Kathy Hopson-Ricks moved back to Mississippi to retire — or so she thought. 

Her call to serve was just too loud to ignore, so she decided to couple her passion for community service with her desire to help young adults. That marriage brought her back to Vicksburg, where she has taken over as the new regional director for the Vicksburg campus of AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.

“I actually had kind of semi-retired and moved back to Mississippi and was doing a lot of community volunteering. The corporation that I had worked with before worked with a lot of young adults in this age group, so I had a lot of experience with that,” Hopson-Ricks said. “I was very used to the age group and working with their issues and problems.”

Familiarly known as the domestic version of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps aims to “help others and meet critical needs in the community,” according to the organization’s website.

To do just that, more than 75,000 volunteers ages 18-24 are trained at five different campuses across the nation — one of which is in Vicksburg —before being sent to a location to serve that community.

Hopson-Ricks will oversee the day-to-day operations of the organization’s southern region campus after working her way up through several jobs with AmeriCorps over the past five years.
“It’s really been nice because I’ve been in several of the departments,” she said.

Hopson-Ricks said her favorite part of the job is watching the transformation of the young adults who come to work at AmeriCorps. To her, shaping the lives of the future is something that keeps her going in the present.

“It is, without a doubt, my favorite part of what I do,” she said. “The amazing things that they do and the skillset that they gain, and watching the recommendations and the awards and the accolades and the things that they gain from that.”

The Vicksburg campus of AmeriCorps opened in 2009 and has since been what Ricks-Hopson calls “a hidden treasure” in the community. She hopes more Mississippians will want to get involved with the organization as they learn more about it and looks forward to helping pave the way for future accomplishments in the lives of young adults across the U.S.

“I’ve been with the organization for five years so I’m very familiar with AmeriCorps, and I’ve always been in the southern region,” Ricks-Hopson said. “I’m very excited about this.