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MAVA VISTA June Conference Recap

Jonathan A Grinde | Published on 6/15/2022


On June 8th, 2022 at the MAVA Volunteer Engagement Leadership Conference the MAVA VISTAs presented "Volunteer Engagement Through AmeriCorps VISTA Service.” The presentation involved eight VISTAs, with six in attendance and two participating with pre-recorded media.

Jonathan Grinde (MAVA) began the presentation by giving a brief overview of AmeriCorps and VISTA specifically. He then introduced the cohort and the organizations where they are serving. After that, he handed it off to Tim Francis (Minnesota Tool Library) and NorKhadijah Lindgren (Anoka Technical College) to begin their section on identifying the need for volunteers at your organization.

The next section was presented by the trio of Amelia Blair-Smith (YWCA Minneapolis), Lindsey Noyed (Foundation for Essential Needs), and Cat Holl (The Family Partnership). They presented on how to onboard and orient new volunteers. Cat’s portion was a pre-recorded video embedded into the slideshow because she was not able to be there in person.

The final section on engaging and appreciating volunteers was presented solo by Chance Chapman (CAPI USA). His partner, Julie Risser (Planned Parenthood of North Central States), was at a training in Iowa and so pre-recorded a couple audio clips for her portion.

Every VISTA was able to share experiences from their project and their organization. The meetup at the conference was a culmination of work to date in everyone’s projects and the first time a meeting of this cohort has taken place in person. This is the first MAVA VISTA conference presentation, but it will not be the last. The recording of the presentation can be found on the Whova conference platform.