Boston, July 10, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — City Year and Cornell University, with support from Einhorn Collaborative, have released the findings of a study that provide new evidence of the importance of national service to young people and how service supports workforce development and promotes engaged citizenship.
The City Year Alumni Bridging Study draws from survey responses from over 2,000 City Year AmeriCorps alumni who served as student success coaches and mentors in systemically under-resourced schools across the U.S. between 2012-2022. The study, conducted by Cornell University’s Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement, also included one-on-one interviews with a subset of survey respondents.
A major theme emerging from the study is that an AmeriCorps experience can prepare young people with many of the essential skills that are most in demand by employers today and in the next five years, as identified in the 2023 Future of Jobs report by the World Economic Forum. These core skills include creative thinking, empathy, resilience and leadership, among others.
City Year alumni also reported their experience helped them to work across lines of difference, enabling them to navigate working effectively and collaboratively with diverse teams in the workplace.
“Understanding and embracing difference is critical to professional and personal success, at work and in life, so we are encouraged to see that service is contributing positively to corps members’ growth and development in this area,” said Jessica Proett, City Year’s senior director of external evaluation. “The skills that corps members gain are also being nurtured in the students they serve, opening their eyes to the value of community and how public service can change lives.”
Other notable findings relate to the impact of national service, with alumni saying that they felt more prepared to continue with their commitment to community engagement,
Read an overview of the key findings of the Alumni Bridging Study: https://www.cityyear.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Cornell_Study_Overview_City_Year_01.17.24.pdf
About City Year
City Year is a trailblazing, youth-powered organization with a dual mission: expanding educational equity for students furthest from opportunity and developing diverse leaders through national service. Research shows the more time a student spends with a City Year AmeriCorps member serving as a student success coach, the better the student outcomes—academically, socially, and emotionally. A public-private partnership, City Year is a proud member of AmeriCorps, operating in 29 U.S. cities with international affiliates in the U.K. and South Africa. Today, 42,000 alums continue to lead and serve where they live and work. Learn more about City Year’s six areas of impact: www.cityyear.org, Facebook, X and LinkedIn.
About Cornell University’s David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement
The Einhorn Center’s mission is to be the hub of community engagement at Cornell, supporting a university culture where students, faculty, staff and partners work together to create a better world. Through these partnerships, communities see positive change on issues that matter most to them; faculty infuse their teaching and research with diverse perspectives and ways of knowing; and students develop the skills, insight and humility they’ll use as lifelong learners and leaders with a public purpose.
About the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research
The mission of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research is to expand, strengthen and speed the connections between cutting-edge research and the design, evaluation and implementation of policies and practices that enhance human development, health and well-being. The Bronfenbrenner Center fosters research to understand and discover solutions to human problems across multiple levels of analysis (individual, interpersonal, community, organizational, governmental), as well as to identify, evaluate and disseminate evidence-based and cost-efficient practices and programs.
About Einhorn Collaborative
Einhorn Collaborative is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to fostering social connection and cohesion in the U.S. We work with community leaders, researchers, practitioners, culture makers, and funders to help Americans build stronger relationships, embrace our differences, and rediscover our shared humanity, so we can solve our most urgent challenges together.
- City Year Alumni Bridging Study