AmeriCorps marking today’s induction of its millionth member

The nationwide AmeriCorps community service program today will deploy its millionth member into a troubled community, a milestone that will pass with little fanfare among the current crop of island volunteers who spend a year serving the needy while earning poverty-level wages themselves.

Volunteers working for the three programs that fall under the AmeriCorps umbrella are working every day to help in Hawaii — whether with at-risk preschoolers or with policymakers to reduce homelessness across the state. But “national service and volunteerism is largely unrecognized and untapped in Hawaii,” said Derrick Ariyoshi, Hawaii’s program director for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency tasked with “engaging citizens across the country in service and volunteerism.”

Since 1994 more than 5,900 Hawaii residents have served more than 6.4 million hours for AmeriCorps VISTA, AmeriCorps State and National and the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, including Scott Morishige, the state’s homeless coordinator.

His mother, Sandra, worked for 35 years with the state Department of Human Services. Morishige’s late father, Stanley, was a general-practitioner lawyer, mostly working in real estate.

AmeriCorps helped Morishige figure out whether he wanted to go to law school like his father or pursue a career as a social worker.

After “a lot of homeless people walked off the street looking for help” at the Legal Aid Society where Morishige worked, he ended up using his modest AmeriCorps “educational award” at the University of Hawaii, where he graduated with a master’s degree in social work.

The experience helped guide the course of Morishige’s education and career, and capped an upbringing focused on community service, said Morishige, who reached the rank of Eagle Scout as a Boy Scout.

AmeriCorps “exposes you to a lot of different things you wouldn’t be exposed to, real on-the-job field training,” he said. “And it can help pay off student loans or advance your education.”

But surviving on what AmeriCorps calls a poverty-level “living allowance” of $20,640 annually — plus a one-time $5,815 payment for education — remains a struggle for current AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers Eileen Lacaden, 23, of New Jersey, and Tessa Baizer, 26, who is from Oregon but has bounced around the country.

They met this year as AmeriCorps volunteers at the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice and pooled their meager earnings to rent a modest apartment in Liliha with a third roommate.

Last year Lacaden graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in industrial and systems engineering and was likely headed for a career as a financial consultant for a big company.

Instead, Lacaden told her parents that she wanted to help those in need.

“They were kind of shocked,” Lacaden said. “But I’m just drawn to service. That’s where I find my happiness, helping other people.”

At the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice, Lacaden is compiling a network of resources for people on Oahu interested in building accessory dwelling units, which would generate more housing on the island and theoretically free up units for homeless families.

“The lack of affordable housing is part of why Hawaii has the country’s highest per capita rate of homelessness,” Lacaden said.

Baizer is working on a study mandated by the state Legislature to get more data on four distinct homeless populations: convicts who are just released from prison who often have no identification, financial means or housing; teenagers with no support and youth who age out of the foster care system; the chronically homeless who rely on hospital emergency rooms; and those who are discharged from substance abuse facilities.

Through AmeriCorps, working for the Appleseed Center “seemed like a good way to learn to use the law and use legal remedies to help people with civil rights issues and poverty issues,” Baizer said.

Ariyoshi isn’t sure how many active AmeriCorps volunteers are currently working in the islands, but Baizer said she believes there are 40 AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers, including about 20 on Oahu.

Most are in their 20s or early 30s.

While AmeriCorps also gears programs for volunteer senior citizens and retirees, it mostly attracts younger adults, Ariyoshi said.

“That’s the demographic,” Ariyoshi said. “It’s open to all ages but it’s the 20-year-olds. That’s the typical profile nationally.”

Baizer knew people on the mainland who had volunteered for AmeriCorps before she signed up, and the reviews were mixed.

“Some of them really loved it, some really hated it and some were put into really difficult situations when you’re 22 or 23 and you have to navigate working full time and the salary and not having a permanent support system and all those things,” she said.

But Baizer welcomes a challenge, and she’s no stranger to surviving on meager wages in order to help others.

“I’ve been poor before,” she said, “so it’s less difficult for me.”

For more information, visit nationalservice.gov.