GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — A sudden wave of federal budget cuts is hitting Wisconsin communities hard, forcing hundreds of AmeriCorps members to walk away from their services.
AmeriCorps members across Wisconsin were told with little warning that their service was over.
“We had, at that point in time, 430 members serving around the state, that their service ended at 6:20 on a Friday evening,” said Jeanne Duffy, Executive Director of Serve Wisconsin. Serve Wisconsin was suddenly left without nearly 85 percent of its annual funding. The cuts affect 21 programs in the state, including youth education, health outreach, and disaster recovery.
“People are scrambling, and, you know, it's not the best time to have to raise, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure out how you're going to replace all that funding,” Duffy said.
One of the local programs impacted the Girl Scouts of Northwestern Great Lakes lost seven full-time AmeriCorps members who were serving in schools and after-school programs.
“There were tears shed. It was incredibly challenging. These are people who have served, sometimes multiple terms, with Girl Scouts. They're incredibly dedicated to our mission,” Brittany Pye, of Girl Scouts of Northwestern Great Lakes said. The AmeriCorps members helped bring STEM, outdoor recreation, education, and life skills programs into classrooms, sometimes reaching girls who had never experienced Girl Scouts before.
“So without the service of those AmeriCorps members, we may be able to serve fewer sites year to year, which means fewer children get introduced to what we have to offer,” the representative added.
Duffy says the timing couldn't be worse, with many summer programs now left trying to quickly fill the gap. She is urging federal leaders to restore the funding.
“We have a lot of elected officials who are AmeriCorps members who are fighting for us. So there will be, and there's still programs operating nationwide, so at a smaller footprint, so I think that there will be, there's hope, and we'll be back,” said Duffy.
Serve Wisconsin is working with affected programs to try to find emergency funding or alternative support, but many roles will go unfilled without federal help.
