Created by the City Year Boston Recruitment Department. For more info and to apply to City Year, click here.
Introducing the web-series that dishes the inside scoop on City Year Boston.
BRDtv, Volume 1: Why we serve and what we look for in a strong applicant
By Jessica Mah, City Year AmeriCorps Recruitment Project Leader on the Bain Capital Team.
Some may argue that giving a service year is similar to taking a gap year. Time and again, I hear from potential applicants and concerned parents that serving a year will delay personal career goals. I would like to provide enlightenment on this concern and highlight the professional benefits of serving with City Year. One of the main reasons why I decided to serve was to make a difference while accelerating my professional growth and leadership development.
46 Give a Year Partners Offer Tuition Discounts to Corps – more below…Throughout their City Year, corps members receive numerous trainings and workshops that not only improve their in-school service skills but also cultivate their talent as young leaders. Corps members have incredible networking opportunities that benefit their professional, educational and career plans. For example, City Year Boston offered a Bain & Company mentoring program for corps members and a Deloitte mentoring program for senior corps members this year. In March, City Year hosts a networking event in which friends and alumni are asked to facilitate discussion tables in over 15 fields of interest: college, graduate school, law, political science, law enforcement, non-profit and education, just to name a few. These discussions provide the corps opportunities to network, explore potential careers and brainstorm plans to achieve their professional goals.
[Rewind: Admission Coordinators Reveal Top Five Application Tips]
The skills, knowledge and tools that corps members gain throughout the year are invaluable. From professional development and leadership growth, corps members are well equipped to serve a year and then pursue ‘leadership after City Year’ (LACY) opportunities.
But if the benefits during a year of service aren’t enough, the post-service financial rewards Continue reading
Presented by Evan Carper and Benjamin Marshall, City Year Boston Admissions Coordinators. Fill out an application here!
With the next application deadline approaching – Feb 15, mark those calendars, folks – the City Year Boston Recruitment team dishes out its’ top five list on turning in a choice application to City Year. Leave us a question and we’ll respond in the comments section.
By Evan Carper, City Year Boston Admissions Coordinator, CYB Corps ’06-’07
Interested in joining the 2012-2013 City Year Boston corps? Start your application today!
As I walked into the Lavine Civic Forum in August of 2010, I couldn’t help but recall the many memories I made during my corps year from 2006-2007. There were the students that I had mentored, the playgrounds I helped restore, and the lifelong friends that I had made. There was one thing, however, that I couldn’t stop thinking about. My corps experience happened 5 years ago in 2006; this was 2010. I was a corps member then. I am a staff member now. Little did I know how intertwined those two positions would be.
My job as Admissions Coordinator for City Year Boston is to review applications, answer applicant questions, and conduct interviews. When I was brought on as a full-time staff member, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed. How was I, at just 22 years of age, supposed to make decisions about who was qualified to join City Year? At first, I relied a lot on the Boston Recruitment Department – otherwise known as the BRD gang. They were happy to answer my questions and helped me settle into my new position. But as the days quickly turned to weeks, I realized that my first set of interviews was closing in and I still didn’t feel confident enough to judge applicants. Sure, I had read the admission manual cover to cover, but there had to be some intangibles that I was missing. Days before my first interview, those intangibles finally came to me. Continue reading
By Jessica Mah, Recruitment Project Leader serving on the Bain Capital Team
As City Year corps members, we are in the business of helping others, making a difference in our communities and changing others’ lives as well as our own. But when do we know if we’ve made that positive impact? At what point can we say that we’ve actually made a difference?
Corps member Jessica Mah tutoring a 4th grade student in math. Photo by Elliot Haney.
I thought about that question a lot last year, serving as a corps member in a 4th grade classroom. There wasn’t a formula or process to follow that would ensure my success, but I was told, “Trust the process, have faith that you will make a difference even if the results aren’t immediate.” I served an entire year with my 4th grade students, celebrating all of the small successes, but it was during the last few months of my service year that I really came to realize how much my hard work and dedication had really paid off.
Now, serving as a Recruitment Project Leader, I truly believe in “trusting the process.” I’ve attended college and career fairs and other outreach events to engage prospective applicants and get them to apply. I remind myself to make the most out of every interaction while utilizing my knowledge of City Year and recruiting methods to inspire the next generation of corps members to serve a year. After exceeding our recruitment goals for each deadline, this year has solidified my faith that I am making a difference.
