It's possible that City Year started out as the sort of participatory, energetic, competent organization that could really meet their goals-- a group of passionate young people who reject the apathy of their generation and work hard for others. But, even if it ever were such an organization, its mass production has now led to an incompetent shell of it's ideals of civic engagement.
Employees (volunteers) are required to wear costumes daily-- t shirts or polos covered in branding from sponsoring organizations, and chunky Timberland boots (another sponsor), in red and yellow McDonald's franchise colors. Corps members should expect to spend a considerable amount of time selling the City Year brand-- from making sure any and all documents are covered in CY and sponsor logos to actual cold calls and fundraising.
A considerable amount of time and energy goes into public military-like calisthenics that clearly have nothing to do with any aspect of helping children. The trainings for the first several weeks of service are devoted to imbuing in corps members the "culture" of City Year, which is passed on the form of "founding stories" and myriad inspirational quotes in the handbook. This "culture" talks with dewy-eyed admiration of democracy and participatory engagement-- yet doesn't leave room for volunteers to share and implement THEIR goals, and, worse, certainly doesn't make space for the people CY's supposed to be helping to ask for what THEY want.
The few real and genuinely useful activities that corps members do, which in my opinion is limited to one-on-one tutoring in struggling schools, is painfully limited by insufficient training and devotion of time to more public (and thus potentially fundraising) efforts-- the big service days, calisthenics, filling out endless forms on childrens' "improvements" to show the sponsors, etc. I only spent about 4 hours out of my 40 hour weeks tutoring. Other CY activities in school were extremely poorly run, and often resulted in poor relations with teachers and the administration. As an 18 year old out of high school, I was left to manage an after school program for 30 children for four months when my supervisor quit, despite repeated requests for assistance from my superiors. This sort of situation was common.
My biggest complaint with working for City Year is the disillusionment and lack of appreciation for individuality and honesty in the franchise. Civil service is not one-size-fits-all, and just because you say you're doing "good" doesn't mean you are. Or, in fact, that you're not doing actually harm by setting poor examples for they children who look to you as role models by being incompetent, brainwashed, and self-righteous.
