A year and a half ago, 26-year-old Travis Mills had never heard of People First.

“[The Sierra Regional Center] told me about People First and I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “I went to an interview and everyone seemed really nice.”

Through that interview, Mills ended up landing a job as a VISTA volunteer. Now, he’s worked on a half dozen or so projects and plans to stay with the self-advocacy group as long as he can.

Mills has written agendas for monthly meetings, updated the People First website, created flyers for chapter meetings, and created and updated a YouTube account. Now, he’s beginning an even bigger project: writing a grant to outfit People First chapters with video equipment.

Mills’ goal is to equip each chapter with a digital video camera and accessories like memory cards and video editing software. With their new technological capabilities, chapters would be able to create video updates about their recent activities and record personal histories of members’ involvement with self-advocacy.

Mills was drawn to this project not only because he has a passion for video editing, but also to promote the strengths, weaknesses, abilities and disabilities of his fellow People First members.

“I have a disability myself and I like to advocate the People First members,” Mills said. “If we do self-advocacy and self-determination on each guest speaker, we could get the word out.”

So far, Mills has filmed two People First members’ stories. He plans to start editing them while completing his grant work.

Read more about People First at:
NCED’s People First page
People First of Nevada’s website
People First YouTube channel

Read more about VISTA volunteers at:
AmeriCorps’ website