President Obama visited with members of FEMA Corps, a unit of AmeriCorps NCCC, during his November 15 trip to survey the Hurricane Sandy damage in Staten Island, NY. A small contingent of the 428 FEMA Corps members currently serving in New York and New Jersey met the President at a Staten Island Disaster Recovery Center as the scene was broadcast across the nation.

Chelsea Steck, who is the team leader of Summit 5 and a member of the FEMA Corps unit of AmeriCorps NCCC, said, “It was really great the President took time to meet with us and thank us for our service. It will be my highlight of service.” Chelsea and her team are assigned to Nassau County, where they are going door to door helping residents who need help with transportation and other basic needs. They're also involved in shelter operations.

President Obama told Steck and other members how happy he was “having young people like you who are involved like this making a difference in people's lives.”

National networks, including CNN and MSNBC, aired footage of the President meeting with the members, and an early version of The New York Times report on the visit highlighted the meeting:

On Thursday, the president stopped at a federal disaster recovery center, where a group of about 200 residents cheered as he arrived. He chatted with the Staten Island borough president, James P. Molinaro, and other officials. Later he stopped at a Small Business Administration tent and greeted a line of disaster workers from FEMA Corps, an AmeriCorps program started in 2012.

Nearly 1,200 national service participants have been deployed in response to Hurricane Sandy and approximately 1,020 are serving in disaster-affected communities.