As a new Americorps CTC VISTA member, this week I (along with Alice!) attended a 3-day orientation in Boston to kick off our awesome year of service.
Along with the 33 other CTC VISTAs serving all over the country, I learned the history of Americorps VISTA (which has been around since the 60s) and more specifically the CTC program and how it adds community media and technology to the equation for positive social change. We discussed how we can help our home-sites with "capacity-building"; the great non-profit buzzword that reflects the importance of sustaining our work to benefit the non-profits we serve even after we're gone. There I go again. "Sustainability" is another noteworthy term we heard a lot about this week.
In addition to sharing websites, books and other useful resources, each VISTA offered personal advice and relevant anecdotes that could aid the group. I was lucky enough to meet another VISTA who is from the same neighborhood in New York that I just moved to! So now that I know which grocery stores are in my area, I can worry about other important non-profit things 
. This trend of sharing resources and experiences will continue throughout the year. Each member will be writing online field reports to keep the group as well as our VISTA Leaders updated.
The orientation answered all of my questions about what to expect as a VISTA and it calmed my "new job" nerves to see how many people were in a very similar situation. I am excited to learn what my new friends will accomplish this year and to share with them my accomplishments with Grassroots.org!
