#femacorps

I deployed to the AmeriCorps/FEMA Corps base in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to hear from diverse voices about their involvement in supporting emergency management and disaster recovery.

I interviewed and filmed serval students and recent graduates who travel around the country helping others. 

Next week is the end of the first round, and honestly it’s really bittersweet. I feel like working External Affairs in Austin was probably the best possible first place to go to, and there’s a not so small chance that we go back here during Round 2. It was a real enough possibility that our Unit Leader (our team leader’s boss) asked us about it during our conference call with her. I would personally not mind at all and would probably even enjoy it more because I’m the type of person who hates change and I feel like I’ve carved out a good niche where I get to use my skills to help the people of Texas. Other members of my team are less open to the idea, preferring the experience of travelling across the country.

 We are back to working regular an 8-5 pm work schedule, with weekends off and basically doing the sort of hours that were advertised when we first signed up for the program now. After working 12 hour shifts for so long, it feels really weird to be able to go home and do stuff and be able to have some semblance of a life outside of work. It’s really nice, don’t get me wrong, but I’m still adjusting to the lifestyle change that comes with going back to normal hours.

 And it is a lifestyle change, because after 12 hours I was so tired I just did only the tasks that were mandated by the team and by AmeriCorps after going back home and I passed out. That was my after work activity, sleeping, because I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. On my day off, I sat there and wrote fiction because that is how I personally destress and barely left my room because I was so drained from the week I needed to recharge alone for the most part. Now that I’m not so drained when I come home, I can actually find the energy and motivation to interact with my team a lot more which I think is really important in a residential program. For good or for ill, you’re stuck with the same group of people for the entire year.

 In earlier entries, I said I felt really lucky that I got this team and though we’ve had our differences and challenges with each other I’d still echo that same sentiment today. I feel like overall we are a team who can handle just about anything because we are for the most part mature enough to deal with problems in a constructive manner and competent enough to excel in the smaller stuff to get trusted with the bigger stuff at work. We were fortunate to get stationed in a place that was willing to scale our workload and our duties with our capability as individuals and we have shown that we are capable of a heck of a lot during the time that we have been in Austin. I’m really proud of that both from a personal and team perspective, to be frank.

 This program is a humbling experience, one that I personally really needed. Just the lifestyle and living conditions that are present on an active disaster are much different than what I am used to, and I have been forced to adapt a good bit along the past two months of being in Texas. It has also been a growth experience, because I have personally had to advocate for more work and get experience selling myself and the skill set that I possess and I have gotten a lot more comfortable with doing that when appropriate. I came to this program to help people, and if I sit around doing nothing for too long I get antsy and start asking for more work to do. Sometimes that backfires and I get way too much work all at once, but I’m starting to find that balance and learning what I can do on a day to day basis and what my limits are.

 After next week, we go back on transition for 4 days with all of the other Pine teams in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It will be the first time we will have seen the rest of the unit in two months, and boy am I excited. I’ve kept in touch with a number of my friends on other teams, as much as I could given our crazy schedule as part of this program, and it’ll be fantastic to have the opportunity to see them again in person. In this program, I have learned that getting through the rougher patches is a lot easier when you have something great to look forward to. I hate change just as a personality trait and travel days are not my favorite, but since I get to see all my friends in the program again that hate of the steps to get there isn’t so bad because they serve a purpose.

Spent most of the month sick and super busy, with the regular schedule being six days on and one day off with 12-hour days being the standard since we were redeployed a little over two weeks ago to the Austin Joint Field Office. It’s been a rough few weeks, but we’ve all made it through so far. I got to work with Digital Communications for the past two weeks, which is pretty similar to my old analyst job where we study social media trends and all that stuff. We also have a second step to that, being to publish news releases and actually interact with the public on FEMA social media pages in an attempt to help connect survivor’s needs with the resources that would actually help them.

 The scale of this disaster is absolutely enormous, and really quite heartbreaking. I saw pictures of the absolute devastation that Harvey wrought throughout Texas every day and people attempting to rebuild their lives after literally everything was taken away from them in a heartbeat. It’s emotionally draining, frankly, to scroll through all these stories and pictures of shattered lives on a daily basis.

Sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been BUSY. We ended up getting our FEMA positions, Disaster Survivor Assistance and External Affairs but have yet to learn where we are going ‘on spike’ to for the ‘first round’. Basically spike is our deployments to different areas to do our service work for FEMA, and a ‘round’ is how long we are at a site. Apparently we get three rounds in FEMA Corps, which can consist of as many ‘spikes’ as our orders tell us we have.

