Oak View community worker leaving H.B. to help in Detroit

A longtime member of a neighborhood nonprofit in Huntington Beach is returning home to Michigan this month after volunteering and working for the Oak View Renewal Partnership for five years.

Mollie Grierson, 27, a native of Saginaw, Mich., who lives in Orange, first came to Oak View — a low-income Latino neighborhood in Huntington Beach — in 2010 after joining the AmeriCorps VISTA program, which sends members to various cities to help residents overcome poverty.

As a VISTA member, Grierson was required to work at least a year with the Oak View Renewal Partnership, a nonprofit that aims to help residents improve their community through job and leadership development, soccer, community cleanup, health and other programs.

She was tasked with helping with volunteer engagements, overseeing cleanups and being involved in community meetings. She ended up staying for three years as a VISTA member, then took a job with the partnership.

“I thought I’d be out here for a year, get good experience and move back home,” she said. “But I learned so much in that year and had built up so many good relationships here in the community. There’s such a strong collaborative of partners from the schools, other nonprofits and the city, and they made it such a wonderful place to work amidst all the challenges.”

Grierson said she appreciates Oak View’s uniqueness and sense of community, which she said she didn’t experience growing up in Saginaw.

“In Oak View, almost everybody knows each other,” she said. “They all come out to walk their kids to school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon and go to the same quinceaneras and events. Everyone was welcome. That was a pretty special thing to be a part of, and I didn’t want to leave.”

VISTA members can serve with AmeriCorps for a maximum of three years. However, Iosefa Alofaituli, executive director of the Oak View Renewal Partnership, wanted Grierson to continue her work in the community and offered her a job as director of community engagement.

He credits her for being an integral part of the nonprofit’s development and said he believes she has made a significant impact on the community.

“She really embodies what Oak View Renewal Partnership is all about, our vision of empowerment and lifting up others,” Alofaituli said. “She’s never looking for credit or attention. She’s always looking to help support people so that they can grow.”

Grierson said that after five years in Orange County, it’s time to try to make a difference back in Michigan. But instead of returning to Saginaw, Grierson said she is moving to Detroit to help that community.

“There’s already so many community building efforts out there,” she said. “With my experience here, I hope I can contribute to the grassroots effort there. It’s very exciting.”