Americorps NCCC 20th Reunion!

Well I can’t believe it, but 2014 will be 20 years since I flew to Charleston SC to start a new adventure.  There were about 200 other people doing the same thing.  They either came by plane, car, train and some lived in Charleston.  But all came to be the 1st class of Americorps National Civilian Community.  This was a residential volunteer program.  You commented to 11 months of volunteer work and in exchange you received some money toward college.   The corp members were ages 18-24 years old.  I was 19 at the time and excited about getting away from home and doing something new.

The 1st year was interesting to say the least.  As this was a new program and there were growing pains.  Plus many for many of the corp members this was their 1st time away from home.  As I was one of them, but I thought of it as an adventure.  In the 11 months I believe I grew as a person.  I started to enjoy life.  Since high school was not something I enjoyed, since I never fit in.  But here it seemed that I fit in just fine.

Every one was paired into teams of about 10 people each with a team leader.  So you had 4 units, green, blue, red, yellow. Each unit had 5 teams.  The volunteer projects would be divided among the units and teams.  In the beginning most of our volunteer projects was in and around the Charleston area.  Then we finally was able to get other volunteer projects out side of Charleston and SC.  We did many different volunteer projects like education, disaster relief, worked with the park service and many other things.

I met many long lasting friends, the funny thing is I haven’t seen these people since 1995. But that is changing,  due to Facebook now the 1st class of the Charleston Campus has a place here Americorp*NCCC Charleston campus class 1.  I have connect back up with people I haven’t talk to in years!  Now we are planning a 20th reunion and looking for people from the 1st year.  We are up to 75 people.