The Work of the WAICC

Working Areas of the Washington InterCorps Council

The InterCorps Council gathers each month for a meeting followed by a pot-luck lunch. The meetings are great for networking and getting to know other service members from across the region and state. We have also made excellent use of email and online chats to push forward the work of the Council. The products of those face-to-face and online meetings have been most encouraging.

We have identified four roles relevant to the ICC mission, and have formed action teams to develop each on behalf of the council. Those four areas are networks, training, representation/ambassadorship, and cross-stream service opportunities. Teams have been working and reporting since early January 2001, with the following results:

Networks: The ICC uses a variety of means to increase communication among members in Washington State and around the nation. First, regions hold meetings where ideas are shared and connections made. Many useful contacts have helped to keep members from "reinventing the wheel" in their efforts to serve.

Fresh information is also on this web site, sponsored by Seattle Community Network. The site is a member resource for finding events, people, and service organizations in your area. Your contributions to this site are always welcome. Please contact Wellesley Chapman if you would like your site or service story represented on this site.

The WAICC uses a statewide mailing list service provided by Yahoo Groups. The service has archives, a calendar, and several other functions useful to members. We encourage members to use these tools to their benefit.

Leaders of InterCorps Councils across the country have recently launched national ICC mailing list to share best practices, questions, challenges, and resources related to cross-stream collaborations in national service.

Trainings: The ICC has committed to providing valuable training for members across the state. Recently, this committment has been met with trainings in Career Transitions (which included a half-day session on group facilitation) in partnership with NWREL and web design, taught by Wade Englund of Seattle Community Network.

We look forward to member thoughts on future trainings. NWREL's offices are overflowing with curriculum, including stress management, tutor training, all aspects of project planning, service learning teaching tools, adult learning, career-related communication, graduate school 101, leadership, living on a budget, mentoring, public relations for national service programs, reflection, team work, and working with challenging people.

So let your local contact know what you want to learn.

Service Projects: Harnessing the excitement of the first-year AmeriCorps team in Cowlitz County, the ICC is helping to facilitate a statewide service project, the AmeriCorps Weekend Challenge. Members in Cowlitz County have arranged for a full weekend of activities, food, speeches, hard work, more food, and places to sleep for hundreds of participants. The ICC role is to help in any way we can, especially by using our networking capacities to spread the word and tapping our connections and collective experience and to help the project along.

Representation & Ambassadors: At almost every regional meeting held since November, 2000, at least one attendee has come from another region. Karen Fortuna has traveled several times from Cowlitz County, in the Southern Region of the ICC, to Seattle and once to Ellensburg during the Member Development Institute (MDI) to promote and report on the progress of the AmeriCorps Weekend Challenge, being organized by the Cowlitz team. Members from the Northern Region have attended ICC meetings in the South and three members drove east to Ellensburg for a meeting with Eastern members during the MDI.