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VISTA Of The Month: Ethel Fontenette
VISTA Spotlight: Jordan Medalia
A scholarship from Grinnell College is what brought Jordan Medalia to Iowa from New England.
“It seemed like a good school, people are nice there, and I didn’t have to take any English classes,” the 24-year-old from Medfield, Mass. said, also pointing out that fraternities and sororities do not exist on the campus, located approximately 75 miles from Cedar Rapids.
Upon graduating from Grinnell in 2008, Medalia said he was in the market for a job, when he applied to serve in AmeriCorps.
“(The program in) Cedar Rapids contacted me after I applied on the AmeriCorps Web site, and they offered me the job, so I decided to come here,” he said.
Now in his second year as a VISTA, Medalia was originally brought in to assist with taxes at three sites offering Volunteer Income Tax Assistance. This year, he is serving as a supervisor for VITA’s Wellington Heights site in southeast Cedar Rapids.
“Most of the time that I’m there, there’s other tax preparers that are there also, so they do the returns and when they’re done, I’ll do a quick quality review to make sure they didn’t miss anything,” Medalia says of his duties at the site. “At times when there are no tax preparers there, I’ll do the tax return. Then I’ll go through the rejected returns and call people and figure out what was wrong.”
In addition, Medalia has worked with Matthew 25 Ministry Hub on various projects, including watering flower pots for the organization’s Cultivate Hope program, and helping to start a non-profit coffee shop that would double as a venue for the arts.
“Ideally, it would be a youth arts venue and place where people can just go and drink coffee, buy ice cream, or just sit and do homework or something, look at art and go to see a concert,” according to Medalia. “A lot of it’s contingent on getting funding for it.”
Medalia is unsure of what he wants to do when his term is up in November, saying he may or may not go back to school.
“I’m thinking about it,” he said.
In the meantime, Medalia hopes to get the coffee shop up and running before he leaves. Wearing a Boston Red Sox T-shirt during the interview, he’s also looking forward to the upcoming baseball season, heading to Kansas City in April to see his favorite team take on the Royals.
“I’ve got tickets somebody was generous enough to give me,” he said. “It should be a fun time.”
By: Brian Siguenza