Fighting Poverty
How do RCAA's programs affect you?
- Natural Resources Services (NRS) works directly with Humboldt County community leaders, schools and parents to improve safety and encourage more children to safely walk and bicycle to school. NRS helps coordinate both the Greater Eureka and Humboldt County Safe Routes to School Task Forces.
- The Natural Resources Services works with community members, civic groups, and local jurisdictions to enhance neighborhood street tree planting and support the development of community forests for public access and watershed protection.
- The TOOTH program: igniting healthy smiles and lifelong dental wisdom in young minds!
- The Energy & Environmental Services Division provides much needed help to our low-income and elderly community members. The program helps to pay their energy costs, to make their homes warm and cozy, and improve their health by weatherizing their homes against inclement weather.
- AFACTR AmeriCorps Member states that their experience with the program has been by far one of the best experiences I have ever had at any job. The training's I've had has opened my opportunities for other jobs in ways I never thought possible. The AmeriCorps experience has been a really great experience. I have nothing but good to say about being an AmeriCorps member.
- AmeriCorps has helped me to understand the imperative need for stabilization services not only in Humboldt County, but on a macrosystem level. It has also allowed me to network with wonderful local nonprofits and federal service agencies to understand how they provide trauma informed services that strengthen family systems and community based models. Based on my term as an AmeriCorps member, I have become more comfortable with providing casework to clients and have developed a meaningful rapport with service agencies in our area. Providing at a resource center has driven my interest in continuing my education to pursue my master's degree in public administration.
- I began my AFACTR term as an undergrad student and saw it as an opportunity to better define what I wanted to pursue as a career after college. As my term comes to an end, I have committed to gaining a master's in social work degree, something that I 100% attribute to my experiences at the family resource center. It feels like this program was tailor-made for people in a similar situation as me, who feel somewhat uncertain about future direction but have an affinity for or interest in helping professions. Additionally, the relationships I've build with my coworkers and clients have given me a feeling of connection and understanding to the community that was just not present in my life prior to my AmeriCorps term.
- My AFACTR AmeriCorps service provided me with the confidence I needed to branch out into a whole different field of service.I cannot put into words how much this program means to me. My future looks very positive and full of opportunities I thought I would never have. As a result of AFACTR I now have so many tools at my disposal that I can utilize in my professional future.
- As a second term AFACTR AmeriCorps member, I can say that AFACTR offers you a unique opportunity to be the best version of yourself. Whatever place you are in your life when you enter the program, you will leave having grown in ways you didn't know were possible. I cannot recommend strongly enough the powerful opportunity of upward mobility through hard work and commitment to your community. I am on my way to getting my master's degree which will be financially supplemented by my educational award and am in a place where I feel seen, valued and supported.