Rakiesha's Story: "When I heard about Americorps, I saw an opportunity for change."

Rakiesha Chase serves as a TechMission Corps Member at TechMission Inc. in Boston, Massachusetts

While I’m sure that my efforts on UrbanMinistry.org and other TechMission sites have affected many peoples’ ministries, my life-changing story is definitely something that has affected my life.

Moving to Boston in itself has definitely changed my life. Before I moved here, I was floating between jobs, not really working towards any particular goal. When I heard about Americorps, I saw an opportunity for change. I related to TechMission’s mission of assisting “organizations in using technology to transform vulnerable communities.” My own personal goal for life is to help inner city youth find their voice through digital arts, so I felt like I would fit in perfectly at TechMission. After I was accepted, I moved eight hours or three-hundred and sixty miles from Baltimore into a cozy parsonage with three other strangers at the time. I tend to live my life in bursts of spontaneity; however, I have never taken a leap of faith such as this in my life. While this has been a very rocky transition, it has had its rewards. I have definitely learned how to take care of myself one-hundred percent, have discovered how to be a team player without comprising my morals and ethics and have developed a brand new respect for my hometown.

The biggest change that has taken place since I moved to Boston is my newfound independence. Well, I didn’t really “find” it. I more or less had to adopt it to survive. Overnight, I went from living in my mother’s house, working part-time and occasionally paying a bit of rent and other expenses to have to take care of myself in every aspect from making sure that my bills were paid, buying and preparing food, working full-time and, worst of all, doing laundry. If I had not done Americorps, I would have never been inspired to learn how to live on my own.

Professionally, I have had to adapt to several different positions very quickly without much training. However, I have never had my morals or ethics questioned until I was placed in a situation where I had to balance what I believe in with the idea of being a good team player. I think that working somewhere that stands so strongly behind a certain set of ideas has been very challenging for me and I have learned a lot from it. I am now able to work as a team player without feeling that I have to try to change myself to fit in or make others accept my way of thinking, both ethically and professionally.

Lastly, I most definitely have a brand new appreciation for Baltimore after doing Americorps. Some of that may be attributed to my missing my hometown, but a lot of it has to do with the urban renovation that I see is starting to take place in the city. Once I started my Americorps year, I became curious as to how I could better serve the urban areas in my city once I return to Baltimore at the end of my year. To my surprise, there are several organizations that work in the city trying to combat the digital divide. I hope to definitely connect with some of these groups once I return home.

Basically, Americorps has made me grow up in every way. I now have a real goal that will use my education with my prior professional experience and the sense of service that I have acquired from TechMission to help to change the urban area that I grew up in.