Free tax filing assistance can be life changing for many. In East Los Angeles, that’s certainly the case for 1,109 households. That’s how many free tax returns were completed by Eastmont Community Center and AmeriCorps members this year as part of their free tax preparation program.

For the second year in a row, a partnership between AmeriCorps members and GSO Community Connect grantee Eastmont Community Center (ECC) has ensured that more people have access to free tax preparation services across LA and the Inland Empire.

In early January, nine AmeriCorps members went through the effort of becoming Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) certified and were tasked to work with GSO partner ECC during the busy 2024 tax season.

The result was over 1 million dollars returned to the community via tax refunds. An estimated 1,683 individuals were assisted with tax preparation over the course of the tax season. In addition to changing lives with free tax preparation, the AmeriCorps team also helped ECC to distribute over 38,160 pounds of food to community members. The team also signed up 87 new volunteers for GSO and sent almost 130,000 outreach texts.

“It is a great partnership,” said Elizabeth Cervantes, Assistant Director of Programs at ECC. “Along with GSO, we work to provide training to AmeriCorps and the volunteers help us reach a broader community”

Part of reaching more people for ECC has meant helping to cover areas of southern California that have few free tax preparation services. Last year, they helped to open an entirely new VITA side in the Riverside area and have also helped open several other VITA sites farther afield from their center.

“We want to help reach even more people, particularly in the Inland Empire since there are so few free tax services available there,” said Cervantes. “We know people in our community trust us to provide these services and we want to expand our ability to do that. We want to show underserved communities that we are there for them.”

To learn more about Eastmont Community Center, visit eastmontcommunitycenter.org

To learn more about this year’s AmeriCorps cohort, visit our blog.

By Jamie Servantes