AmeriCorps volunteers gave to Alaska

Executive Director Meg Zaletel put attention on the loss of the AmeriCorps volunteers in this letter sent to Sen. Murkowski.

April 18, 2025

Dear Sen. Lisa Murkowski,

Eight AmeriCorps young people dedicated a year of their lives to provide service to Alaska only for their time here to come to an abrupt end.

Alaska was lucky to have them. They did tough work with grace and kindness. They walked across frozen paths to connect with our unsheltered neighbors living in camps, helped people apply for housing, made connections and friendships, and became a part of our team at the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness.

AmeriCorps volunteers arrived at the ACEH office in early January.

People in Anchorage were housed because of them.

They came from Tennessee and Georgia, Connecticut and Maryland, Arizona, Massachusetts and Colorado. They started in Fairbanks with the Fairbanks Community Food Bank and the Tanana Chiefs Conference, where they got to package salmon and deliver it to elders. They moved onto ACEH, Anchorage re:MADE and Fur Rendezvous. Their next stop was supposed to be Yakutat to support projects in the Tongass National Forest and with local governments.

Some said their time helping those who have experienced homelessness was life-changing, and those who received the help could say the same. In a single day, two of the AmeriCorps members along with one of our staff members signed up 21 households for a rare chance at a housing voucher.

“Having an extra set of hands from people with empathy and with compassion, from people who are taught to help, is an incredible asset,” one of our team members, Michaela Franklin, shared. The help from AmeriCorps meant that more people were signed up for Alaska Housing Finance Corp.’s recent opportunity for a housing voucher. More were enrolled in the Coordinated Entry by-name list of those experiencing homelessness. “We were able to assist more people directly,” Michaela says.

AmeriCorps helped with the annual count of people experiencing homelessness.

One day AmeriCorps was out with our street outreach team and encountered a veteran and his wife who had been on the street for years. The AmeriCorps team lead, Morgan Scherrer, shared the story at a recent conference from her place on stage with a street outreach panel.

“We met him where he was at, at his encampment, got on the phone with the VA , and within 20 minutes he was talking to somebody that was planning a way to get out to him the next day.” When the veteran couple was housed, AmeriCorps was as overjoyed as our own staff.

The whole AmeriCorps team supported the two-day community-wide conference in April that we co-hosted with the Municipality of Anchorage. During a recent volunteer appreciation luncheon, Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance gave the AmeriCorps members a shoutout as volunteers extraordinaire.

Mike Hill, ACEH outreach and housing navigation specialist, worked closely with AmeriCorps. He said they were sponges eager to learn and soldiers who never hesitated to go into the field. “They will go on to do great things,” Mike says.

Thank you for listening.

Warmly,

Meg Zaletel

Executive Director

Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness

AmeriCorps volunteers gathered with Meg and some of the staff and outreach team on the day they learned their stint in Alaska was ending early.