20 volunteer to spruce up Youngstown during year-long service to Americorps

YOUNGSTOWN

If you live in the city, look for stepped-up efforts to fight blight, create added green space and improve educational opportunities to come to a neighborhood near you.

“What you will do in Youngstown over the next year is highly important. You will be helping to improve our city on a daily basis,” Mayor John A. McNally told about 20 members of the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. and Ohio Reading Corp. organizations who have dedicated one year to serve on behalf of AmeriCorps, a 23-year-old national civil program devoted to a variety of public-service projects.

The community volunteers were sworn in during a one-hour swearing-in gathering Friday morning at YNDC’s headquarters, 820 Canfield Road, on the South Side.

YNDC hosted the event, which also was part of the 2016 AmeriCorps 1 Millionth Member National Swearing-In ceremony to celebrate 1 million current and past members who have served the organization since 1994 in efforts that include expanding educational and economic opportunities, fighting blight and poverty, strengthening nonprofit agencies’ impact and revitalizing neighborhoods.

McNally applauded the new AmeriCorps volunteers for assisting elected officials and other city stakeholders with duties such as mowing lawns, boarding up vacant homes and taking part in neighborhood clean-up efforts to enhance the city’s overall quality of life.

One of those ready to get started was Brian Wallace, 32, of Youngstown, who hopes to make a positive impact on the East Side, where he’s lived most of his life.

“There’s too little going on. I’d like to liven up the East Side; it’s the lost part of town,” he said with a hint of frustration.

Wallace said he wants to see a full-service grocery store open to eliminate the so-called food desert in that part of the city. In addition, he hopes to paint some buildings to “add more life” to the area’s aesthetics, Wallace continued.

Read more about the plans in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.