Whether it’s having a positive impact on a child’s life or recruiting the next group of young idealists, I trust that with patience and perseverance, my hard work will pay off. And that is what motivates me to continue making a difference.
Make next year a City Year. Photo by Christian Correa.
“…I trust that with patience and perseverance, my hard work will pay off. And that is what motivates me to continue making a difference.”
Interested in joining the 2012-2013 City Year Boston corps? Start your application today!
Written by Kevin Popovich, corps member serving on the on the State Street Foundation Team at the Maurice J. Tobin K-8 School
When I was in high school, everyone’s mentality was that a student would graduate and either find employment or attend a four or two year college. Service was not talked about, and only once after I began my application to City Year did anyone ever mention the one recent City Year alum from my school, a close friend of mine, who had gone to serve with City Year Columbus.
Right after graduation, I stand with my family in the courtyard at Hudson High School in Hudson, Mass. My term of service would begin in just two short months.
While everyone talked about what schools they were applying to and worried whether their SAT scores were high enough to get into the Ivy League, I felt as though I was on an altogether different planet. Instead, I though about the times that I had exhibited the qualities of a leader, how my next phone call with Evan Carper (the Admissions Coordinator at City Year Boston) would go. As my friends received college acceptance letters in the spring, I was searching for apartments in Boston that were close to an MBTA subway station. I not only felt different because of the process I was going through, but also because City Year was my first choice. From day one of senior year, I knew that I wanted to do something important before I chose to follow my dreams of becoming a chef or an actor, and City Year offered me the perfect opportunity to serve, to make a difference, and to grow as a person.
I truly believe that there isn’t a single person who would not benefit from a year of service.
I truly believe that there isn’t a single person who would not benefit from a year of service. Don’t get me wrong; there are certainly people who might not be able to make it through the first six weeks of rigorous training, and service isn’t always for everyone. For those who are ready to serve though, there is no better option. So far, my time with City Year Boston has been tiring, difficult, and more than anything, rewarding. I’m not talking about the stipend, the MBTA pass, or the uniform – I am talking about the immense change that I have already seen in myself.
City Year has crafted me into a leader who is always ready to handle a tough task and a young man with an intense passion for service. City Year has helped me become someone who really cares about the people around me and who knows how to make truly impactful change. But most of all, City Year has developed me into someone who, at the end of my term of service, will always carry that level of leadership, care, and skill with me as I go on to do other things. Service may not yet be the traditional course after high school, but it is by far the most rewarding.
Written by Ann Holland, Recruitment Coordinator
As a Recruitment Coordinator for City Year Boston, it’s my job to go out and engage young people ages 17-25, talk about the goals of our organization, and encourage those young people to apply and become the next generation of corps members. However, if there is one thing I have learned in my tenure at City Year Boston, especially working in recruitment, it’s that you must be flexible, creative, and positive, especially when it comes to outreach.
Evan Carper, CYB Admissions Coordinator, and the BU Quidditch team.
This past Saturday, October 22, City Year Boston and the Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success at UMass Amherst co-hosted the first ever Student Leadership and Service Summit. This event brought together students and service-oriented organizations for a morning career and volunteer fair, afternoon discussion panel, and workshops led by Recruitment Manager Jamaal Williams and City Year Boston alumna Nikki White. Organizations such as the Peace Corps, Citizen Schools, and Boston Teacher Residency were in attendance, as well as student leaders from a group on campus called Student Bridges, a service learning course that deploys UMass students to the neighboring communities of Holyoke and Springfield to tutor and work with community based organizations.
However, there came a point in the day where student attendance was lagging a bit. So what did our department do? They did what any self-respecting corps or staff member at City Year would – they hit the streets and started engaging the student body in a more organic way. They went out on campus with free food and City Year branded give-away bags and talked to students in order to draw them into the event’s panel discussion and workshops. Along the way, they even met up with the Boston University Quidditch Team and students who were running a 5K for a charity event.
All in all, the day was a success, even if some things didn’t go as planned. If there is one thing I can depend on my co-workers in the Recruitment Department to do, it is to be constantly optimistic, innovative, and always moving. I think those are qualities that City Year has helped to develop in all of us, and why we are so successful as a team.
