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When Jackie Curry was a sophomore at the University of Denver, she needed cash to keep her afloat as she worked toward her degree in environmental science.
So she did what a lot of college kids whose parents aren’t footing their education bill do: She went to the work study office, where a counselor helped her find a job with DU’s Center for Community Engagement to advance Scholarship and Learning.
Her duties took her to K-12 classrooms across metro Denver, where she asked kids what they would like to see in their community. One class was highly concerned about gun violence, so Curry helped bring in Frank DeAngelis, principal of Columbine High School during the 1999 shooting, to speak to them about the implications of gun violence and the importance of prevention.
“We kind of looked at things through a social justice lens, in a way that K through 12 students could understand,” she said. That makes sense, because her job at the center came through AmeriCorps, the billion-dollar federal agency for national service and volunteerism, which is rooted in social justice.
Colorado has a huge AmeriCorps presence with programs operating on more than 700 sites across all 64 counties. AmeriCorps members do everything from wildfire mitigation (350 chainsaw operators are certified annually) to building affordable housing to expanding mental health access in rural communities and helping older people file their taxes.
Benefits vary, but during AmeriCorps terms, which generally run from three months to a year, members can get a small monthly stipend for living expenses, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicare benefits, certifications in skills that will help them enter the workforce and thousands of dollars they can put toward college tuition, student loan debt or other education-related expenses.
Mile High Youth Corps member John Knudsen set fire to a pile of tree debris alongside U.S. Forest Service firefighters near the Bridge Crossing picnic grounds in Hatch Gulch Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022, near Deckers. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)You’re not going to get rich doing AmeriCorps. In fact, you might only squeeze by. But the positive impacts of the program are reciprocal. There’s the help, fresh ideas, enthusiasm and cheap labor members give communities. And there’s the training, certifications, adventure and sense of purpose an AmeriCorps experience gives members.
But in April, the federal Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk cut more than 500 of 700 federal AmeriCorps positions, a national AmeriCorps program and $400 million in grant funding, which hit 1,000 programs across the U.S. and led to the end of service for 300 members across 200 sites in Colorado.
This puzzles Josie Heath, a Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame inductee who worked in President Bill Clinton’s Office of National and Community Service when he was creating AmeriCorps in the early 1990s, because when she asks a leader from one of the various nonprofits she knows if members from the Mile High Youth Corps program, which she founded, are working out, “they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we couldn’t do what we do without them.’
So if you’re really talking about efficiency, which is at the core of DOGE, I can’t imagine there’s a program that leverages more significant outcomes.
— Josie Heath, founder of Mile High Youth Corps
“So if you’re really talking about efficiency, which is at the core of DOGE, I can’t imagine there’s a program that leverages more significant outcomes,” said Heath, who served eight years as a Boulder County commissioner and modeled the Mile High Youth Corps after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. “First, in service and secondly, in training the next-generation workforce. Both have a demonstrated need, so it’s hard for me to imagine anyone who truly understands the economy saying we shouldn’t expand these programs.”
Not everyone agrees with Heath.
An opinion writer on Fox News who has followed AmeriCorps for decades, said “AmeriCorps struggles to distinguish between real and imaginary ‘service,’” citing some members serving as elementary school “‘recess referees,’” and others organizing a poetry reading on the evils of domestic violence for survivors of domestic violence.
The agency receives roughly $1 billion in taxpayer funds every year, according to the House Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, but in November failed its eighth consecutive audit over the past decade, “highlighting persistent mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.
But on April 29, Colorado joined 24 other states in filing a lawsuit attempting to reverse the Trump administration’s abrupt cuts to AmeriCorps funding, which they say will prematurely end the service of thousands of members unless the state or nonprofits can come up with alternative funding.
If the DOGE cuts stand, and other funding fails to materialize, hundreds of programs helping thousands of people in Colorado will face negative impacts, along with a significant number of 18- to 24-year-olds for whom AmeriCorps is a bridge into adulthood at a time when entering adulthood is harder than ever.
Adulting in the 2020s
Mile High Youth Corps land conservation crew members work together on the start of a bridge. (Courtesy of Mile High Youth Corps)A recent survey by the PEW Research Center showed 7 in 10 Americans thought young adults were having a harder time than their parents’ generation when it came to saving for the future (72%), paying for college (71%) and buying a home (70%).
