Bashing: Americorp VISTA

What's up people.

Or just Heather.

This going to be one of the first blogs on my actual life. SO enjoy the blood spray while you can.
I'm here now to bash the hell out of my job and tell you why.
I'm an Americorp member. This can range from helping people prepare for emergency situations to grantwriting all day everyday. I am somewhere in the middle it seems.

As a VISTA I am supposed to be a person that works on indirect service. I change the system to allow more people to go to college....in theory. That actually has nothing to do with my job. I rarely if ever do work that helps underprivileged students gain access to higher education. But that's supposed to be my job.

Really I just send out a bunch of e-mails to people to try to make this "grassroots" organization work. I pretty much run this group called the Community Congress. It is made up of a bunch of other groups in the neighborhood; the Library Reform Group, Community Development Corp, Smith Hill Lib. , Providence Housing Assoc. reps like that. In theory they are all supposed to work together and make the area better for people...or something.
Fine. Well they suck at working together because they never come to their own damn meetings. There are about 50 groups on the contact list but the highest attendance I've ever seen is 20 people half of which are students from PC. I do all the work doing the agendas and writing up the minutes and everyone else kind of just tries to think of shit.

But I'm not mad about that.

I'm mad cause I'm getting worked like a slave and they keep rubbing that in my face.
This year I had 2 big projects I had to run myself. Community Congress and the Alternative Spring Break. Ok. A lot of work but in theory, do-able.

1)Americorp people are supposed to work for a year. I was hired in Oct. I was supposed to be hired in July with everyone else. I thought I would leave in July with everyone else. Nope. I have to work till Oct. of this year and overlap with all the new people.

2)They are hiring 2 people to do the job I did alone this year. That tells me you really can;t do this job efficiently with just one person, so I've been overworked. Secondly, that means that I have been doing double the work and getting singular pay (believe me it's really like 25% the pay, I'll explain)

3)Providence College is paying for the 2 additional workers this year. While Americorp paid me this year. So basically the college is getting 3 full time workers for pretty much free AND Americorp is getting me for an additional 3 months. SO everyone is getting pretty much extra free labor.

4)I only get paid $383 every two weeks after tax. Or $766 a month. Word. And that's from working from 8.30-4.30 everyday. That's fulltime.
And they expect me there at those times believe it or not...for the most part.

5) Oh did I mention that I'm not allowed to work another job? I am "technically" on call 24/7.

Yea. Now how the hell can I respect an organization that rubs it in my face that their using me? I would drop this job honestly at the drop of a hat. If I could get a job at Borders and a job at another bookstore, as long as I made anywhere over, I would work there. And say fuck this job. I only get 10 sick and vacation days. Fuck them. I'll take more days. Fire me. Who would take over?

And really it's not about the pay. Community Organizing isn;t supposed to be. But I looked up what Community Organizers are supposed to make. They make $31,000-$50,000. Mind you most make $32,000. Insulting. And they keep on insulting me. If only I had anything else....