Please visit EpiscopalServiceCorps.org. There is an on-line application. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the NYIP Coordinator, Sarah Nazimova-Baum ("Contact Us" page).
When do I apply?We urge applicants to have their materials to us by the 15th of March at the latest, but we can also consider early applications. Occasionally we have openings in the late Spring and Summer. Please contact Sarah Nazimova-Baum for further info about this.
I am not a United States citizen. Am I eligible?US citizenship is required for participation in AmeriCorps.
What does AmeriCorps involve?During the year, AmeriCorps members file a variety of forms, including bi-weekly time sheets, with which NYIP assists. By the year’s end, having accumulated 1700 work hours, interns qualify for a $4,725 grant toward future or past education expenses. During the year, AmeriCorps participants are eligible for forbearance on federal student loans.
AmeriCorps rules preclude interns from using their AmeriCorps work hours (generally, 35-hrs/week) to engage in political advocacy or religious observance. However, interns are absolutely free to use their non-work hours on these activities, and St. Mary’s is a vibrant center for social action and worship.
In addition, AmeriCorps shares with NYIP an emphasis on direct-care experiences. This includes face-to-face encounters, running groups, individual sessions, program planning, and advocating for client’s needs with other agencies/providers.
How do interns spend their time? How much free time is there?Interns generally work M-F, 9-5 or 10-6, from the beginning of September through mid-August. The NYIP year includes an Orientation and four Retreats, which take place Thurs-Sat in beautiful, restful and inspiring locations. In addition to whatever holidays/sick time the worksite agency grants, NYIP offers interns ten personal/vacation days to use as necessary throughout the year, in cooperation with the worksite’s schedule. We understand that most professional positions entail some overtime. We ask our worksites to ensure that doesn’t exceed 10-15 hours a month on average.
Interns are engaged in a variety of community-building and spiritually formative activities some evenings and weekend days. The Kooperkamp family hosts the interns at dinner three weekday evenings each week. One of those evenings is spent on theological discussion. One Sunday afternoon a month is spent on group process with the NYIP Coordinator. The Coordinator also meets individually with each intern for one hour every-other-week, at the intern’s worksite. This means that we are in a good position to advocate and communicate with the worksite whenever helpful. But these one-on-one meetings are also important times for the intern to discuss and explore any issues at all: personal, spiritual, vocational, professional.
Regarding the rest of their free time, Interns decide amongst themselves about activities like Community Dinners, Community Meetings, Community Worship and group outings. It is integral to NYIP’s learning goals that interns have the freedom and support to explore New York City’s amazing range of events and opportunities. Nevertheless, this is not the right choice for people primarily looking for a convenient way to spend a year in New York City. The internship year makes serious demands on interns’ time, energy and attention – and it is designed to deeply engage their hearts, minds and spirits!
How are worksites chosen?During the Spring and Summer preceding the internship year’s start, the NYIP Coordinator is in touch with incoming interns about our worksite possibilities and the most promising matches given each interns’ goals. We work hard to place interns in settings that reflect their priorities and that will help their year be satisfying and meaningful. Usually there is an interview between the intern and the agency, by phone if necessary, which is also an opportunity for the intern to explore that prospective position.
Do I have to be Episcopal? Am I expected to proselytize?No. We do not discriminate on the basis of religion, and we accept applicants of all faiths and uncertain or no faith. NYIP is founded by and housed in an activist and vibrant Harlem church, and we are looking for interns who will derive meaning and inspiration from this context.
Many of our worksites have no religious affiliation. Whatever spiritual or religious meaning an intern draws from their work placement, and indeed from the entire year’s experience, is guided and shaped by the intern’s own values.
St. Mary’s is a multi-racial, multi-cultural, even multi-faith congregation. St. Mary’s is also host to an extraordinary array of community action and expression. Interns explore and participate in a variety of events to share in this abundance and opportunity.
What is intentional community?NYIP is founded on the idea that deeply-considered engagement in diverse relationships is the basis for life-changing growth. That begins in the intern apartment, as each year five individuals get to know each other and work collaboratively to create a home. Interns live together thoughtfully, and share the joys as well as the challenges.
As might be expected, five people who start out as strangers do not instantaneously become friends. Every year NYIP consists of deep, sincere individuals engaged in a process of learning about others and themselves. Meaningful, trustworthy community emerges from a willingness to be surprised and transformed as the year’s experiences are shared.
To foster this, NYIP staff, St. Mary’s, and the Kooperkamp family provide an array of supportive and formational activities, designed to deepen the group’s understanding and also lift up the blessings and gifts within and among us.
What is it like to live in Harlem?Harlem is a neighborhood of contrasts. Perhaps the best way to depict it here is to describe what you would see upon traveling to St. Mary’s. You would get out of the 1 train (“the Broadway local”) at the125th Street stop. After leaving the subway, if you look to the right you will see the stately, beautiful buildings of Columbia University and Riverside Church. In front of you are enormous brick apartment buildings of a public housing project. To the left is 125th Street, Harlem’s “Main Street.” Along 125th Street and its side streets, within a 2-block walk you will see a check-cashing place and a large bank, a supermarket and a small bodega, a hardware store, the MLK pharmacy, a barber shop/beauty salon, a laundromat, a fitness center/gym, a 99-cent store, a church and day-care center, an expensive gourmet food shop, fast food restaurants, a pizzeria, a taco joint, a soup/natural foods restaurant, and a Cuban restaurant.
If you walk one block north to 126th Street, you will see another large public housing project on the corner. Make a right down that street. On the way to St. Mary’s you will pass a city health clinic that was built but never opened, about which St. Mary’s holds community meetings. After the health clinic you will pass a beautiful, new playground, with bright green jungle-gyms and a sprinkler in the summer. Across the street, there is a large police station, and next to that an AIDS Residence and Day Treatment Center that was founded by St. Mary’s. Farther down the street are a public swimming pool and a handball court.
In the middle of the block is St. Mary’s: a yellow clapboard house attached to an old brick church, surrounded by trees. There’s a garden out front, with picnic tables that on most days are piled with clothes for an ongoing, informal used-clothing-bank that St. Mary’s runs. Monday-Friday there’s a homeless drop-in center in St. Mary’s basement, and clients are often sitting on the steps outside. Our front door is usually open. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by and say hi!