Building a Community Organization to Improve Education

Rhonda Ulmer is being honored as a Champion of Change for her time and effort in AmeriCorps.

As a mother of three it has been a challenge for me to balance a life of children, work and school. It was difficult to incorporate them into my daily work and I wanted to find a way to set a great example for them. I got that chance in 2004, when I successfully made a rewarding career decision to join Volunteer Maryland (VM), an AmeriCorps program of the Governor’s Office.

Serving in AmeriCorps through VM provided me with the skills to not only help myself and family, but an entire school community. When a needs assessment was conducted of my children’s elementary school, the results were apparent why some children in our school were being left behind. The survey results revealed parents need of basic needs, educational resources and skills to help themselves to in turn help their children academically succeed. 

As founder of the Van Bokkelen Family Network, the program provides local community resources such as GED, health, and housing education for parent in the school. Through the dedication and commitment of the network parent volunteer leaders, teachers, and community partners; the school is no longer on the Maryland State Department of Education takeover list, and the school has successfully sustained itself for over three years. 

With the support of teachers and the community, Van Bokkelen Elementary families have healthier lifestyles, students have strengthened their math, science, history and other academic skills, and the school has become the hub of the community. PTA membership has grown significantly from 25 inactive members when I started to a larger network of active and engaged members who all help the school continue to make substantial yearly progress. The Van Bokkelen Family Network has led to a national PTA award for the group andthe model has been used to assist other troubled schools.

The huge success of my project inspired me to expand my vision of making every parent potential a reality across the State of Maryland. In 2008 after receiving the Eli J. Segal AmeriCorps Alums Entrepreneurship Award, I founded the University for Parents, a community organization that provides parents throughout Maryland with the skills and resources to help their family succeed. The organization helps mentor and educate parents with the skills they need to help their children be successful in school. I continue to share the Van Bokkelen story as a testimony that low performing schools can close the achievement gap through parental involvement. By educating, encouraging and motivating parents to succeed as a family, this becomes a win-win for the school and the community. It was not until my basic needs were met as a parent, was I able to help my children. I would be able to relate and lead by example for other parents through my own personal experience.  

In 2004, I was unsure if I made the right decision to join AmeriCorps, but deep down in my heart I knew I had the desire to give and talents to bring out the best in others. My AmeriCorps service helped my dream for years to start a community organization that provides educational resources for parents come true.

Rhonda Ulmer is the founding director of University for Parents (UfP), a community organization that provides parents with the tools and resources to help their children succeed in school.

Turn A Problem Into Your Passion

Shonak Patel is being honored as a Champion of Change for his time and effort in AmeriCorps.

“Do what you like, like what you do.” These are the simple, yet powerful, words I heard from Life Is Good co-founder John Jacobs in the summer of 2011 while participating in the MassChallenge startup accelerator. After listening to Jacobs speak I couldn’t help but reflect on the experiences that got me to what I perceived to be a place of privilege, where I was pursuing a passion, tackling a real problem, and effectively blurring the lines between work and play with my first start-up, Swellr.

I grew up in Andover, MA in a family full of entrepreneurs and educators. Innovation, curiosity, and a desire to eliminate problems through creative thinking is in my blood. My whole life, I have been presented with every opportunity to try, to fail, to learn, to change, and to be inspired. The impossible has always seemed possible and that is solely a result of all the great teachers and learning experiences I have been exposed to along the way. As a teenager, I came to realize not everyone is fortunate enough to grow up in an environment that nurtures their confidence and encourages them to take on new challenges. As an incoming freshman, I made it my purpose to leverage entrepreneurship to help address societal needs and in doing so unlock the potential in others.

After working in the investment world for 4 years, I left my job in 2009 to serve with the LouisianaDeltaServiceCorps in New Orleans, LA. During my term of service, with NONDC, I had the privilege of working in one of the city’s most underserved — yet culturally rich neighborhoods — CentralCity. It was an experience defined by listening, observing, and identifying complicated challenges facing the community members I served. I supported a long-time resident in an arduous fight with the City to undo an erroneous property tax judgment. I listened to children playing basketball on 4th street tragically explain that a fear of being shot was the reason they weren’t using the beautiful new courts across the street at A.L. Davis Playground. I surveyed residents, planted trees, sat in on community meetings, and cleared blighted lots. I was quickly exposed to a diverse and complicated set of issues, brought on by the vicious cycle of poverty, which had trapped residents of this neighborhood, young and old, over and over again. AmeriCorps changed my life in helping me fundamentally shift the way I approach solving problems, from a prescriptive approach to a disruptive approach. AmeriCorps taught me that big, real, problems require big, systemic, change. This, as I have come to learn through experience, is the essence of innovation and entrepreneurship.

How could we disrupt the cycle of poverty? I began to challenge myself, and those around me, to imagine a world where everyone had access to a diverse set of educational resources and ongoing learning opportunities. What if everyone was equipped with the same support network and experiences I had been granted to continually discover, learn, and create new things? My AmeriCorps experience gave me the renewed clarity I needed to pursue this new vision, a vision for a world where the concepts of technology-enabled education, life-long learning, and creation are front and center. As a co-founder of Swellr, I diligently worked with my co-founders to find a new way to fund more educational resources into local classrooms. While this venture could not sustain itself in the longer term, I was inspired by the humbling power of failure to teach and considered myself once again lucky to have had another incredible opportunity to grow as a leader. Currently, as a co-founder of GatherEducation, I am once again working with a great team focused on making on-line learning experiences more engaging, more collaborative, and more accessible to teachers and learners everywhere.