Written by Ben Marshall, City Year Boston Admissions Coordinator
Ben and his travel buddy, Ari
How does a guy who has spent the last few years living out of his car, pushing people out of trees (don’t worry, just zip lining), and traveling from country to country end up working for City Year? I get that question a lot whenever I talk to my friends from around the world. The answer is simple. I believe in their message, and if I believe in their message, I will help them succeed.
I told myself at a young age that I would spend my professional life working for companies that are trying to create a better society. Whether mentoring under-achieving middle schoolers in my home county of Suffolk, England or teaching inner city kids about the outdoors and the environment, I feel that I have stayed true to that goal. I also ran a summer school in Geneva, Switzerland that brought together children from, Iran, Israel, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the United States to teach them about other cultures, creating a unity between them that surpassed nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. I guess that’s how I landed in Boston and at City Year.
I believe in City Year’s message…
…and if I believe in their message, I will help them succeed.
Being the new guy at an organization like City Year is certainly a peculiar experience. Walking in on my first day through a morning greeting, participating in a dexterity check when I wasn’t wearing black or white socks and had no belt or name tag, watching people wave their hands instead of clapping, and “bringing it in for a break” (which means “lets all have a cup of tea” where I’m from!) certainly left me with a lot of questions that needed answering. So I thank all of the Boston Recruitment Department for helping me through my first two months at City Year. I’d like to let them know that starting and ending my days standing in a strong circle with them just feels right, and I look forward to many more.
I do not know how long I will stay at City Year as I have the whole Southern Hemisphere to explore, but I do know that I will leave a better person for having been a part of such a fantastic global organization. I hope that I may even help it grow one day. City Year Edinburgh, anyone?
Thanks for having me, City Year!
Written by Jamaal Williams, Recruitment Manager
In college at Cornell University, I was all about the community. My mother’s knack for connecting people to resources and opportunities may be genetic because I certainly took much more joy in slaving over budget proposals for culture nights than I did in pouring over my developmental psychology textbooks. In fact, my personal motto was, “I do it for the community,” a phrase borrowed from a friend and fellow student leader. However, on a recent trip back to campus, I realized that doing it for the community had come to mean something different to me. As an undergrad, it meant supporting and looking out for people that I belonged to; now, it has become more about contributing to something larger than myself.
The foundation of my concept of community began in 2003 when I showed up at Cornell’s Pre-freshman Summer Program, simultaneously terrified and elated to be away from home for six weeks. I spent that time pushing myself through calculus and chemistry classes and forging relationships with people who would support me throughout my four years in college. We created a community of friends united by our passion for service and our passion for action.
As time went on, we each found student organizations that allowed us to realize those passions, mine being a men’s support network called The LINK: Men’s Alliance.
Jamaal (bottom center) with members of The LINK: Men’s Alliance
It was during my time in The LINK that I really began to do it for the community, facilitating discussions around the retention of men of color at the university and doing something to improve the situation by encouraging upperclassmen to connect with and guide underclassmen through their undergraduate experience. As a beneficiary of The LINK, I felt it my duty to pass on that which had been provided to me; someone had looked out for me, so why shouldn’t I do the same for someone else? So we hosted events, created forums for discourse, and provided opportunities for others to channel their passions into practice. We did it for the people; we did for the community.
Following college, I joined the City Year New York corps where I returned to serve a senior corps year – one year just wasn’t enough for me. Now I serve as the recruitment manager at City Year Boston. This September 13th, I returned to Cornell to find young adults interested in doing a year of service – as recruitment manager, it’s kind of what I do. There, I had the chance to speak to a Community Outreach class, a course for students who want to discover how they can impact a community through intervention work; it was, in fact, the same class that helped me uncover how I could positively impact a community. I talked about being a student leader at Cornell and how that set me on the path to eventually join City Year. As I was applying during my senior year, becoming a corps member was just another opportunity to do it for the community, only now that community would consist of youth in my hometown. But as I shared my experience with the Community Outreach class, I began to understand that doing it for the community meant something more to me than simply affecting the people in a community; it included leaving my surroundings – whether that meant Cornell, a child, or an entire organization – better than I found them.
