The importance of being involved

My name is Brendan Ehrlich and I am an Americorps member currently serving Midland Area Homes in the city of Midland. It has been roughly eight months since I began my service here and the experience so far has been rather eye-opening.  I grew up in Midland and I’ve been a resident for nineteen years. Before my experience with Americorps, I actually never liked this town. In fact, I had a strong urge to leave as soon as possible. However, this urge began to fade once I started serving almost eight months ago. Americorps really forced me to be involved with this community in a way that I had never been before. In a short amount of time, my service was showing me many new aspects of the town I had lived in my entire life. 

My first eye-opening moment of my service occurred at Midland County’s 2011 “Housing Connect” event. I was amazed by the number of people from the Midland area that had shown up for help. The lines of people stretched far outside and wrapped around the building. This made me realize how out of touch I was with the community. My previous notions of homelessness in Midland were inaccurate to say the least. As I watched the faces of people light up after receiving a winter coat or a small bag of toiletries I wondered why I never knew that this much help was needed. I soon realized that many residents in Midland were just as out of touch with the community as I was. This realization really motivated me to help spread awareness of these issues in Midland where ever I could. Following the “Housing Connect” event, I began to partake in numerous local events and fairs to help bring awareness to my agency and the issues of homelessness in Midland.

Shortly after I was introduced to some of my community’s toughest issues, I met many of the great people trying to tackle these issues. I started attending Midland county’s C.O.C. meetings on a monthly basis and listened in as different local agencies worked out plans in cooperation to better serve the community’s needs. Each agency would bring up the problems they were facing when serving clients and together, the C.O.C. would try to address those problems. I came to admire many people from those meetings and made connections that I never would have without Americorps.

 

My Americorps service has taught me so many things, but I think the most important lesson I’ve taken from this is that I have to be involved. I realized that my dislike for my community when I was younger was simply a result of me not trying. I will take this lesson with me for the rest of my life and use it to work with others to make my community a better place.