[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 11, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 VISTA: 30 YEARS OF SERVICE TO AMERICA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I was pleased to read Colman 
McCarthy's recent article in the Washington Post entitled ``VISTA at 
30: Quietly Thriving.'' VISTA--Volunteers in Service to America--has a 
rich and commendable history. Started in the sixties, VISTA has been 
quietly lifting hopes and changing people's lives for the better for 
the last three decades.
  My home State of Illinois has a strong VISTA connection. Currently we 
have more than 160 VISTA volunteers serving in 23 projects in urban and 
rural communities through Illinois. We take pride in VISTA's service 
and recognize the commitment these volunteers have to their community 
and their country.
  VISTA is thriving in community health centers, Head Start programs, 
literacy programs, neighborhood centers, community development 
corporations and in housing projects across the country. At Literacy 
Volunteers of America in Chicago, VISTA's are recruiting volunteer 
tutors, organizing community support for local literacy programs and 
developing a bilingual tutor training program. The VISTA's of the 
Contact Ministries program in Springfield, IL, have established a 
shelter and housing program, provide food and other necessities to over 
9,000 low-income individuals and are developing innovative educational 
programs to help 200 individuals affected by substance abuse. Starting 
in June, a new team of VISTA's will be placed in rural areas of 
southern Illinois with the Illinois Coalition for Community Services to 
address the issues of illiteracy and unemployment through the 
development of youth-focused educational activities and job training. 
In urban locations in Illinois, VISTA's will address the crime and gang 
problems through neighborhood organizing and positive youth leadership 
programs.
  VISTA volunteers understand that the most valuable resources in low-
income communities are the people who live and work there. VISTA taps 
into local resources, talent, and energy. Working to build local 
infrastructures, VISTA's help show communities that they are equipped 
to strengthen their own neighborhoods.
  The impact of these quiet warriors against poverty has been felt in 
neighborhoods and community based programs all across this country. The 
30th anniversary of VISTA provides us a great opportunity to give VISTA 
and its volunteers the recognition they deserve. I encourage my 
colleagues to look at your own communities; you will be impressed with 
the contributions of VISTA volunteers to your part of the country. This 
is an occasion to salute both current and former volunteers, and to 
renew our own commitment to the fight against poverty in our Nation.
  The article follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 3, 1994]

                     VISTA at 30: Quietly Thriving

                          (By Colman McCarthy)

       Houma, LA.--Gratitude and respect are among the emotions 
     Maia Bloomfield has felt this past year. She is a member of 
     VISTA--Volunteers in Service to America--and came to this 
     bayou community in southeast Louisiana after graduating last 
     spring with a history degree from Minnesota's Carleton 
     College. Bloomfield, who is 22 and a native of Bethesda, Md., 
     where she was a student leader at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High 
     School, has thrown herself wholeheartedly into Project Learn. 
     It is an adult literacy program, funded by United Way and run 
     by Catholic Social Services.
       Bloomfield recruits tutors for Project Learn and sets up 
     workshops to train low-income housing residents to tutor 
     other residents. Two afternoons a week from 4:30 to 6:30 she 
     helps 30 mostly black children with schoolwork and, lately, 
     practice for a play about Harriet Tubman. She also works with 
     food stamp recipients who need help with reading and writing.
       Bloomfield's gratitude is for the chance to serve here, to 
     have cultural and political ties to the Northeast but to be 
     accepted by Houmans as if she were raised on gumbo soup, 
     crawfish pie and the teachings of Kingfish Huey Long. Her 
     respect is for the children and families she helps teach and 
     organize--for not giving up and for believing in themselves. 
     The teaching and learning flow both ways.
       In Houma, where the economy is hurting because the local 
     fishing and oil industries have been shaky, at best, in 
     recent years, five VISTA volunteers are at work. Three were 
     recruited locally and all work on literacy.
       Each of the several Houma residents I spoke with who either 
     supervise Bloomfield or work with her endorsed VISTA as a 
     local treasure. It is that way nationally. This year is the 
     30th anniversary of the program, created as part of the 
     Economic Opportunity Act. Among its sister programs also 
     begun in the mid-1960s--Head Start, Job Corps, Legal 
     Services, Upward Bound, foster Grandparents--VISTA has been 
     the retiring, unnoticed member of the family. How well is it 
     known that more than 100,000 volunteers have served in 12,000 
     projects? Who is aware that 4,000 VISTAs are serving urban 
     and rural communities in 50 states?
       For a few perilous years in the 1980s, it appeared as if 
     the program would not survive. Under Ronald Reagan's first 
     budget, funding dropped nearly 50 percent. In 1981, which was 
     Jimmy Carter's last budget, VISTA peaked at $30 million. By 
     1983, the year of Reagan's second budget, funding was $11 
     million. The ranks of volunteers declined from 4,200 to 
     1,700.
       Before the plug was to be totally yanked, which was part of 
     the larger Reagan plan to heighten the assault on the poor, 
     the force of a minor miracle occurred: Friends of VISTA. This 
     was a coalition of supporters and former volunteers--
     including Sen. John D. ``Jay'' Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who 
     served in West Virginia in the early days--who came together 
     for the rarest of missions: protecting a government program 
     from the outside from government attackers on the inside. The 
     coalition had saved VISTA during the Nixon years, breathed 
     easier under Carter and then mobilized for the Reagan 
     wreckers.
       Calm times--no, energized times--have returned. Last month, 
     James Scheibel, a reflective liberal, the former mayor of St. 
     Paul and now in the Clinton administration as the director of 
     ACTION, the federal domestic volunteer agency, told a House 
     subcommittee that next year's budget request for VISTA is $59 
     million. This is a deserved and needed increase of $16 
     million--or 39 percent--above the 1994 funding. This will 
     allow an increase of more than 1,100 volunteers.
       With Jim Scheibel leading VISTA in Washington and 
     volunteers like Maia Bloomfield in Houma, the original 
     promise of the program cannot help but thrive. In this rural 
     Louisiana community, the spirit of self-help is strong, as it 
     is in other areas of the country where volunteers are running 
     or creating food banks, wastewater systems, cooperatives, for 
     low-income farmers or anything else that fulfills what then-
     Gov. Bill Clinton said of VISTA volunteers in Arkansas: They 
     ``taught us about the importance and power of people building 
     from within.''
       In Houma, or anywhere else, what other power matters as 
     much?

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