A Year Like No Other – Letter from ED

City Year San José/Silicon Valley’s service year has been like no other in our 27 years of service to this community, and all along, 120 AmeriCorps members leaned into everything this school year has brought. As I write this message, we are preparing to return to school campuses with all the nuances of health, safety, and of most importance, how we work alongside our community partners.

Throughout the year, our 120 AmeriCorps members have:

• Distributed laptops, hot spots, and classroom supplies to all students in our partner districts.
• Worked with partner teachers in the virtual classroom to provide real-time support for students monitoring chat rooms, and providing 1:1 and small group tutoring.
• Created 10 in-person Care Pods at our partner schools for students who are experiencing homelessness, lack of reliable internet access, and for students of frontline workers.
• Provided virtual afterschool extended learning time (afterschool support) for over 1,000 students.
• Created enrichment classes that covered interests from Anime to Coding and many other STEAM-related activities.
• Assisted students through times where they needed just to be heard and created space for them to process the world they are living in.

These highlights just brush the surface of our AmeriCorps members’ impact on the students they support. Countless stories have been relayed of those small incidental moments where students and AmeriCorps members are showing up for each other. It can be sharing a moment of laughter, a tear, or a journey into learning a new language. The impact City Year AmeriCorps members have in this unfamiliar world we live in is profound and needed.

While the end of the school year marks bittersweet goodbyes to our AmeriCorps members, I am ecstatic that many of them have elected to return for a second year. These experienced mentors will be invaluable as we welcome the new “2021-2022 Corps,” which is shaping up to be one of our largest cohorts to date. Of course, none of this work could be possible without your continued support or the work we do and for investing in our AmeriCorps members. Of course, none of this work could be possible without your continued support for the work we do and for investing in our AmeriCorps members.

In service,

Pete Settelmayer
Vice President & Executive Director