Alright, this post is going to be a bit different than previous ones to vary things up a bit. I know that if anyone ends up reading this, it will be because they want to know more about the program and whether it may be a good fit for them or not so I will do my best to remember to intersperse the more personal reflection type posts with ones like this that will focus on more things that I have picked up about culture, lifestyle, et cetera while serving in FEMA Corps as a whole.

 One thing that stood out to me was the content of the training. Most jobs at least I’ve had provided training that was basically strictly related to the job at hand and the technical aspects thereof. A large portion of the training here is social in nature and basically I guess teaching you to become a better person. That may sound insulting to some people, but you are living with a group of other similarly aged men and women with admittedly varying maturity levels, personalities, and backgrounds. It is very important that a toxic team environment does not occur early because you are ‘stuck’ with these people for your entire stint. Not being a jerk is a life skill, and one that is super important. I expected stuff like that in NCCC training, which is one of the parent organizations of FEMA Corps.

 What I did not expect was for that type of training to bleed over into FEMA specific training. We just completed our first day of ‘FEMA Basic’, and a large chunk of it was how to treat people with disabilities with the respect and the humanity that all people should be treated with even down to language. That was something I had never thought about before in my life, being completely honest, but it makes complete sense. In this job, especially since one of our FEMA jobs that we are ALL being trained in is Disaster Assistance which means we may very well be interacting with people directly after a disaster on the actual worst day of their lives. The last thing we want to do is agitate them more to the point of hostility, because it is our sole job to serve the communities we are sent to. If that means saying some things differently or learning tact, I am all for that.

 I can only speak about North Central Campus here in Iowa, but I every interaction I ever have with staff (even when I inconvenience them like when I lost my third issued water bottle the other day!) it’s very obvious that they do have a vested interest in my well-being and legitimately care about us. Around 100 of us milling around, being annoying and probably asking the same question dozens of times to every staff member and I have not had one bad experience with a staffer on this campus at all. They have their rules, sure, and rumor is that we’re one of the stricter campuses in the country but as long as you follow their rules and guidelines they will be some of the most helpful and pleasant people you will ever meet.

 Another thing that stood out to me was that this was much more of a lifestyle than I guess a lot of people expected. Work can and will bleed into your personal time a lot, so you need to be as the saying goes ‘FEMA Flexible’. For example, during the first month or so of training on campus there are enforced curfews. For days before work it’s 10 pm (every day except for Saturday) and 12pm when the next day is a day off (literally only Saturday). You are not allowed off campus during breaks in training, even if the break is for an hour or more. Any time you walk or bike off of campus (yeah, if I didn’t mention we have a bunch of bikes that FEMA Corps gets to use around Vinton. Apparently the only campus that has them.) You must wear a reflective belt when walking around Vinton. You cannot use the team van during the first month or so of training without your team leader physically inside of the van, so you basically have to bike or walk almost everywhere except for grocery shopping with the government card where all of your food stipend ($4.75 a day!) goes to for the team or actual work duties.

 Let me preface what I am going to say next by saying that from what I have seen I believe it is possible to save close to 100% of the living stipend that you do get if you choose to live that lifestyle. I’m sure the team leaders had some sort of training to encourage team members to be responsible, but I had to be pretty insistent today to get granted the ability to spend my own money on groceries[SA1] . This was a team specific decision, and everyone is still growing into their role but we need at least some freedom y’know? My own personal money that I get in my paycheck, mind, not the government card for food that I have no access to. I am a snacking type of person. I cannot just eat a light breakfast, a light lunch, and a medium dinner. That is enough for some people, but I need more. You get roughly $150 a paycheck, every two weeks to spend as you wish and the majority of food that you do eat will be covered in your stipend unless you eat an enormous amount. I wanted to supplement the team food with stuff that I know I eat a lot of, because being one person who eats through everyone’s combined food budget makes you a total jerk and nobody will like you.

 I’m a hilariously boring eater, so I eat a bunch of waffles and sandwiches. Thirty waffles, four bags of potato bread hamburger buns and a loaf of whole wheat bread was a little over $10 combined dollars. That combined with the communal food will likely be more than enough to see me through the week. I don’t want to make it seem like we’re starving or anything as part of this program, but being willing to spend even $10 a week on snacks if you are a snacker I believe is more realistic. It’s nice that the program ideal wants you to save all of your stipend, but to be frank everyone who goes through this program is basically in the same age range. We’re all young, and I fully believe in experiencing life while you still can. I’m going to live within my means, sure, but I am going to go out with friends when possible and enjoy my time in this program as much as I am able. This experience may vary from team to team, but we have a lot of heavy eaters on our team and we burned through our week’s supply in like three days before this conversation got started. You will not be able to eat multiple heavy meals and snack throughout the day on the food stipend that they give you, it is not happening.