This is how I got here. My learning experiences as a child, in service, and as an entrepreneur have taught me to inspire curiosity, a certain “need to know”, in others. I have learned to not fear failure, but to rather fear the status quo. Failure at its core means you are trying something new after all. I’ve been blessed to do what I love, and ultimately love what I do. Now, my focus is on helping others find their way to the same. I encourage everyone to find a big problem that impacts you or others around you, then turn it into a passion, and then push hard to turn it into progress. This is service. I promise you’ll never look back.

Shonak Patel is the co-founder of Gather Education.

Serving the United States Through AmeriCorps

Dr. Sharon Wagner is being honored as a Champion of Change for her time and effort in AmeriCorps.

I am truly honored to be included in such a remarkable and dynamic group of social advocates as the Champions of Change.  My own story of service began in middle school. I grew up in a small town on the South Shore of Boston, MA, and attended a very special camp on Cape Cod called Briarwood. This was a special place because through all the turmoil of emotions that accompanied adolescent years, it was the one place I could go among my peers and feel accepted. I wasn’t a religious child, but I felt a strong spiritual connection to God, humanity, and the Earth as we learned about each other and the Christian and Native American beliefs connected to society and the environment. After my second summer as a camper at Briarwood, I volunteered every summer for eight years as a camp counselor in order to ensure that other young people would be able to experience this connection and acceptance.

The experience at Briarwood allowed me to appreciate the gravity of the situation when at the age of 12, I read about the impending extinction of the rainforests around the world. The article lit a spark in me. It seemed so wrong from a spiritual perspective to be killing so many species that share the Earth with us. It seemed so foolish from a human perspective to be destroying the very thing that may hold the key to curing some of our most terrible diseases. As I learned more about environmental issues, I committed myself to a career path that would enable me to work toward protecting the environment and the people that depend on it. As an Environmental Science major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I had the opportunity to spend a week during my senior year as a participant in one of the first Alternative Spring Break trips. I traveled with a group of students and our instructor, Dr. Art Keene, to New Road, Virginia to learn about poverty, social justice, and grassroots development, while assisting with building renovations and cleanup in the community. This trip was my first experience with service learning, the concept of treating a volunteer experience as much as an opportunity for the volunteer to learn and grow from the community as for the community to benefit from the volunteer’s work. It was a concept that made a lot of sense to me.  People don’t want someone riding in on their white horse to save them. They’re not going to trust that.  But, if they realize it as a partnership, where they have something to give as well – if both the volunteer and the people they serve have pride in the work – that is when change is possible.

AmeriCorps was the natural next step when I graduated from UMass.  As a 22-yr-old graduate, I wanted to save the world – I just didn’t know where to start. I applied to the Peace Corps, but when it came down to it, I looked around and saw so much need in our own country that I could not ignore.  I wanted to serve the people of the United States of America.  AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC), with its focus on service learning, gave me that opportunity. I was stationed in Charleston, South Carolina and trained for acceptance into a wildfire-fighting team.  Our team, Red 5, did three environmental projects in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee, where we removed exotic vegetation, planted native vegetation, built trails and renovated park equipment. We did two education projects – at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock and at the South Carolina Teen Institute. And, we did two projects in the area of unmet human needs.  We were team supervisors for two months for college students who volunteered on their spring breaks for Habitat for Humanity in Anniston, Alabama. Then, we used what we had learned in Alabama to renovate a shelter for abused and neglected children in Hope Haven, Mississippi.  I received an email from the director of the shelter in 2005 that the building we renovated was one of very few left standing after Hurricane Katrina hit the area.

My experience with AmeriCorps was rewarding, challenging and memorable. It opened my eyes to the depth of need in the United States and to the unique, inviting culture of the South. It showed me the power of a small group of citizens committed to “Getting Things Done”. It gave me the confidence to work as a middle school science teacher in a Mexican barrio in San Diego, California even though I had no formal education training or experience with the culture. I taught for three years at King/Chavez Academy of Excellence and connected with my students using the service learning skills I had gained in AmeriCorps and Alternative Spring Break. The passion for learning about social and environmental issues in other cultures and educating youth led me to teach high school Environmental Systems for two years at Colegio Americano in Quito, Ecuador. I returned from Ecuador with renewed appreciation for the opportunity for change that exists in the United States and began to work toward a doctoral degree in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. As an Environmental Systems teacher in Ecuador, I had begun to appreciate that energy is the key issue at the intersection of environmental and social issues for our country and the world.

I am now an Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Maine, teaching about energy issues and working to advance a humane and sustainable energy future. As a public land-grant institution, the University of Maine is committed to serving the citizens of Maine, the nation and the world. I have the unique opportunity to collaborate with a group of highly skilled, intelligent, hard-working, and compassionate scientists to encourage the development of vast renewable energy resources in Maine and throughout the country in a way that improves social wellbeing. In a career path committed to service, my experience in AmeriCorps was a crucial step during a transition from youth to professional that gave me the confidence, knowledge and skills to solve critical social and environmental problems.

Dr. Sharon Wagner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Maine.