Mount Vernon resident Sophia Andrews recently returned from 10 months of service with Americorps.
Andrews’ service took her to Kauai Habitat for Humanity in Kauai, Hawaii, Sierrra Resource Conservation Center in Fresno, Calif., and World Relief and International Aid in Sacramento, Calif.
Andrews said she had been involved in social justice issues, including the Black Live Matter movement at the start of the pandemic, and was interested in more activism after high school when she stumbled on the Americorps organization.
“I wanted to do more to help community issues and be part of the change I wanted to see in the world,” Andrews said.
Andrews was part of a 6-to-10 member team that worked at the three locations, spending roughly seven to 12 weeks at each location, working on projects for the organizations.
Tasks the group helped with included disaster response, infrastructure improvements, helping refugees resettle into the community and working on electricity and environmental issues.
One of the key lessons she learned – communication is one of the most important things for any group to function.
“Even if we didn’t all agree on the way something should be done, it was important we came to a mutual understanding and found ways to work with each other,” Andrews said.
Some of the challenges Andrews said she found was the unpredictable nature of what they might tackle in a day.
“We might have been working on a task the day before, and the next day we were working on something different,” Andrews said.
The other challenge was the isolation from family and friends.
“I knew that my time with family and friends would be limited when I joined Americorps, but there were just times where I missed my family here,” Andrews said. “There were times I’d just be in unfamiliar places without a lot of people I knew. When that happened, it was important to maintain the relationships with the people in my team and let them know what I was going through.”
Her favorite project was working with World Relief and International Aid.
“With that organization, we were helping to resettle refugees in the Sacramento area,” Andrews said. “That work really required so much empathy and working with other community organizations to make sure the needs were taken care of.”
She said she also did a lot more administrative work, customer service and front desk duties in that role.
The Sierra Resource Center work was spent cleaning up potential burn materials around properties in the Fresno area.
“It was a lot of tedious work, but the people were always so grateful to see us show up and I was always amazed at how much we could get done in a day’s work,” she said. “It taught me how to do a lot of hard things.”
She loved the opportunity to visit three different portions of the United States and get to see different communities and walks of life.
“Every day felt like a new adventure,” Andrews said. “I learned a lot in this very immersive program.”
Andrews said that she wants to focus on more creative outlets, like singing and performance art.
She is learning more about music production online, and hopes to move to a community with people on a similar journey.
Andrews definitely recommends students in high school consider the Americorps program, especially if they aren’t sure college is right for them or what their future plans are.
“If you’re unsure of your next steps, this will at least give you an opportunity to help serve some of the underserved communities,” she said.
While serving with the International Rescue Committee, Sophia Andrews harvested beets and performed other maintenance tasks for a community garden.