3 volunteers will help tackle social issues in Butler County
Three volunteers recited the oath of office Tuesday, June 20, at the Slippery Rock University Center for Community Engagement, Empowerment and Development (SUCCEED) at the same time as hundreds of other new volunteers.
They will work with the Institute for Nonprofit Leadership at SRU as Volunteers in Service to America (VISTAs) for the 2023-24 academic year, as a way to not only learn about the community, but find out how they can help it.
“I figured this would be the best way for me to spend time helping my community as well as learning about it,” said Riah Eisner, a former SRU student and new VISTA. “If I’m going to get my degree from here, I might as well get to know the community and its needs and help to address its resources.”
VISTA is a federal anti-poverty national service initiative founded in 1965 to provide resources to nonprofit organizations and public agencies to help address poverty and poverty-related problems in the country.
Eisner will serve as the Anti-Poverty Coalition VISTA; Mark Yankasky, a 2020 graduate of SRU, will be the Social Determinants of Health VISTA; and Ayanna Squair, a 2023 graduate of PennWest Clarion, will be the Substance Use Disorder VISTA.
Alice Del Vecchio, director of SRU’s Institute for Nonprofit Leadership, said the students will lead projects in the community relating to their areas of focus. They will work 40 hours a week and receive some benefits at the end of their one year of service, according to Susan Bowser, assistant director of the institute.
The three volunteers said Tuesday that they are eager to begin their service because it is a good opportunity to start their community engagement. Squair, for example, said she hopes to learn about substance abuse in the area to become a better force against it.
“We’re just trying to become more involved in our communities,” Squair said. “Initially, I was thinking of doing anti-poverty but since I have more of a relationship with substance use with individuals, I thought, ‘Maybe that will be self-awareness for not only them but for me as well.’”
For Yankasky, helping people address their health on an individual level is his goal as a VISTA.
“There’s so many factors that affect your health — everything from the air you breathe and environmental factors to social factors like family life and stress,” Yankasky said. “If you have the energy to make a little of that better, the rest of it gets better too.”
Eisner said she wants to play a part in developing new initiatives that can be carried on into the future of Butler SUCCEED and the overall community.
“I really want to uphold the legacy the previous VISTAs have done,” Eisner said. “They have put a lot of work into making these things happen like the penny carnival, all the activities they have annually, monthly.
“They’re building structures, and we want to keep those structures in place and help support those and help expand them.”
Although the VISTAs are just beginning their service, they each said they feel prepared to address their chosen fields because of the training they went through prior to their swearing in Tuesday.
Yankasky also said that the backing of a nationwide group of other VISTAs who can communicate with one another gives him confidence.
“It’s going to be a lot of work, but as our training has reminded us time and time again, we are one part of 2,000 active members at the moment,” Yankasky said. “We’re not tackling these issues alone. We’ve got a lot of people behind us, and there will be a lot of people after us who pick up where we left off, too.”
