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VISTA Spotlights

Jenny Moore
Hello MAVA! My name is Jenny Moore, and I’ve been an Americorps VISTA at Foundation for Essential Needs, FFEN, since August 2019. We office in Minneapolis but we partner with food shelves statewide to reshape the food shelf system to provide equitable, healthy and predictable food options throughout Minnesota. This year I’ve been focusing on expanding our volunteer program and formalizing our volunteer processes. For example, I’ve created standard recruitment, screening, and onboarding processes for volunteers; as well as a way to track volunteer hours. I’ve also created satisfaction surveys to gain feedback from both the food shelves that we partner with and our volunteers as well.

Once my Americorps VISTA year comes to an end in August, I’ll begin my second VISTA year at FFEN a few days later. I’m incredibly grateful to be able to continue at FFEN for another VISTA year and expand some of my work from my first year. In my second year, I’ll be creating a volunteer stewardship plan to work on the next phases of our volunteer lifecycle. My first year was more focused on recruiting, screening, and onboarding. My second year will be focused on evaluation, recognition, retention, and everything in between. Come August, I’ll also focus my attention on technology solutions to continue to expand and track our volunteer program.

If you have any questions or want to reach out, feel free to email me at: jennymoore@ffen.org
If you’d like to read more about my background or my reflections from my first year; feel free to browse the links!

Patrick Twomey
I cannot believe my time as a VISTA is already coming to a close. Despite the unprecedented times that will mark half of the experience as a VISTA, my year at Hope for the Journey Home as a VISTA sponsored by MAVA has been an incredible experience of growth and learning. Hope for the Journey Home is a shelter for family’s experience that is in Oakdale, Minnesota. My time at Hope for the Journey Home before COVID-19 was spent mostly recruiting volunteers, creating materials for volunteers, and working on the Shelter’s databases. While some of this work continued after the virus, I have recently been spending more time on volunteer retention, trying to keep our volunteers engaged in the hopes that we will see them again when we re-open. Working at the shelter has provided me with a wide array of experiences that have allowed me to grow more in a year than I even knew was possible. As my time as a VISTA comes to a close I look forward to the future as I will be returning to Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington to finish up the last year of my Bachelor’s Degree. Despite likely moving out of State I look forward to staying in touch with everyone I have met both at MAVA and at Hope for the Journey Home!

Samantha Khaimraj
Hi my name is Samantha but I go by Sam. I graduated from Augsburg University Fall 2019. I am currently working at Roseville School District as a Volunteer Coordinator. My main goal was to build the infrastructure of the program and since I have done that I am focusing on how it can grow and help our students. Right now I am working on how we can utilize our volunteers online. After my service I would like to do something in project management.

Ree Ford
My name is Ree Ford and I’m the 2019-2020 AmeriCorps VISTA for Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People (VEAP). VEAP is a basic needs organization whose mission is to create pathways to stronger, more hopeful communities through access to healthy food, housing stability, and supportive services. My project this year was to increase the volunteer capacity of VEAP by expanding and diversifying our volunteer corps; developing and implementing training to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); as well as deepening partnerships with communities in our service area.

I started my service year by developing a survey that asked volunteers and staff about their experience with our volunteer department, what they believed our department’s priorities should be for the upcoming year, as well as gauging their interest when it came to DEI work and education. The results of this survey paved the way for a lot of the work I did the past 11 months. A few of the projects that stemmed from the survey were:

• Looking into our recruitment, onboarding, and orientation practices and creating a revised process that’s more inclusive to all.
• Developing education events for volunteers that focused on topics such as suburban poverty, different cultures in our community, and cultural competency.
• Conducting outreach to communities in our service area such as Dar al-Farooq Islamic Center and Normandale Community College.
• And more!
  

I’ve been fortunate enough to be hired on as VEAP’s Volunteer Engagement Coordinator once I finish my service term in August. I look forward to starting my new role, staying connected with MAVA, and continuing to support all the great DEI work that’s happening at VEAP and other non-profits in Minnesota come next fall!