CY 101: Joys

The service we do in City Year is hard. Students count on you, your service leader counts on you, family and friends count on you. People come to you with problems seeking advice. The hours are long and the pay is low.

In spite of this, every day is full of Joy. That is why City Year encourages our corps members to share their Joys. These are good things that have happened in service, around town and in your non-City Year life. We share Joys because we need to highlight the positives in our days. Too often, people get caught up in the negatives of the world. Taking a moment to really think about what is going well or what has been a simple gift puts things back into perspective.

Example: In my first City Year, I served on the Lincoln Financial Foundation team at Olney High School. We also served after school at Cooke Elementary. This year, I am office-based and don’t do direct service with students on the day to day basis that I did last year. I was able to go to this year’s Olney team’s first day of after school programming at Cooke to help introduce some of the old students to the new team. This was a huge Joy for me. I got to help introduce this year’s team and got to see all the kids I got to know and love last year. Seeing Gabby, who used to read out loud to me for practice, run up to me and hug me while saying, “I get to be in City Year this year!” was one of the most rewarding things I have seen or heard this year. Gabby’s enthusiasm for CY is just one of the Joys that I got to experience on my visiting day back to Cooke.