My journey with YCore
I had a fantastic first YCore experience as a fellow in the 2021 Spring Cohort. Working with Foundation for a College Education and a great YCore team. So in the winter of 2021 I chose to apply to be a Project Lead, and after being accepted, I started the work of contacting a variety of non-profits to see if they wanted to work with YCore.
I was very excited to find 350 Bay Area was on the list of “priority partners”, since they had previously expressed interest in working on a project with YCore.
Combating climate change is something I’d been interested in for many years and I was excited to scope a project that could have a real impact in the environmental justice space.
After finalizing the project with 350, I started to recruit a team for the project and I was excited to meet the candidates! Looking back on it now, I’m so thankful that the 4 candidates I interviewed for my team chose to apply. Each of the 4 interviewees had precisely the skills the project required and all seemed to be genuinely passionate about environmental justice! No matter how excited I was about our team then, however, it can’t come close to how much I appreciated them during the cohort and now after our project has concluded.
My volunteer experience prior to YCore was all centered around either donations or one-time manual labor.
Those experiences were rewarding, but the amount of impact I could have in one day or with a collection of people that weren’t a true team was limited. The 350 Bay Area YCore team was the complete opposite. We became each other’s cheerleaders, sounding boards, editors, emotional support and, ultimately, friends. From spending many hours digging through long research papers on city-level clean energy best practices, to sending each other dog photos to get each other through covid infections, this group of people came together over the course of 4 short months to create a useful tool for our non-profit partner.
I’m truly inspired by the amount 5 strangers can get done with a common purpose, passion and support from knowledgeable partners.
If you have any questions about my experience or want to connect, please reach out!