 I can’t really speak about any real experiences with FEMA training yet, but I feel like unless there is a major shift I can speak at least about AmeriCorps a bit and what it is like life-style wise. It is certainly not as strict as the military or the police, but it is more restrictive than college. You will likely disagree with some of the restrictions in place and you may even feel like you are being treated like a child again in moments of frustration. The behavior of AmeriCorps NCCC staff is like halfway between camp counselor and motivational life coach if that makes sense at all. The atmosphere, despite the rules is very laid back at least in my opinion as long as those ground rules are followed and you are absolutely allowed to have your personality shine through. No, you do not have to be a robot your entire term.

 But you will have responsibilities, and with those responsibilities comes with you being held to a higher standard than just college or high school. In typical professional environments, the only person you can bring down is yourself or a small group of people. In FEMA Corps, you can bring down an entire team and the mission that the team is on by being a toxic influence over a long period of time. There have to be standards in place, because as was hammered into our heads during FEMA Basic today the #1 goal of FEMA is to reduce loss of life. It might not be direct all the time, but there’s a saying I often heard repeated in my old job that comes from the military that I believe applies to that indirect help concept that I am going to paraphrase: For every soldier on the front line, there are ten support staff making it possible for him to be out there and do his job to the best of his ability.

 At FEMA Corps, we are that support the vast majority of the time. We will not be doing glamorous work, you will not randomly save a famous celebrity’s cat from a burning house or something and go on the talk show circuit for your heroism. You are going to be doing important work, sure, and sometimes it will be boring or tedious. If you sign up for this program, you signed a contract to work your tail off for ten months in support of FEMA. Your main obstacle to that goal is keeping team dynamics up and learning to live with your teamliterally all the time. You have to understand that FEMA’s #1 goal of reducing loss of life is more important than your ego. In the immortal words of the great philosopher, Stone Cold Steve Austin, that’s the bottom line.

We got rep roles today, and I got the media position that I wanted. The trainings, while long, are admittedly getting pretty darned creative. Physical Training (PT) also started this week, and every week we’re on the Vinton campus from now on it will be held at 5:30am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The gosh darn Region Director, in charge of the entire program here drives down at that ungodly hour chipper as ever to lead it and actually runs with us while we do PT. I don’t know if he does any of the other stuff with us, mostly because I was too busy gasping and cursing my horrible physical fitness between huffing and puffing my way through. I had always meant to prepare more, but being real, I am pretty adverse to any cardio so I will appreciate this down the road. How far down the road, I have no idea but at some point in the future I will be happy with my new muscles and stamina and the fact that I did PT three times a week at that ungodly hour.

 I think. As it is, the Region Director was the last one out of the gym for the PT run and not only beat me going out but also coming back in. I’ve had him for a few trainings now along with PT, and I can say for a fact that the lowest energy I have ever seen that man is several orders of magnitudes higher than I have ever been. I genuinely hope to love a job and lifestyle as much as he seems to love his at some point in my life.

 One of our team members was sick today, which was a really rough position to be in. She still sat through training, but she was really visibly struggling as anyone would with a darned fever. One thing that really stood out to me was how none of the staff, including my Team Leader didn’t call her out for something clearly outside of her control and just let her do the best that she could at the time. That sounds really basic, but I’ve certainly been in jobs before where I would have gotten chewed out for daring to get sick during work hours and underperforming. I’m sure some of you have been there.

 One team member got her Gatorade and something to eat, I gave out multivitamins and protein bars. Me and this other girl from another team basically stayed with her in the kitchen while she ate and cleaned her stuff for her so she could get back in her room and rest. The other girl isn’t from my team and I don’t know her at all, but bless her for being willing to do that. The type of person that comes to this program really is awesome sometimes.

