After AmeriCorps cuts, an urban farm project turns to private donors
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CASPER, Wyo. — Jamie Purcell was counting on welcoming a team of seasoned AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps volunteers to dedicate 13 weeks to building a two-acre urban farm in Casper, Wyoming.
But a few days before her team’s scheduled arrival, Purcell, a program manager, discovered that no one was coming. The NCCC program disbanded after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ordered AmeriCorps to cut almost half of its total grant funding.
The volunteers who planned to serve in Casper, the second largest city in Wyoming, were sent home instead.
Purcell, farm manager at Urban Thistle Farm, a branch of the Casper Housing Authority, wasn’t ready to accept defeat.
A team of AmeriCorps-trained workers is building the farm in Casper, but the government isn’t funding the project. Instead, individual donors — community members from Casper and beyond — are footing the bill.
“We just had this idea, could we fundraise locally about $20,000 to bring 10 essential team members here to continue the work?” Purcell said. “We already have the housing. We already had the plan and all the supplies.”
Urban Thistle Farm hosted a team of AmeriCorps NCCC members in the fall to start building the farm. When Purcell learned about the cuts in April, she called the previous group’s team leader to float her idea.
By the time Purcell made that call, most AmeriCorps members at the NCCC campus in Aurora, Colorado were already on flights home. But the team leaders — AmeriCorps members responsible for leading the volunteer teams — stayed behind to make sure everyone got home.
Purcell recruited a dozen now-former team leaders interested in working on the urban farm in Casper.
But she had to find a way to pay them.
The executive director of the Casper Housing Authority pitched to the board the idea of raising $20,000 to fund a group of former AmeriCorps members to complete the urban farm. One donor, Rhonda Zimmerman, the owner of a towing company based in Casper, donated the entire amount.
This donation funded a team of 12 young adults to work 40 hours a week for six weeks on the urban farm, earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
Purcell already had housing lined up for the original expected team of AmeriCorps volunteers, provided by the Casper Housing Authority, where the new team could stay instead. The dormitory-style apartments are owned by the city and managed by the housing authority.
When team leader Drew Tienken heard about the chance to receive free housing and be paid to work in Casper, he jumped on it.
With the disbandment of the AmeriCorps NCCC program, corps members lost their jobs, health insurance and housing. The position at Urban Thistle Farm doesn’t offer as many benefits as AmeriCorps NCCC — no insurance or student loan repayment — but it is an opportunity to continue working in public service.
“Although certain political motivations in the current administration would have liked to take away the benefits that this program is providing, this is a way for us to continue to uphold our commitment to America and to the American public and continue to uphold AmeriCorps' mission of serving communities that are underserved and need access to resources,” said Tienken, one of the former AmeriCorps team leaders working on the farm.
The newly-assembled team went home for a couple weeks before they arrived in Casper the first week of May.
Urban Thistle Farm is located in North Casper on property owned by the Casper Housing Authority, which provides housing assistance to residents in the area.
North Casper has one of the largest Latino communities in the city. The poverty rate in the neighborhood is twice as high as the city’s average, and the area is considered a food desert.
Purcell has helped start several community gardens throughout the city, but Urban Thistle Farm will be the largest, designed to maximize food production and address the neighborhood’s food insecurity.
“The neighborhood itself is walkable, but it's not walkable to many services. A few years ago, the last convenience store closed, and there's only one left at the entrance of one of the neighborhoods. But you're one to three miles from any source of food,” Purcell said.
The team of AmeriCorps volunteers who worked on the farm in the fall built three greenhouse domes to protect plants from the elements.
The current team built another greenhouse and started growing plants inside each dome.
They are building planter boxes, installing an irrigation system, removing rocks and tilling soil to create a pollinator garden and planting wildflowers along the road.
The team is funded through June 14. By then, the former corps members want to complete the farm’s infrastructure and start growing food.
The farm is located next to an old school building, which Purcell said the organization plans to renovate into a community center connected to the farm.
A few of the classrooms will be converted into a small grocery store to replace the convenience store that recently closed. Purcell said they’ll use the space to offer career and job training to people housed with Casper Housing Authority who want to gain skills in food production or retail.
Originally, AmeriCorps NCCC team assigned to work in Casper planned to stay until July 17, which would have given them time to work on renovating the school building.
“The goal is to have it be a farm, but also have it be like a community hub. And those two things can work together in tandem, ideally, if we were given a little more time to do so,” Tienken said.
Two weeks after the team arrived in Casper, they launched a campaign to raise another $20,000 to pay for six or seven team members to continue working on the farm for an additional five weeks, when their AmeriCorps service would have naturally ended.
“As a former AmeriCorps alum, I have a sense of where these displaced members are financially. I just had a big sense of empathy, of the lack of preparation for their life outside of AmeriCorps,” said Katherine Kalmon, who donated $500 to the fundraiser.
“The second [reason] is that what Urban Thistle Farm is doing is a public good. Public goods are public goods for a reason. They positively affect everybody down the line.”
Tienken said the majority of the donors in the fundraiser have been people like Kalmon, who are familiar with AmeriCorps. But the team has received donations from community members in Casper as well.
“It is really heartwarming to see community members give donations to our cause for us to stay longer. Because to me, it suggests that they want us here and they want us working and they like what we're doing,” said Phoebe Serlemitsos, another former AmeriCorps team member working on the project.
Without the initial donation made by Casper resident Rhonda Zimmerman, Urban Thistle Farm could not have afforded to sponsor a team of former AmeriCorps members to get the farm up and running.
Through the AmeriCorps NCCC program, sponsors did not need to raise a substantial amount of money in order to receive a team. AmeriCorps provided its NCCC teams with transportation, gear and a stipend. Purcell said the organization hosting the team only needed to provide housing.
“AmeriCorps is so much more sustainable, right? You take collective tax dollars from everyone and you're able to streamline it nationally and serve so many more communities. Whereas this team, as amazing as they are, is only serving North Casper,” Purcell said.
Tienken is worried about how the privatization of payment for public goods will impact communities who would have otherwise benefited from AmeriCorps services but can’t afford to fund it on their own.
“It didn’t matter how affluent or how many resources someone had. There was a dedicated team of staff who looked for places that were underserved or financially marginalized, and the federal government was the supplier of those resources,” Tienken said.
“Places that have access to resources and are able to host a team of people who are willing to serve might have the ability to do that. But places that don't have access to those resources will not get the proper service that they might need.”
Wyoming Public Radio reporter Jordan Uplinger and Rocky Mountain PBS reporter Alec Berg contributed to this story.
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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