VISTA: An Alum Looks Back

Tami Dowd of Escanaba joined the Access Coalition family in late 2005, just as the Medical Access Coalition of Delta County was getting its feet on the ground to serve uninsured county residents. 

At MAC, she says, “serving as an AmeriCorps*VISTA gave me a sense of actually influencing change in the lives of those who have far less than I did. I felt needed and worthy of being an AmeriCorps*VISTA member.”

Her experience in “making a difference” through two service years that ended in December 2007 included her involvement in the growth of the MAC program into a two-county health care outreach effort. Since opening its doors in March, 2006, Tami helped the staff at MAC which has:

  • served 634 uninsured residents of Delta and Menominee counties, including 331 enrolled patients;

  • secured $584,735 in donated medications from pharmaceutical companies and provided another $58,515 in generic prescriptions for patient-enrollees;

  • referred and continues to refer uninsured patient-enrollees into the local OSF St. Francis Hospital and Medical Group system for needed health care.
“The use of AmeriCorps*VISTA members is an incredibly valuable asset to any program that needs additional man/woman power,” she says. Her belief that “volunteering as an AmeriCorps*VISTA is a very rewarding experience” has even prompted her to recruit family and friends to “give it a try.”

“Just the experience alone is a major reward for becoming an AmeriCorps*VISTA,” Tami contends. “No other one work experience can give you so much of a wide variety of eye-opening knowledge.”

 

 

To learn how you can serve as an Access Coalition VISTA, click here.

To meet the VISTA members currently working in Access Coalition offices, see our VISTA Profile page.

To learn more about the AmeriCorps*VISTA program, visit their website.