MEMBER STORIES

Eli Feldman
Americorps

Thank you for the opportunity to tell you about my experience with Americorps National Civilian Community Corps, and how it was abruptly and illegally defunded and then cancelled. I hope that my story can give you a more personal connection to what is currently happening within the administration. There are so many misdeeds and injustices that it can feel overwhelming and numbing, and give you feelings of, “of course that happened,” or “no surprises there” when something awful happens. It's easy to forget that each action taken affects so many people, and while you’re listening to my story, I want you to think about how many others who have experienced something similar to what I have.  

For those who may not be familiar, Americorps NCCC is a federal program for young adults aged 18-26. Founded as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in 1993, it’s a residential service program where you are put into a team with 8-10 other volunteers and do service work across the country; split into three rounds across ten months. During each round, teams work with different sponsors, whose only qualification is to be a non-profit and to be able to provide housing for the teams. Americorps NCCC is a nationwide program split into four regions, with roughly 2,200 volunteers each year. Food and housing is paid for by the program, members receive a small living allowance and are rewarded with an education grant upon completion of the program.

Before joining Americorps, I had been working as a financial consultant in Manhattan for three years since graduating college in 2021. It was a solid job, and I appreciated the experience, but over time I started to feel stuck and wanted to do something to fully shake up my life. I also learned something important: I’m most motivated when I feel like the work I’m doing matters. I had first heard about Americorps soon after graduating college from a friend whose brother had completed the program. I thought it sounded extremely cool at the time, and after realizing I wasn’t fulfilled with my job and my life in the city, I was quickly set on joining Americorps. The application process was fairly simple, and I was accepted into the fall class of 2024, where I would be trained in Sacramento and then stationed in various parts of the Pacific region. I am extremely grateful that everyone in my life wholeheartedly supported my decision, and in October I quit my job and left for California. 

The program started amazingly. I was in a place with an extremely diverse group of young people from all over the country, who all had similar goals of wanting to make a difference. We went through a brief training, got formed into our permanent teams and got sent into our first round project. We were in Oregon, working at two different outdoor camps helping them with fire prevention, invasive species removal, trail clearing and building, and general camp maintenance activities. The work was difficult but extremely rewarding. Some of my favorite memories were when the camps hosted alumni work weekends. Through this we were able to meet, work, and speak with many people who had their lives changed by the camps, and it really allowed us to see firsthand the impact that our work was having on the community. My worst memory, which I probably share in some form with most of you, was sitting helpless in front of my T.V on election night, watching as our country somehow voted Trump into his second term in office. Despite that, I had a great time in the first round and went back home for a holiday break before traveling back to California to start round two.

The start of the second round made it seem like it was going to be even better than the first. The team was much closer, and the projects were more exciting. For the first half of the round, we were working with three different non-profits in Sacramento, and for the second half we were going to be working with an outdoor education school in the Lake Tahoe area. In Sacramento, we worked two days a week at a black owned community garden, two days a week at a home repair non-profit, and one day a week at our consensus favorite sponsor, the Community Shop Class. The Community Shop Class is a community learning center for everyone, especially people with ADHD, where people could go to learn how to use power tools, work on personal projects, or meet and spend time with others from their community. The shop class also held a special connection with Americorps. Chad, who ran the shop class, was struggling to keep the shop going through its first few years due to troubles with funding, when he was able to get a job as the tools trainer for new Americorps members. This was his first time as a full fledged sponsor, and because of how much the program meant to him, he brought so much excitement into work every day, and the work we were doing there was fun, rewarding, and important. However, starting pretty soon after January 21st, things started to go downhill.

