Today’s post comes from Michael Nealis, Interactive Strategy Coordinator for Points of Light Institute. He served as an AmeriCorps member for two years with Volunteer Maryland.

I still remember the first day of my AmeriCorps service. I walked into a room full of people that I didn’t know and who seemed infinitely more qualified to be leading volunteer programs than I was.

At that time in my life, I had only studied volunteerism. I didn’t volunteer anywhere, and I never had.

I felt like what I was being asked to do wasn’t possible. How could I start a volunteer program and make it successful if I didn’t know the first thing about actually volunteering?

I was scared that I would fail, and I was even more scared that I would disappoint the people I was serving with.

Two weeks later, I set foot on my service site with a two-inch binder full of program ideas and best practices, a few ideas in my head, and a healthy dose of worry.

I was walking into a government agency that didn’t have any formal volunteer program and was being asked to build a volunteer program around something I didn’t know much about.

I spent the first month just trying to learn about volunteer programs, the issues I would be working with, and trying to meet everyone I would be working with (and remember their names).

It took me three months to get the program off of the ground, and another four months to get to a place where I felt like I was running a successful program.

That’s when I took a week off and walked away from my program to build a playground.

A community playground in the neighborhood I lived in had been burnt down by an arsonist, and the community came together to raise funds to rebuild it. An AmeriCorps member that I served with was working with an organization that was involved with the rebuild and asked our class to come out and help with the build.

I thought it would be a great test of my program’s ability to run on it’s own without a lot of maintenance if I was out of the office, so I signed up to help.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into.

The playground was about five thousand square feet, and over a thousand people came to work on the playground over the course of the week-long build. I got to meet everyone who walked onto the construction site because I was working in the tool shed, handing out tools to the volunteers.

I met people from the community, AmeriCorps members from across the state, and people that came from hundreds of miles away because they had worked on the first playground and wanted to help to rebuild it.

Working on the playground taught me more about what it means to live in a community than I ever learned in school.

I got to see the power of people working together, not only to build a playground, but sharing their lives with each other.

I went back to my service site with a renewed sense of purpose. I had a better understanding of the work that volunteers were doing, not just on the project I was working on specifically, but with every organization in every community.

I signed up for a second year with my AmeriCorps program and helped a fresh class of AmeriCorps members understand the importance of volunteerism in their communities.

My term of service changed my life for the better. I’m forever grateful for the people I served with, the people who led my program and mentored me to become the man I am today, and the people that I met who worked to improve their communities.

I am AmeriCorps, and I always will be.

Don’t forget to celebrate AmeriCorps week this week! If you see someone sporting their AmeriCorps gear, throw them a high-five and thank them for their service!