Now, instead of working directly with middle school youth as I did during my time in the corps, I seek out individuals who want to improve the students and communities we serve in. So eight years later, while my perspective has changed, it turns out that yes, I’m still doing it for the community, but for more than just the people around me; I do it for the ideal that young people deserve a chance to maximize their education and become agents of change in this world. I can only hope that my actions have caused others to do the same.
Liz (left) at a BC hockey game in 2008
In the fall of 2006, I was in the midst of an exciting and uncertain time in my life. As a freshman at Boston College, I found myself in a completely new environment where opportunities to get involved and form a fresh identity seemed endless. But one thing in particular struck me about campus life at BC: no matter where I looked, people were in some way serving others.
At BC, service was often as common an experience for students as spending their Saturdays in a Superfan shirt at Alumni Stadium or cramming before a final at Bapst Library. BC promoted the notion of answering the call to action, and that answer came in forms that ranged from service trips to impoverished regions of the country to developing health education programs for Boston high school students. My freshman year, through the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, I was lucky enough to become a Big Sister to a 3rd grader named Natalia* at Garfield Elementary School in Brighton, MA. Natalia was a bright and creative young girl, but living with her mother and six other siblings in a small apartment in Roxbury, she rarely received the attention she needed at home. Once a week, Natalia and I spent lunch and recess together discussing everything from her favorite foods to why she was nervous about seeing her father after months of sporadic phone calls and broken plans. Before long, I came to the realization that “service” as I knew it was not just a tool to offer assistance to those who need it; it was a means to build relationships and find a common humanity between all people.
While at BC, I also became involved with a service organization called 4Boston, which is comprised of BC students who commit to four hours of weekly service at a social service, health, or education placement in Boston, as well as one hour of weekly group reflection. Through 4Boston, I served as a teachers’ aide at a school for children with multiple and intensive special needs. What drew me to the organization was its theme: “Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world.” Serving alongside over 300 BC students who also connected with this theme, it was hard not to feel inspired by the power of young people to take initiative and work for social justice.
As I prepared to graduate, my decision to apply to City Year was a natural one. Although the service I would embark on as a corps member was not identical to the service I had been involved in at BC, City Year drew me in with its challenge to use my skills and enthusiasm to reach the children and communities who need it most. I had been told when I arrived at BC back in that fall of 2006 to answer the call to action; today I can proudly say I am answering the call more than ever.
Want to get involved?
BC Campus Service Organizations
BC Volunteer and Service Learning Center
* Note: Student’s name has been changed to protect privacy.
Much of the work we do here at City Year is focused in the schools we serve in. But many of our senior corps members play A Role Outside the Schools that is essential to continue to produce results. From our Boston Civic Engagement team to our office based Project Leaders, every senior corps member works to improve our impact on the city. Recruitment Project Leader Molly Brown describes why she now serves to assemble the next year’s corps.
Recruitment Project Leader Molly Brown
Last year, I was a corps member proudly serving on the Comcast team at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School. Along with my cohort
partner, I remained with the same core group of ninth graders throughout each day. I developed relationships with several of my students, and had the opportunity to witness their immense growth throughout the academic year. It was the most difficult year of my life, but the end results were more than worth the long hours and stress-filled days. The year culminated in a message I received from one particular student upon returning from Summer Academy in July. This student, my Starfish, had failed both first and second term. The message she sent me in July informed me that she had received the letter in the mail telling her she was moving on to the tenth grade. When I saw that message, containing an appropriate “:-)” at the end of that one wonderful sentence, I could hardly contain the immense amount of emotion flooding through me. It solidified what I had already known–that I had made a difference. By the end of my corps year I had the realization that I not only made a difference to my students, I changed fundamentally as a teammate, as a leader, and as a human being.
As a Project Leader in the Recruitment Department, I have the incredible opportunity to discover the next generation of idealists. Working for recruitment, I am able to share my incredible experience with countless individuals, in the hope that I can inspire them to serve. I had spent the majority of my corps year serving on the Open House Crew as part of the A-Team (a recruitment-based leadership opportunity) and really enjoyed meeting prospective corps members. I discovered something that I had a knack for, and also something that would allow me to hone in on one of my most challenging areas: public speaking. Despite the fact that I will no longer be serving in a school, I understand that my role is just as important because the next generation of young, motivated and idealistic leaders need to be found, so City Year can continue making an impact on the students and communities in which we serve.
