Crawala/ AmeriCorps Vista: Illinois Community Impact Project

Any nonprofit organization, educational institution, tribal or public agency with a program that is poverty-related in scope can apply to sponsor a VISTA project. The project’s goal should address helping individuals and communities out of poverty rather than focusing on making poverty more tolerable. The project should strengthen long term solutions, not merely provide short term services. Commun

ity Empowerment — Sponsors must ensure that the project engages residents of the low-income community in planning, developing, and implementing the project. The project must be responsive and relevant to the lives of the community residents, and should tap into inherent community strengths and resources. Capacity-Building —VISTAs do not provide direct services to low-income individuals, but rather increase the capacity of organizations to fight poverty. Through activities such as fundraising, volunteer recruitment and management, community outreach, and collaborative development, VISTAs mobilize local resources to achieve lasting solutions. Sustainable Solutions — VISTAs are short-term resources who help organizations address a new or existing program area related to their mission. All VISTA projects should develop a long-term sustainability plan beginning in year one of the project’s existence, showing the eventual phase-out of VISTAs. VISTAs are assigned in order to build the capacity of an organization to implement its anti-poverty program on its own after a period of time (typically three years). Source: Corporation for National Community Service - VISTA Toolkit 2008