Giving Tree
Dear Editor: The Giving Tree was an amazing success this year. Thank you to all who took tags and so thoughtfully and generously gave gifts to those we serve, and to those who donated.
Also, a big thank you to the Wells Fargo Bank for hosting the tree and the gift drop box, we could not do this without you. A special thanks to all the volunteers who made tags, collected and distributed over 125 gifts to the Sitka Pioneers Home, Sitka Long Term Care, Sitkans Against Family Violence, Sitka Youth Advocates and Tlingit and Haida Head Start.
We wish all of Sitka a Blessed New Year!
Julia Smith and the
United Methodist Church of Sitka
AmeriCorps
Dear Editor: The day the Kennicott pulled into Sitka’s ferry terminal on the crisp early morning of Jan. 10 was the beginning of the rest of my life – or so it felt anyway. Up until that point I’d spent three months traveling from New Mexico, up the 1 along the west coast, all the way to Bellingham – breaking down in Nevada, fighting snowstorms in Oregon, and enjoying the last of my lower 48 experiences.
I was thinking about what my next chapter was going to look like and how I was going to be transformed. I had chosen to come to Sitka because my life, and my growth, had come to a standstill in New Mexico and I had been looking for deeper ways to impact change in the ever weary and restless world around me. That feeling is what led me to AmeriCorps.
I have now been a volunteer with AmeriCorps for an entire year and am excited to renew my contract for a second year. The growth I was looking for has been far more than I could have ever imagined because Sitka knows how to leave its mark on a person’s soul. In this past year, I have spent my time serving at Youth Advocates of Sitka, as a service provider of Hanson House, and that time has been revitalizing, life-changing, and provoking.
In my time, I have been pushed entirely out of my comfort zone. I have had to learn how to be a better, more compassionate communicator. I have been forced to recognize that I am still learning how to be a reliable leader. I have become more reflective about what it means to be a supporter.
At the same time, I have also learned what it means to be an advocate. When I chose to come to Sitka, to support the mission statement of AmeriCorps, I had come with the naive belief that I knew everything there was to know about the nation around me. I came thinking that my passion – my tenaciousness, and conviction for change – was going to be the building block on which I could instigate a bigger systemic change. What I learned instead was that gentleness was the real way forward. That there have been plenty of people aggressively pushing forward to point out the flaws in our world and lay out the answers on how it needs to be changed – I know because right now I am that person. However, like the steady beat of the Haa Shagoon drum, what the world really needs is someone who can be just as steady, enduring, and resolute.
What I have learned this year in my service with AmeriCorps is that what the world needs is more gentleness, forgiveness, and unconditionality. Moving forward, I am renewing a second year with AmeriCorps. My hope for myself this year is that I can learn how to be gentle, how to get out of my own way, and how to live and see the world through the eyes of compassion, not judgment.
Unity and kindness,
Anastasia Stefanowicz,
AmeriCorps Volunteer
