What is City Corps?

City Corps is a blended model of experiential service learning, peer support, and mentoring geared to young people between the ages of 12 to 24. Grounded in a strengths perspective, City Corps affirms within its members a “can do” spirit and life/work ethic that promotes civic responsibility and establishes youth as meaningful, capable and essential resources to their communities and beyond.

Ventura Corps Projects

Ventura City Corps projects offer youth an opportunity to serve the County of Ventura community either by easing physical needs, providing emotional support, improving the natural environment, fostering community development, creating art, or providing an opportunity for career exploration. Ventura City Corps will often work in alliance with other nonprofits in order to achieve our mission statement.

Mission Statement

To inspire and develop youth to become capable, productive, engaged civic leaders and to elevate the status of youth in their communities in the Central Coast. Through experiential service learning projects and youth mentoring, we help youth to develop leadership, life and vocational skills, pro-social relationships and standards of excellence. Through service to the community we promote civic responsibility and establish youth as a meaningful, capable and essential resource to their communities.

What it all means

It means that our youth have a place they can feel appreciated while making a positive difference in our community. 

City Corps Values

Responsibility

...is the accountability for oneself in all aspects of life. Members learn that their actions, decisions and disposition are their own personal obligations. The values of responsibility and acting responsibly start at a personal level and, through projects and exposure to service-based learning, are applied to the community. This develops civic-minded young people with an inherent quickness to act to better their community and their world as a whole.

Readiness

...is to be in a constant state of preparedness and possession of a willingness to act on anything in a timely manner. At City Corps, this definition not only applies to jobs and projects, but also to a member's openness to learn a new skill or to extract the educational value from a novel situation.

Loyalty

...is a faithfulness to commitments, obligations, causes, organizations, leaders, people, and principles. City Corps members foster an allegiance and constancy to bettering themselves as well as their community.

Authenticity

...is an honest and truthful display of one's character. Adherence to one's genuineness of ideas, principles and actions facilitates self-discovery. Members are encouraged to be true to themselves despite the many changes they must face upon their entrance to adulthood.

Respect

...is the willingness to show consideration or appreciation for oneself and the community at large. Collaboration with a wide range of local businesses and organizations, city officials, neighboring cities, and local youth gives members the opportunity to practice sensitive understanding and tolerance to different beliefs and backgrounds. Through participation in projects and community recognition, members place their personal abilities and al aspects of self in high regard and acquire a new awareness of their personal power in the community.

Duty

...is something that one is expected or required to do. In the context of City Corps, a sense of duty is fostered through the consciousness of community ownership that is spurred by participation in city projects. Civic duty and good citizenship evolve into an everyday reality and habit.

Trust

...is the reliance on the integrity, strength, and ability of a person, place or situation. Each City Corps member grows into a person whom the city can rely to constantly protect, maintain, and act on community needs. Members transform into trusted citizens in their community and begin to build confidence in their city and its institutions. This allows for members to develop the hope and expectation for a brighter future.

Leadership

...is the capacity and ability to successfully understand, guide, and motivate a group in order to complete a goal or task. City Corps promotes effective leadership for positive social change within the community as well as in the personal life choices of each member.