Martin finds year as AmeriCorps team leader ‘eye opening’

Martin’s latest community service work was as a team leader for AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC).
“I spent most of 2008 with that program,” said Martin, 26, of Presque Isle. “I showed up in January for a month of training in Denver, and after that, the Corps members arrived. There were 28 teams, and I had 10 Corps members that I was responsible for. We spent the month of February training with them, and then we all deployed for a specific project in March.”
Each team manages four projects – each project lasting about two months – throughout the year. Martin’s team was first sent to Mississippi.
“We were doing refurb on homes affected by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina … hanging drywall, mudding, sanding, painting, hanging a little bit of cabinetry, doors, floors … anything on the inside of existing structures,” he said. “Then we moved to New Orleans for our second project.
“We worked with Habitat for Humanity. One great experience down there was getting to work with President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s Blitz Build. Though we didn’t get to work on a house with he and his wife,” said Martin, “they had an after party for the people involved in the build. I didn’t get to meet him, but I got to see him on stage. He sang “When the Saints Go Marching In” with Harry Connick Jr. It was a fun night. They had all kinds of exotic foods … I tried my first raw oyster. It was interesting. Grilled oysters are better.”
Martin, the son of Stephen and Cheryl Martin of Presque Isle, said his team worked on six or seven houses in New Orleans.
“After the Blitz Build was done, our team moved to St. Bernard Parish, which is just outside of New Orleans. We worked on another seven or eight houses. Habitat for Humanity contracts out foundations, pours the slab and piles the bricks up. After that happens, Habitat takes over and it’s all volunteer work. In total, we conservatively helped build 15 houses in Louisiana. It was a tremendous experience.”
When Hurricane Katrina hit, St. Bernard Parish was completely underwater.
“There wasn’t one inch of area that didn’t have several feet of water over it,” said Martin. “Rescue efforts weren’t even sent into St. Bernard for three days because they just assumed that everyone died, when in fact there were people waiting on the roofs of their houses for days to be rescued. There were 35,000 to 40,000 people displaced from St. Bernard Parish alone.”
Once wrapping up their stint in Louisiana, Martin’s team headed back to Denver for a weeklong break.
“At the Denver campus, we have what’s called a ‘shuffle round’ where we change up teams. For our third project, I pretty much had a new team,” he said. “Along with two other teams, my team ran a three-week summer program called ‘Summer of Service.’ It’s a mini NCCC experience for Denver at-risk youth.”
Martin called the Summer of Service “the most challenging experience of my life.”
“By far, it was the most rewarding,” he said. “We had 100 Denver youth come to the program. They were divided into teams of 10, and during that time, team leaders step up a role in responsibility, as well as Corps members. It’s an additional leadership challenge.
“The Denver kids stayed on campus, ate on campus and lived on campus. During the day, they were deployed into Denver and surrounding areas working on conservation, with state and national parks, and getting positive, real-life experience,” said Martin. “To say that these kids were headstrong would be an understatement. They were very stubborn … jaded. Some of these kids have been living on their own raising their siblings from the time they were 11 or 12. In the beginning, it was difficult for them to meet the expectations that we had set, but by the end, the kids were enthusiastic about being there. Ninety-five percent of them wanted to be there, wanted to do the right thing, and wanted to give back to their community.”
Martin’s fourth and final project was in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“We went back to our original teams and we worked with the Cumberland Trail Conference helping build trails and bridges,” he said. “They had three bridges that they wanted build across some gorges. We helped on one and started and finished a second bridge.
“The one that we built was an 80-foot long bridge that was 25 to 30 feet over the gorge,” said Martin. “It was an amazing experience.”
While in Tennessee, Martin’s team got called on a Red Cross Disaster Deployment to Texas to help out with Hurricane Ike relief.
“We worked in Beaumont for a week, and then in Orange, Texas for two weeks. We worked directly with the Red Cross and the Southern Baptists delivering hot food to the communities,” said Martin. “Getting a chance to hand a hot meal, snacks and water to someone who hasn’t had food yet that day and was so thankful was a tremendous experience. It really puts how well off we are in perspective.”
It was while doing an alternative spring break (ASB) program with the University of Maine in 2007 that Martin got reintroduced to community service.
“We went to Eden Garden State Park in Florida and helped them with some conservation work … mitigating some invasive bamboo species,” he said. “That was my re-taste of community service. I did some in middle school and high school, but most of my college career was concentrating on other things. Then I got back into it at the end of my master’s program with this ASB program. One of the girls in that group told me about one of her friends who had done the NCCC, so I looked into it and decided this was a time in my life that I wanted to be more involved in the community and national service.”
Martin said all the cities he visited were “eye opening.”
“I really liked New Orleans,” he said. “The music – at and in-between every street corner – was phenomenal. I had never been to a crawfish boil before … never eaten turkey neck before. There was a lot of culture shock for me along the Gulf Coast. I thought I had seen poverty before, but I hadn’t. There were some difficult places in New Orleans and along the coast.”
Through his year with AmeriCorps NCCC, Martin said he learned a lot about himself, and others.
“There are so many people in our country – let alone the world – who can use a helping hand but don’t want to ask for help. I felt a responsibility to help. I’m in a position where I can give back; why shouldn’t I,” he said. “Working side-by-side with the people who are receiving the Habitat houses – who can’t thank you enough – is an amazing feeling. It was those interactions with the people you meet that I’ll never forget.”
Martin hopes to continue volunteering whenever and wherever he can.
“Being involved is high on my priority list,” he said. “Being involved has to be part of my life from now on. There’s no other choice.
“I would encourage people to volunteer because it’s one of the very few things in life where the more you give, the more you get back,” said Martin. “It’s a chance to be involved and have an amazing feeling of happiness and to take pride in your community. As soon as you have any investment whether it be time, effort or money into a project, you have a vested interest in it and it means that much more to you. If you plan on being in a community for any length of time and need a reason to feel connected, go out and help. There’s always work to be done.”
Martin graduated from Presque Isle High School in 2001, and from the University of Maine at Orono in 2005 with a degree in electrical engineering. He defended his master’s Feb. 19 in Orono.
For more information about the AmeriCorps program, log onto www.americorps.gov/nccc.