And a recent report by the Department of the Treasury said those variables, along with “the mounting costs of climate change and deficit spending,” are deteriorating young people’s health, “as seen in increases in social isolation, obesity and death rates.”
But AmeriCorps offers an alternative path to adulthood for young people.
Some AmeriCorps impacted by DOGE cuts in Colorado
Paonia, CO, Groundwork
Managing livestock and regenerative food production, mentoring Food System Fellows, and preparing to double farm output at an educational farm.
Salida, Guidestone Colorado
Delivering hands-on environmental and garden education to K–12 students through a district-wide Farm to School program.
Managing community and school gardens, growing food for cafeterias, hospitals, and local families.
Leading ranch history and homesteading education programs that connect youth to agriculture, culture and place.
SEE MOREAlamosa, Rio Grande Farm Park
Running the “Rising Stewards” youth employment and education program, supporting multilingual community events and engaging farmworkers and first-generation farmers in regenerative agriculture.
Paonia, Colorado Farm & Food Alliance
Supporting rural food system resilience through bilingual community outreach, content development, and farmer support; advancing citizen science projects in soil health and climate-smart ag; and coordinating the “Plant-a-Row” food-sharing initiative.
Leadville, Cloud City Conservation Center
Teaching farm-based science and nutrition education in the only produce farm in Lake County; supporting school gardens and outdoor learning in partnership with Lake County School District; and promoting healthy food access and waste diversion.
Al Stone, who started her service in the San Luis Valley in 2017, said “it’s a way to serve your country without going into the military. It’s a way for young people to see a part of the country they’ve never been to.” And in her case, she said, it was a way to give neurodivergent kids in an underserved region much-needed attention while taking some of the pressure off overworked specialists.
Stone didn’t have to do AmeriCorps — she chose to after a Peace Corps stint in Malawi fell through. And she said during her service, she saw a lot of white privilege in young adults using AmeriCorps as a way to move to a new community for a year. “However, you could do AmeriCorps right in your backyard,” she said. “I could have done mine in Georgia.”
For Curry, the SNAP benefits, access to a local food pantry and her modest stipend of around $900 per month for living expenses supported her while she was going to college. She used her education award — $8,000 total for two terms lasting nine months each during undergrad and a yearlong term after she graduated — for books and other materials, student loan payments and to re-up her Wilderness First Responder certification multiple times. (The money sits in an account accessible through AmeriCorps. It expires after seven years.)
Curry has poured AmeriCorps’ investment in her back into her community. She’s worked with multiple nonprofits across the Front Range, including Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, Wildlands Restoration Volunteers and Mile High Youth Corps, where she’s now a board member.
Since college, she’s been involved in multiple projects that positively impact communities. In her latest job, at an environmental nonprofit focused on advancing a movement to tackle environmental challenges, she “gets to study how people are connecting with the outdoors across the country and how I can be of service to them,” she said.
After Stone’s two-year service ended, she stayed in Alamosa, where she found work with the Valley Roots Food Hub, which distributes locally grown food across Colorado.
She has since moved to Del Norte and created The Moth-inspired Spadefoot Story Slam, at the Narrow Gauge Book Co-op, where community members gather on the third Saturday of each month “to share true stories, live and from the heart. No notes, no script — just real moments remembered by you.”
She’s on the board for SLV Pride, which organizes Pride Fest; she’s on the committee for the Valley Educational Gardens Initiative, which empowers people to take ownership of their nutrition through education; and she says working in local food systems and with youth makes her happy, so she intends to keep doing it indefinitely.
A sampling of AmeriCorps in Colorado
On April 30, Holly Conn sent an email to supporters of her nonprofit, Mountain Roots Food Project.
In it, she said the federal government had canceled over $400 million in funding in AmeriCorps grants nationwide, which could (and did) prematurely end the service of nearly 300 AmeriCorps members in Colorado, 25 of whom she manages.
“AmeriCorps members are the ‘boots on the ground’ that get things done,” she wrote.
“Every year, 7,526 Gunnison Valley residents depend on the programs and services our AmeriCorps members provide to our community,” she added.
They focus on food production, food security and food policies through a farm-to-school program Mountain Roots runs for the Gunnison Watershed School District. They give hands-on lessons in environmental science and nutrition, model and teach regenerative agriculture practices and deliver boxes of farm-fresh food to 150 recipients throughout the Gunnison Valley.
