Q: I saw a facebook post at Americorps NCCC Winter 2013: FEMA Corps - Denver Campus, indicating that the government shutdown might be impacting deployment of NCCC teams. Sounds like teams are not traveling unless they're involved with disaster relief. Do you know if the government shutdown affecting the FEMA Corps program?
A: First I want to say that in answering this, my answer only responds to how it effected where I worked and what I have heard about other teams/locations of AmeriCorps NCCC Traditional and FEMA Corp. For our team specifically, we were minimally effected outside of the fact that our van was only approved for trips to and from work and needed health and wellness trips. For ISPs (Independent Service Projects) they had to be approved prior to the shutdown, and future unapproved ISPs were on hold until the shutdown was over. Our living allowances were still given and came on time and we were still funded, FEMA Corp is funded slightly different than other government programs so it still had funding during the partial government shutdown.
However during the shutdown, our primary POC (point of contact) was out on furlough, so we had a couple new POCs who worked on alternating days and who we reported to during the shutdown.
From what I have heard about how other AmeriCorp groups were effected, and this is all secondhand information so take it as such and not as official information, classes who had either not started training yet or who were not deployed yet were on hold until the partial shutdown ended. The different teams who were already deployable and deployed prior to the shutdown as far as i know were able to keep working and were funded during the shutdown.
Luckilly the shutdown is done now and our original POC returned to work this past Thursday. Time to do good work this last month then it is off for a two week break before our final six month period of service. More posts to come, stay tuned.
If you have any questions about AmeriCorps or what life is like while serving within the programs, send your questions in with the box that is on the upper right side of the blog page. Reader questions give me even more to talk about as well as enable this blog to have a Q & A component where questions can be answered and I can share my experience and feedback as it pertains to each question. Helps to liven up the blog even more.
All posts and answers are my sole opinion unless otherwise quoted and cited.
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