LINKS
LINKS Members
LINKS provides part-time service opportunities in environment, education, public safety, and other human needs. Positions may be 300, 450, 675, 900, or 1700 hours in length, and typically take place within a year or less. LINKS members are at least 17 years of age (no upper age limit) and serve at least 25 hours per month with a LINKS partner school, non-profit, or government agency. Members earn an education award of $1,000 to $4,725 upon completion of their term of service. Positions are starting now!
LINKS Sponsors
Does your organization need an AmeriCorps member part-time, full-time - for just a few months, or up to a year? Want someone to take on that great back-burner project you've had to put off? Think LINKS! LINKS members can serve 300, 450, 675, 900, or 1700 hours on a project of your design. Proposals are accepted each summer (see Announcements below, for details) for positions starting anytime between September 1 and July 31. Start dates are flexible, depending on your time line. Projects must focus on the environment, education, public safety, or other human needs.
Announcements
Project proposals are now available for the 2010-2011 program year. This is for positions starting anytime between September 2010 and July 2011. Since we have rolling enrollment, you choose the start date. Proposals are due by May 14, 2010. If you have any questions, contact erika.johnson@esd112.org.
Featured LINKS Member
Sonja McKenzie
By Erika Johnson
Sonja beams as she talks about meeting and getting her picture taken with Senator Jeff Merkley at a recent lecture. She excitedly recounts the last-minute meeting she organized between ten visiting Albanian school officials and a local Parent Teacher Association. Her eyes twinkle as she rattles off the names of a few of the upcoming world dignitaries and politicians scheduled to speak here. As anyone who talks with her for just a few moments can see, Sonja McKenzie is a very happy lady. A part-time LINKS member serving as a Volunteer Coordinator with the World Affairs Council, Sonja says that this experience has "blown everything wide open" for her.
Thanks to her experience with the program, Sonja built the confidence to speak with world leaders and decision makers whom she met during her tenure with the World Affairs Council. She feels much more a part of what is going on in the world.
Her duties include recruiting new volunteers and organizing existing volunteers to serve at the organization’s special events and speaker series. She is also creating a volunteer handbook containing the new procedures and protocols she’s developed. When asked how she believes her AmeriCorps service is impacting her community, she says "People don’t have any idea what they don’t know. They may not get motivated about world events until they come out to an event and get involved." Sonja feels that by encouraging people to volunteer with World Affairs Council events, she is bringing the world to them.
If you were trapped in an elevator for five minutes with Sonja (which actually happened her first week on the job) the one thing she would most want to share with you would be her belief in tolerance – for people of other cultures and of differing political views and religions.
One of her biggest motivations for being in AmeriCorps is to serve as an example to her four children. As a single mom, Sonja volunteers with her son’s Cub Scout troop, serves as a council representative with the Head Start Policy Council and assists the librarian at the Boise Elliot school library.
When her term of service is up this summer, Sonja hopes to volunteer at a youth summer camp in Russia that would be her first trip abroad. In the fall, she plans to either start graduate school in Public Administration or enroll in a second term of service with AmeriCorps. That is, if she gets on the plane back to Portland!