The recession of federal funds removes support for the Healthy Futures program the Mountain Roots Food Project operates, which places full-time AmeriCorps members with host sites across southwestern and central Colorado, said Conn.
“These positions are not ornamental,” Conn wrote. “They are deeply embedded in the health, education, food access and climate resilience work happening across rural Colorado.”
“Local nonprofits and regional partners are urgently calling for short-term public and philanthropic funding to keep AmeriCorps members in service,” she added. “Without them, thousands of residents—especially seniors, low-income households and immigrant communities—will lose access to critical services. And hundreds of young adults will lose a pathway to meaningful career development through service.”
Statewide in 2024, Colorado’s nearly 6,600 corps members served at more than 700 local sites across all branches of AmeriCorps service, from rural mountain towns to urban centers, according to Serve Colorado, a governor-appointed state service commission that allocates funding to organizations that respond to local needs.
Every year, 7,526 Gunnison Valley residents depend on the programs and services our AmeriCorps members provide to our community.
— Holly Conn, co-founder of Mountain Roots Food Project
LEFT: Mile High Youth Corps programming lead Daniel Escobar Flores, right, moves to the side so Carter Aram can carry an old toilet from a home in Arvada before a water-saving model is installed. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun) TOP RIGHT: High School Equivalency Lead Teacher Marycela Villescazder, left, assists YouthBuild corps member Emma Garcia with percentages during a math session on May 7. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun) LOWER RIGHT: Escobar, the crew lead, updates the dining room light with energy-saving bulbs after an energy audit of the home in Arvada. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)
In doing so, they gave more than 1 million hours of service “to uplift fellow Coloradans”; returned over $30 million in tax refunds to low-income families through tax preparation assistance; supported almost 20,000 students with mentorship, classroom support and tutoring; removed 25,000-plus hazard trees and thinned 3,000-plus acres to reduce wildfire risk; built or maintained almost 1,000 miles of public trails and provided human services to over 27,000 community members, according to Gov. Jared Polis’ office.
Conn said what she has seen since she started working with AmeriCorps is a win for young people who want hands-on job training experience as they figure out their future, and a win for the under-resourced communities they serve throughout Colorado.
“When I started working with AmeriCorps members, I thought, I need more of this. Our community needs more of this. Young people need more of this, because they’re not ready to go straight from college into a career,” she said.
Scott Segerstrom, executive director of the Colorado Youth Corps Association, which oversees the two largest federal AmeriCorps grant in the state ($6.4 million total) supporting seven of the eight accredited conservation service corps in the network with 725 members, said these corps are “a year-round cornerstone” of Colorado’s $36.5 billion outdoor recreation economy and set to become the “front line implementers” of Polis’ new Outdoor Strategy Plan announced April 24.
And Lynn Urban, president and CEO of United Way of Southwest Colorado, said the AmeriCorps members they place in schools, nonprofits and government organizations do critical work on everything from early childhood literacy to STEM education to food security and “serving seniors, trying to prevent loneliness.”
But perhaps nowhere is AmeriCorps’ impact on those serving Colorado greater than at Mile High Youth Corps in Denver.
The opportunity of opportunities
Before crew members from Mile High Youth Corps head out from their Denver warehouse, Energy and Water Conservation Program Director Nate Edge leads the group in some warm ups to help prepare for the work day. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)Mile High Youth Corps’ headquarters sits on a busy corner of Federal Boulevard with a view of Empower Field at Mile High, home of the Denver Broncos.
On an early morning in May, the offices are buzzing with activity.
Corps members mill about, donning hard hats for their jobs at construction sites across the city, and shouldering backpacks to head out for conservation work along its edges. Someone hunches over a laptop studying for their upcoming GED exam. Someone else staffs the front desk, so Rochelle Kwiatkowski, Mile High’s chief development officer, and Demetrius Parker, program and pathways manager, can explain the program.
Kwiatkowski says federal AmeriCorps dollars account for about a third of Mile High’s budget to support largely BIPOC, mostly low-income 17- to 24-year-olds who hear about the program mainly through word-of-mouth and apply for a few coveted positions seeking job skills, a paycheck, a GED and a path into the workforce. She says Mile High’s grants are still intact, but they are diversifying their funding — just in case.
Mile High hosts four AmeriCorps programs: YouthBuild Construction, Energy & Water Conservation, YouthBuild Health & Wellness, and Land Conservation.
