AmeriCorps Volunteer Helps Herself and Others : Community: A Hmong immigrant will work in a low-income housing program. She is earning money for her college education.

College student Mali Vang knows what it’s like to struggle.

The 21-year-old Hmong immigrant from Laos shares a home with 12 relatives--her parents, five siblings, an aunt and four cousins. At 15, she began working in fast-food restaurants to help the family survive and to save for her education at Rancho Santiago Community College.

But there won’t be another burger-flipping job for her this year. Instead, she’ll spend 32 hours a week helping a Santa Ana low-income housing group as an interpreter for Hmong and Laotian communities.

As part of President Clinton’s AmeriCorps community service program, the federal government will provide her $4,700 for college tuition in exchange for the work.

“My parents always wanted me to go to college, and I feel better if I can make a difference in people’s lives,” said the soft-spoken Vang, after completing her final interview Friday at the Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp. near downtown Santa Ana. “It’s great to help somebody.”

Across the country this year, 20,000 AmeriCorps members will help with a variety of community outreach programs. Some will coordinate child immunization drives. Others will work in community policing, urban beautification and domestic violence prevention.

Students will also bolster the ranks of the National Community AIDS Partnership, the YMCA and Teach for America organizations.

Twenty-four AmeriCorps members will work for the Barrio Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1974 to build and maintain low-income housing in this heavily Latino city. It was the only Orange County agency chosen to participate in AmeriCorps, which Clinton envisions as a domestic Peace Corps program.

“This is the answer to our dreams,” said the group’s president, Helen Brown. “The corporation was started by 400 low-income families who wanted to be the kind of landlords who helped families become self-sufficient and offered anti-gang and anti-drug activities. But we’ve never been able to expand on that idea because we didn’t have enough money to hire the people to do it.”

The organization maintains 1,300 housing units at complexes in Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, Palmdale, Chula Vista and Santa Maria. Brown said the AmeriCorps volunteers will be assigned in teams of five to work with the residents’ associations that govern the complexes.

The volunteers will help identify needed services, from child care cooperatives and health care clinics to after-school youth activities and English classes. Students also will pair people with the appropriate service agencies.

Vang, who speaks Hmong and English, said the Hmong community needs bilingual people to act as liaisons in a world that can sometimes be very unfamiliar.

“The Hmong families get welfare information in the mail but because they don’t understand it, sometimes they throw it away,” said Vang, a sophomore human service major.

“Maybe we could teach them basic English and help them know where to go for help. Maybe we could set up a program to help the kids with their homework, because most times both parents work and don’t have much education themselves.”

Fellow AmeriCorps member and Rancho Santiago student Monica Arreola will lend the same kind of help to Latino residents of Barrio Housing Corp. complexes. The 19-year-old sophomore said she wants to find ways to give kids in her neighborhood a chance at a life other than one of drugs and gangs.

“I hope, since I’ve grown up in Santa Ana, I can help uplift the community,” said Arreola, 19, a criminal justice major who wants to be a police officer. “If we don’t help the children now . . . “ Her voice trailed off. “It’s kind of scary.”

The two said they jumped at the chance to join AmeriCorps, for both altruistic and selfish reasons.

“It’s not easy to pay for education these days,” said Arreola, who said she considered joining the military as a means of paying for college. “And this is hands-on experience that will be useful if I become a police officer.”

Workers at the housing organization said they are thrilled that young people today are dedicated to community service.

“These participants will allow us to broaden the scope of activities of the residents’ associations,” Brown said. “And the AmeriCorps participants will go away with an understanding of what life in a very low-income community is like. Hopefully, they’ll have a more gracious heart.”