A recent Thursday at Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine was just like any other volunteer day after a busy tulip season: people were scattered about the large swath of land preparing the gardens for the summer season, and its AmeriCorps members were harvesting lettuce in the food garden.
This time, though, the two AmeriCorps members – Annie Friesen and Deanna Dreiling – were no longer employed with the federal volunteer program after recent Department of Government Efficiency cuts.
But that didn’t keep them from continuing the work they do with the community.
“Knowing how much schools and all of these different avenues are affected by it is really devastating for people that really relied on it,” Friesen said.
The arboretum’s AmeriCorps program grew out of a need – Belle Plaine’s last remaining full-service grocery store left town in 2015, making it a 23 mile round trip to the next nearest store for people in town when they needed to pick up food for their families.
Produce grown at the arboretum goes to a number of places, including Ellis Island Farm Store, the food bank and local schools.
Like the food initiative at the arboretum, the farm store was created after its owner saw a need – an elderly woman who couldn’t make the drive out to the nearest grocery store. It stocks produce and goods from the arboretum and other local growers.
“Working together, we’re able to give the community what it needs,” market founder Michelle Ellis said, “and if we didn’t have that, our community will suffer, and that’s not good.”
That work is now under threat as the Trump administration defunded AmeriCorps’ grant program that sent volunteers across the country, including all funding for Kansas .
The program was founded in 1993, dedicating itself to community service and volunteerism. AmeriCorps members receive a small living allowance — less than $20,000 for about a year of work — and an education award equivalent to a Pell Grant.
According to the Kansas Volunteer Commission, all 145 of its AmeriCorps members are now unemployed.
A large majority of the programs in the state that utilized AmeriCorps volunteers focused on childhood education.
“This week and . . . for the months to come, our young people in our schools, they may not get the tutoring services that they had been receiving, the mentorship that they had, the addressing chronic absenteeism, early childhood Literacy, kindergarten readiness,” the commission’s executive director, Jessica Dorsey, said. “So just a variety of different educationally focused activities that aren’t happening now.”
To arboretum owner Robin Macy, the cuts don’t make much sense, especially if the reason was to reduce government waste. Citing several studies, she said every dollar invested in the program returns $17.30 to communities.
“Nobody hates waste more than I do. We have compost bins everywhere,” Macy said. “We try to make as little landfill trash as possible… I get that, but this isn’t that.”
The arboretum is now raising money to keep its AmeriCorps volunteers, especially as the vegetables, fruits and other produce they recently planted continue to grow throughout the summer season.
“We only started with AmeriCorps because we started a food initiative,” Macy said, “but it is so beyond the food initiative. What they do for education, what they do for each other.”
Wichita-area children affected by cuts
For the Wichita-area, AmeriCorps volunteers are in the VISTA program, which focuses on capacity building for nonprofits that help alleviate poverty.
Like the arboretum, nonprofits in the city are raising money or searching for other solutions to keep their AmeriCorps members employed.
LegacyWorks is a youth employment program that hires teens aged 14 to 19 years old and teaches them job skills, financial literacy and personal development.
Their south Wichita location has a garden, coffee roasters and a pottery studio, which all go into teaching teens job skills by selling the products they create.
It’s now scrambling to raise funds to continue to employ its six AmeriCorps volunteers – and the three that were slated to help out during their busy summer season while school is out.
“That’s the clincher, the fact that the federal funding is being cut at a rate at which we can’t keep up to plan, project,” executive director Shelly Westfall said.
LegacyWorks is pushing for donations on its social media and will continue to sell coffee, pottery, and its garden subscription service to help try to make up for the loss.
At LegacyWorks, the AmeriCorps grant cuts were a double whammy. Several of the teens it serves are in the foster care system and benefit from Court Appointed Special Advocates – another program that recently experienced federal cuts.
“If they lose their CASA, we were trying to navigate that,” Westfall said. “Literally, I had that conversation with our social worker, and then like an hour later, got the phone call, ‘Hey, this cut was effective immediately Friday, so your people can’t log any more hours.’”
AmeriCorps members at the arboretum also work with local children, many of whom come for field trips where the members pass down their knowledge to that generation.
“Show them this is where lettuce comes from, and let them taste the lettuce,” Dreiling said, “and they’re just amazed that you can actually grow food. That food comes from the ground and not just the grocery store.”
It’s not just their jobs that they’re losing if these programs can’t continue, many of the AmeriCorps members said, it’s community.
“No matter what you believe, no matter what your politics are, there’s a space for everyone here,” Friesen, whose mother also volunteers at the arboretum, said. “We all love each other, and it’s a very, very special community to be around, to be part of.”
This article was produced by The Wichita Eagle as part of the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. The WJC is an alliance of seven media organizations and three community groups, formed to support and enhance quality local journalism. KMUW is a founding partner of the WJC.
