AmeriCorps is facing multiple threats: grants have been cancelled, staff positions have been terminated, and the Office of Management and Budget is currently withholding FY25 funds. Additionally, the president’s FY26 budget proposes to eliminate the program entirely. Everyone who cares about national service is encouraged to contact their lawmakers and advocate for the preservation of AmeriCorps and its funding. Click here to learn more and take action. Read below for a personal statement from 2025 Corpsmember of the Year Logan Nichol of Heart of Oregon Corps about the importance of AmeriCorps to his life and career.

Hello, my name is Logan Nichol, an AmeriCorps alumni and active full-time staff member of Heart of Oregon Corps. Let me tell you how my life was impacted by my service. It all began in the summer of 2021 when I first joined Heart of Oregon’s High Desert Conservation Corps (HDCC). Though I was initially uncertain if the step I was taking was the right step, I pushed through and completed four terms and over 4,000 service hours. Now as a staff member at Heart of Oregon Corps for ten months, I truly have learned a lot about what Corps mean to our community and to myself. My service terms have taught me valuable leadership skills, hands on technical skills, teamwork, and perseverance.
The impact that Corps have on our communities is truly something to behold. Heart of Oregon’s YouthBuild program helps build affordable housing for our communities across Central Oregon and helps youth obtain their GED. In 2024 alone, Heart of Oregon’s High Desert Conservation Corps, Central Oregon Youth Conservation Corps, Camp Lead, and the Stewardship programs improved 1,887 acres of public land in our local communities and our national forests and maintained 83 miles of trail or waterways in Central Oregon.
HDCC goes out to projects in various places in Central Oregon providing essential skillsets and services. They do projects involving fencing (building, maintenance, removal), herbicide applications, wildfire fuels reduction, site restoration/plantings, and trail work (building, maintenance, decommission). HDCC alone improved over 900 acres out of the 1,887 acres Heart of Oregon programs worked on in 2024. Heart of Oregon Corps was part of a trail project out towards the Ochoco National Forest where HDCC crews worked on building a trail near a spring called Bandit Springs. The HDCC crew completed three miles of trail work within a three-month timespan in 2024.
The reason why AmeriCorps is so important to our communities and our great nation – and the reason that Oregon’s U.S. Representatives and Senators need to know about – is that AmeriCorps provides opportunities and trainings for youth with many different backgrounds to gain a foothold in the workforce and to build themselves up to be successful going forward in their lives. AmeriCorps connects individuals with organizations to tackle issues like poverty, disaster response, education and many more service areas to make a local and lasting impact for all 50 states. Members who complete a term of service receive an education award that can be used to pay for college, graduate school, trade school, and/or to repay student loans. AmeriCorps is vital to a lot of communities in our nation who don’t have the funds or the manpower to tackle the problems we face such as homelessness, inflation, wildfires, destruction of natural habitat, etc. For young adults like me, and communities like mine, please help save AmeriCorps.






































































