City Year reviews

The service is mostly bogus. The company measures corps member efforts (hours served! students reached!) but they do not measure results. This is largely because City Year is almost entirely ineffective in making a difference in the schools they serve. They have too many goals and are too unclear with their objectives to be effective. Their organizational goal is to make national service a matter of public consciousness. Which means... they promote service for the sake of service? It felt that way a lot of times. We were placed in inner-city schools with little training and little strategy. It's great that we brought hundreds of thousands of kids to a college fair. But is it really worth the effort when few will get into college and even fewer will finish? I left the program disillusioned with non-profits in general.

This rating is based on my experience as a senior corps member, NOT as a salaried employee: 1. Due to the high number of corps members of a wide variety of ages (17-24), City Year provides very little freedom and, in some cases, respect to its corps members. At the end of term convention, staff members literally did "bed checks" to make sure everyone was in their room. For someone who'd been out of college a couple of years, this was horrifying! 2. The insurance provided is TERRIBLE. The company used mostly caters to school athletic programs. Corps members make very little money as part of the program, but services like prescriptions must be paid up front and then reimbursed. The insurance company is very unresponsive and known for cutting off payment in error. Two years later I am still trying to get a bill paid. 3. City Year is very inexperienced in dealing with medical emergencies. Staff members, including Human Resources, are uneducated in laws regarding "perceived disability." It is possible that service members/corps members are an exempt population, but I have no knowledge about that either way. Anyway, what this means is that if it is -perceived- that you are disabled, you will be treated as such. Also, staff member attitude toward safety is at times cavalier.