 One thing that I’m going to have trouble adjusting to, however, is loosening up just a tad. We got our first job as media reps today that is due in one week, which is making a team brochure that we will send to FEMA worksites as a form of introduction before we make it to the site. There were basic guidelines, but nothing major and two examples passed around. One of which was pretty silly, and I might have put my foot down a little too hard when someone suggested something like that. I come from jobs where having a personality is something that is just as likely to get you fired as noticed, and any of that in professional documents in my mind is basically a cardinal sin. I ended up being talked down to all the professional stuff they wanted in the guidelines and a fun fact or interesting thing about each member. Professionalism is something that I personally take a lot of pride in, but in this environment I think I may need to learn that it’s okay to not be a robot all the time when on the job.

 It is something I am going to continue to take relentlessly seriously, though. Because when I am gone all anyone I work with will remember me as is that one FEMA Corps member that went through with his team. They will remember how our team acted and how they presented themselves, and that directly impacts not only this class but future classes. I want people absolutely ecstatic that Pine 5 is coming to their location by the end of the year, and to do that we need to present ourselves in a manner that shows that we’re a capable team who will work their tails off for the greater mission.

Another six day work week, but a lot of training and stuff done. We went down to Kansas City for two days in order to get our FEMA equipment – basically a laptop and a phone that we’ll be responsible for in our term of service. I’ve never been a fan of carrying around government issued equipment – but it solves a lot of problems for our group in particular. Lots of people have varying cell services with varying levels of working, especially in Vinton. One teammate has Cricket and he gets texts sometimes HOURS after they are sent so letting him know that dinner is ready was particularly challenging at first.

 The long days are feeling less long, and I find myself getting used to sitting through these trainings and have much less issues staying awake. The really fun part, though, is the people here. It kind of feels like freshman year of college again, except everyone here at least that I’ve talked to has a strong drive to do public service and to help people. There’s a lot of very healthy mindsets and while I have been momentarily frustrated or annoyed certainly in these first two weeks, it is a lot easier to work through that when you don’t need to assume that the other person is coming from good intentions. On this campus, I can honestly say just about everyone puts others before themselves almost to an insane degree.

 Canadian standoffs (an instance where two people are trying to pass through a door and both people insist that the other person goes so a long period of time occurs where nobody goes through the door out of excessive politeness) were a daily occurrence at first, but have died down a bit since the first week. People are starting to settle down a bit and get more comfortable, and opening up a bit more now that the initial rush of being overwhelmed is over for a lot of us.

 We got introduced to the concept of rep roles this week, which will be one of our duties as the year progresses. To my understanding so far, there are basically two roles that a FEMA Corps member will be responsible to do throughout the year, aside from service projects and those are your FEMA role and your rep role. The former to my understanding represents the training/work FEMA will give you, and the latter represents the training/work the campus will give you. In my case, my campus in Iowa is part of the North Central Region so I would be doing a duty for that region with my rep role.

 The FEMA positions I have very little information on at this time, but the rep roles I can definitely do a brief overview of. Keep in mind that this is only my limited understanding of the roles at this time, and some of this information may be incorrect. We haven’t gotten our official roles yet, but the basic overview is as follows:

 Vehicle, Safety, and Tools Officer (VST) – In charge of keeping our government issued van that every team gets from preventable damage and maintaining the darn thing. They also log miles travelled and assist the driver in their job. One of the rules is that a driver can only drive for two hours and must have a VST in the passenger seat their entire drive. These two people rotate out every two hours at a minimum to reduce driver fatigue.

 Recruiter – Basically you go to public places, set up your stand, and recruit for AmeriCorps in general. NCCC, VISTA, FEMA Corps, everything. You basically go to different places, set up a table or give presentations, and pitch to people a year of service.

 Service Learning Initiator (SLI) – Basically these are the people that educate people on what we do during our team service projects. They are also in charge of identifying different things the team can do to help their local community where-ever they get stationed.

 Project Outreach Liaison (POL) – Research community organizations. Help organize community service days. Help find out lodging situations, and basically run the show and make everything goes smoothly on at least two community service days. They also plan most of the Independent Service Projects for the team, which are basically optional volunteer hours that people can get. Honestly, this sounds super similar to SLI and I’m not sure what the differences are. I will try and update this when I learn more from the people who actually work these jobs on my team.

 Media Rep – Write press releases, work social media to raise awareness of our programs, write member reflections, deal with the media in general, and basically just make sure that the public knows what we’re doing here at FEMA Corps and to raise goodwill in the community when we do good things. [SA1] 

 Apparently we get two rep roles and two FEMA roles this year, and I’m really hoping for media rep and I can roll with anything else as a secondary. As long as it’s not VST, I’m pretty confident I can do that work without too much trouble and would learn a lot from it. We’ll see how it goes, I’m hopeful for how things shake out.