Welcome to Housing Action Illinois’ new VISTA blog! For about a year, Housing Action Illlinois’ VISTA program has been distributing a monthly newsletter, the VISTA Insider. It’s been a helpful way for current VISTA members to engage and learn more about each other, as well as an excellent way for outsiders (member organizations, potential VISTA host sites, and VISTA candidates) to learn more about the Housing Action’s VISTA program.
This year, we’ve decided to transition from a monthly newsletter to a blog, which will let us share a wider variety of articles, updates, and thoughts. Posts on the VISTA Insider blog (should we come up with a better name?) will come from current and former VISTAs members, VISTA Leaders, and Housing Action staff.
VISTAs: We hope that this blog will help you learn about each other—who you are, what you’re doing, and what you care about—and give you the chance to share your own ideas and passions. We’ve been brainstorming all kinds of things you can write about, but we’d love to hear yours. What have you been learning? What challenges are you facing? What do you wish you’d known when you started? We want to share everything from what motivates you to work in affordable housing and what your host site is focused on right now to how you’re making life work on a VISTA stipend and what challenges you’re facing during your year of service.
So what do you say, VISTAs and host sites? Let’s show them what we got.
— Willie Heineke, Outreach Associate at Housing Action Illinois