Because Americorps is a federal program under the executive branch, we were beholden to executive orders. Nobody running the program actually believed in the orders, meaning they were never too strongly enforced and things went along as usual for the most part. However, one major consequence was that the program was required to reword the language in the contracts with our sponsors, taking out all language regarding DEI and environmental issues. Some sponsors were willing to sign the new contract, as it allowed them to keep working with us, but Chad, who had opened the shop class as a space meant to be inclusive to everyone, refused to sign the new contract, which meant we weren’t allowed to work there any longer. It was a tearful goodbye as we left the shop class for the final time. To add insult to injury, the sponsor at Lake Tahoe also pulled out. Thankfully, we were able to find a new sponsor, another outdoor education camp in San Bernardino, California. As for the program as a whole, there were some tense moments surrounding its continued existence, but when the funding bill passed in March, which guaranteed our funding was secured through September, we thought we would be safe. Until DOGE became a thing, which left us worried again, and for good reason.

On Tuesday, April 15th, Americorps was effectively shut down by DOGE, though it wasn’t officially ended until April 30th. And like all other DOGE shutdowns, it was extremely abrupt. Our second round was coming to a close, and we were set to return to Sacramento for a transition period the day after, on Wednesday the 16th. Our team was practicing a presentation we were going to give to the higher-ups summarizing and highlighting our round two projects, when I got a disturbing text from a friend on a different team. He told us of a post online, which was asking if Americorps had just been shut down. And to our surprise, all of the comments said yes. They were either people in the program or people who knew someone in the program, and they said they were just told the program had ended and they were being sent home. Our team was shocked, confused, and scared as we had heard nothing about this, and, like I said before, our funding had been guaranteed through September. It turns out that other regions had received the news first, and in the midst of our confusion and panic, our team leader received a message from her boss, saying there was an all-hands meeting starting in ten minutes, and it was looking like bad news. About 30 minutes later, our TL came back and told us the program had been shut down. Not only that, but we had to return to Sacramento immediately in order to fly home. We tried to protest, as we were already meant to leave the next day, but it was no use as our flights were already booked and so by 4:00 pm, only two hours after receiving the news, we were in our van and on our way home. We made stops to say goodbye to our current sponsors as well as dinner and gas stops, and we returned back to the Sacramento campus at 2:00 am. As it was likely our last time seeing each other, we stayed up for a bit longer to get at least some modicum of closure, but it wasn’t nearly enough time. Eventually I decided to get about two hours of sleep before getting back in the van at 9:00 am to head to the airport and go home. As one of my team members put it, in the span of eighteen hours we were fired, evicted, and shipped off across the country.

One last thing I wanted to say is that in the long run, I think I’ll be okay. What happened really sucks and it is extremely unfair, but I am lucky enough that I have a wonderful family who welcomed me home with open arms and are supporting me until I get back on my feet again. I had money saved up from when I worked in Manhattan, I am unsure if I will go back to school so the education award being cut in half doesn’t affect me all that much, and I am extremely lucky that I don’t have any bills or debts hanging over my head. But I am a rare exception. Pretty much everyone I met in the program wasn’t as fortunate. Some have homes that weren’t easy to return to or that they didn’t want to return to at all; some were counting on that grant money for their education; most were just coming into adulthood and really starting to figure out who they were and wanted to be, only to be dismissed at a flick of the hand from an administration that didn’t care at all. And Americorps isn’t the only organization that was cut down by DOGE. It’s only been a few months, and there are more groups affected than I can even list. And every single person who works there has a story that is in some way similar to mine. The administration defunded a program whose sole purpose was to help Americans and American-owned businesses and non-profits that only had a yearly budget of $43 million. This all coming only a few days after Trump blatantly manipulated the stock market with his retraction of tariffs. The only reason DOGE would make this cut is because the main goal of this administration is cruelty and punishment of the American people. In any other administration, a story like this would be headlining news channels for weeks, but with this administration, it is only one of many such cruelties. I hope that this story was able to give you a more personal connection to the terrible things that have been happening, and I hope it gives you a good response to anyone who tries to argue that it hasn’t been all that bad under Trump because it hasn’t affected them, yet.