Yanina Rivera - AmeriCorps Alum Story
My name is Yanina Rivera and I served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member with Arizona Serve (formerly Serve Yavapai) in 2011 as a community organizer with the Latino Community in Prescott, Arizona. The following year I was hired as the VISTA Team Leader and events coordinator with Arizona Serve. This has been a life-changing experience. I grew so much professionally and learned appropriate ways of entering, building and exiting community, and I developed strong facilitation skills.
Since then, with my experience of building capacity and sustainability through VISTA, I expanded programming for ABD Production’s Skywatchers Project in the Tenderloin Neighborhood of San Francisco. Skywatchers is a community-based arts program that uses art to facilitate dialogue. Skywatchers use community organizing tactics to bring residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District into partnership with professional artists to create multi-disciplinary, site-specific performance installations that amplify the rich and complex stories, life experiences, and talents of community members.
Today, I am no longer the program manager for Skywatchers but continue to facilitate and support the program part-time. I am now the Drop In Center Coordinator at Misssey, Inc. The drop-in center serves as a transformative safe space and after school program for sexually exploited youth, and at-risk youth. We offer a range of opportunities for youth engagement: recreational activities, educational workshops, restorative justice circles, and outlets for creative expression. Our drop-in center staff are instrumental in helping clients who are in crisis or who simply need a place where they can unconditionally be themselves. This work is a reflection of everything I learned with Arizona Serve and I couldn’t be more grateful for the training and opportunities I received from being a National Service Member.