Programs without YouthBuild in their name are for any 17-to-24-year-old interested in serving. And ones designated YouthBuild are for 17-to-24-year-olds “disconnected from school or work,” Mile High says.
This year, 247 people applied for 22 positions in the Mile High YouthBuild Construction program. YouthBuild combines traditional AmeriCorps service with GED obtainment, so a prerequisite for joining is not having a high school diploma. YouthBuild corpsmembers can focus on one of two programs: YouthBuild Construction and YouthBuild Health and Wellness, both of which come with a remarkable amount of support.
YouthBuild Construction members serve six-to-10-month terms, earn a bi-weekly stipend and an AmeriCorps education award and get on-the-job experience along with OSHA, First Aid, Pre-Apprentice Training and Customer Service Equivalency Training certificates.
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SUBSCRIBEAnd YouthBuild Health and Wellness members earn a bi-weekly stipend, an education award, their GED and access to the Community College of Denver, where they’re enrolled in coursework for their Certificate in Nurse Aide and connected with skilled health care professionals for specialized instruction and on-the-job training.
The YouthBuild Construction program is highly competitive — hence the 247 people who applied for the most recent cohort last autumn.
Initially, through interviews, Mile High selected 50 candidates. They then went through a two-week “bring your A-game” second hiring phase, where candidates had to prove their interest and how committed they were by consistently showing up, being punctual, showing they were team players and that they had “good energy,” said Dishaunee Miller-Christensen, 22, who was accepted.
It’s nerve-racking waiting to find out who made the program. Miller-Christensen said, “I really, really wanted it, I did. I mean, I was ready to change my work schedule and everything. It’s an all-day thing, full-time, so I would have to change my life around. So yeah, I was definitely nervous, but I didn’t think I had a reason not to get in.”
Once in, participants get a windfall of support from people like Jason Vaughn, director of supportive services.
When a new member is starting, he’ll do a deep dive into their career aspirations, resources and education.
Director of Supportive Services Jason Vaughn poses in his Mile High Youth Corps office on May 7. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)“I ask what’s your housing look like? What’s your food resources? What’s your mental health, your transportation? But what we really like to dig into is what’s actually going on in their life, because that’s what’s going to determine their success in the program,” Vaughn said. “It’s not, can they actually do what we’re asking them to do, workwise, it’s going to be those outside factors, like living situation, relationships, mental health and those things. But the folks that lock in and really do the program, I feel like we do pretty well in terms of getting through some of those barriers.”
Over the course of the program, they do regular check-ins, get additional help if needed and meet to teambuild and give feedback on their programs.
And as they near the end of their program, they’re given help transitioning out of it. “So, what are they doing after they exit our program, and how do we make sure that they’re set up for success as they continue in the community and in their lives?” Parker said.
All of that help pays off. In 2023, 192 of 247 members completed their program and 161 found jobs. Perhaps as important: 92% reported feeling a “sense of belonging.”
Crossing the bridge to adulthood
YouthBuild corps member Dishaunee Miller-Christensen, left, poses for a portrait with YouthBuild Program and Pathways Manager Demetrius Parker on May 7 at the Mile High Youth Corps Headquarters in Denver. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)Many who find their way to the YouthBuild program are like Miller-Christensen, who after eight months of working, studying and committing, is about to graduate from YouthBuild after passing her GED and fulfilling her other requirements.
Miller-Christensen learned “the basic skills of tools, measurements and things, so I can go into a company and show them,” she said.
She also helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofits, including The Struggle of Love Foundation, which gives underprivileged youth and/or families access to year-round services and programs. “We just got off a building on Colfax we fixed up,” she said. The YouthBuild team is working on other affordable housing projects throughout metro Denver.
Miller-Christensen said she found out about YouthBuild from a post on social media “that was like, come get your GED. You get paid. You get to do construction.”
It caught her eye, she said, “because, I was like, obviously I want to. I need to get my GED. I’d just … had a lot of stuff at home. I guess I didn’t have anybody to keep me on track. I’d lost that support system.”
After she graduates on June 18, she says she’s going to take some time to think about what she wants to do next, with her newfound skills, GED and connections.
As for the future of Mile High Youth Corps? Kia Abdool, CEO, says if they lose funding, the program would need to “fundamentally shift.
“While it’s too early to say exactly what that looks like, we are actively exploring options to continue serving as many young people as possible, maintaining financial solvency and navigating significant uncertainty.”
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