Young volunteers who respond to natural disasters and help with community projects across the U.S. have been discharged as a result of the Trump administration ‘s campaign to shrink government workforce and services. AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps informed volunteers Tuesday that they would exit the program early “due to programmatic circumstances beyond your control,” according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. More than 2,000 people ages 18 to 26 serve for nearly a year, according to the program’s website, and get assigned to projects with nonprofits and community organizations or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It celebrated its 30th year last year. The volunteers are especially visible after natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Helene last year. The organization said on social media last month that teams have served 8 million service hours on nearly 3,400 disaster projects since 1999.
I worked for a state government agency that had a bunch of Americorps volunteers working in our office and I became friends with most of them. They were in the office with us every day and they made $1000/month IIRC, and they were all on food stamps. Really dumb indeed to cut these people who do important work for a fraction of the cost of a salaried employee.