During my year with AmeriCorps VISTA and CMM, my position consistently provided me with personal, professional, and educational challenges as well as the support system and training necessary to surmount them and aid in bettering my community and myself. As an AmeriCorps Mediation and Outreach Specialist my roles were myriad: facilitator: mediator: event planner: outreach specialist. Working with CMM afforded me the opportunity to develop an arts-based conflict resolution program with a local community, act as a ride-along mediator with local law enforcement, and work side by side with many dedicated members of public and private social welfare agencies as well as community members themselves. Through adopting so many varied functions I gained the career-related and interpersonal skills necessary to make me a more purposeful thinker, educator, student, and, ultimately, human being, and, even less than one year out of the program, I find that my experience with CMM still constantly informs my daily life in positive and enlightening ways.

James Dennis O'Brien 2007-2008