Vermont Housing Conservation Board 2005 - Vermont Housing and ...

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AMERICORPS MEMBER PROFILE
AmeriCorps member Cheryl Santacaterina with youngsters in the community
room at Moose River Apartments in St. Johnsbury. Cheryl provided before and
after school activities and served many hours beyond the number required by her
term of service.
Helping to Build a Working Community
Cheryl Santacaterina of East Haven, in the Northeast Kingdom, was studying
human services at Springfield College when she got involved with
Moose River Apartments and Gilman Housing Trust, the affordable complex’s
developer, in St. Johnsbury three years ago.
Cheryl volunteered for a year at Moose River, to fulfill her college’s requirement
for a community project — then she accepted a position as an AmeriCorps
resident organizer at Moose River and Mountain View, another Gilman property
in St. J. For almost another two years she helped bring residents together,
with each other and with Gilman, the property managers, and others, to solve
problems. The aim, always, was to empower the residents to use their own
voices and improve their own community.
“My premise with the residents has been an inside-out process, versus
someone coming in from outside to solve the problems,” Cheryl explains. “The
solutions in the complex really need to come from them, because they’re the
ones who live there.
The residents needed to believe that they had the skills.”
Although Cheryl’s term has ended, AmeriCorps continues to fund a resident
organizer at the complexes. And although she sees that more work is needed to
achieve truly self-sustaining results, Cheryl has seen impacts. Residents at both
complexes, she observes, are “more involved in community events.
“I’ve noticed that people talk with
each other more. There’s more of a
problem-solving attitude, more camaraderie.
People have started watching
each other’s children. We started using
the community room — it had nothing
in it, now there’s a blackboard, a TV,
VCR, microwave, dishes. The community
room is an actual community
room now, that’s being used — in both
complexes. The tenants took that on,
and ran with it.
“I got to be part of it,” says Cheryl.
“It was definitely a team effort — it’s
the community, Gilman, the on-site
managers, the police, the fire companies,
everybody in the community
who participated and offered to help.”
“A number of the residents residing
in our small community are visible
members of the larger community:
firefighters, nurses, teachers, college
students, disabled people, and Vermont
Humanities Council members,”
wrote Nina Ricci, a Moose River
resident, to the Caledonian-Record
last August. “Moose River is a melting
pot. I’d like to see more communities
like ours in the community that is our
nation.”
Today, Cheryl Santacaterina is a
graduate student in the counseling
program at Springfield. Reflecting
on her experience with AmeriCorps,
she says, “I learned so many different
things. I think one of the biggest — it’s
not a new lesson — is how important it
is to have all the players at the table at
the same time, for collaborative work.
It’s just really important that communication
happens with everybody right
there.”