VISTA Volunteers: 50 Years of Taking on Poverty
What do more than 80 United Ways and the 36th President of the United States have in common? A not-so-secret weapon for combating poverty: the AmeriCorps Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) program. President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated the VISTA program in 1965 as a domestic complement to the Peace Corps to combat poverty through national service. Since then, the program has recruited and mobilized 190,000 full-time, year-long volunteers to serve with organizations on capacity-building projects addressing poverty.