great work as VISTAs and hope you will use this information to help you succeed in your projects.

Americorps Week!

Mark your calendars for May 8-15th! This week has been named the 3rd annual Americorps Week!

Some of you may ask, what is Americorps Week? Americorps has helped us out and provided some good websites with descriptions of what the week means and what we are supposed to do to participate.

Americorps Week is a recruitment and recognition event created to encourage more Americans to serve, salute the VISTAs who have worked so hard and to thank all the people who make Americorps possible.

So what activities should we plan to make this week a success? We are challenged to all come up with an idea to share at the next VISTA training meeting (don't forget to bring your favorite cereal)

So start brainstorming. Continue reading Americorps sites to help you generate some ideas!

VISTA Potluck

Once in awhile we get to enjoy one of the best things about being a VISTA, VISTA potlucks! Well I guess it's not one of the best things, but they are still great. We had a great turn out with lots of yummy food. We had a green, St. Patrick's Day theme.

I took a few pictures of our fun Friday afternoon.

Rachel and Amy
The food line!

I'm looking forward to our next potluck! Thanks for all who came and participated :)