How do I apply?
Please contact Sarah Nazimova-Baum (see Contact Us page). She will send you an Application, which includes essays and some other forms.
When do I apply?
We urge applicants to have their materials to us by the end of March, so that we can make final decisions in April, for the following September. Occasionally we have openings in later months. 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 much free time do interns have?
Interns generally work M-F, 9-5 or 10-6, from the beginning of September through mid-August. The NYIP year includes five Retreats, which generally take place Thurs-Sat at beautiful, restful and inspiring locations. In addition to whatever holidays/sick time the worksite agency grants, NYIP offers interns 10 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. Generally, the Kooperkamp family hosts the interns at dinner two-three weekday evenings each week. One Sunday afternoon a month is spent on group process with NYIP staff. 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.
How are worksites assigned?
We make recommended matches based on each intern’s priorities and goals. This takes place during the Spring and Summer preceding the internship year’s start. Usually this involves 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, select and participate in some aspect(s) of this diverse community life. In fact, these are unique aspects of NYIP’s 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 support and deepen their entire year’s experience by living together thoughtfully, and sharing the joys as well as the challenges.
To foster this, NYIP staff and the Kooperkamp family provide an array of supportive and formational activities in various settings, designed to deepen the group’s understanding of themselves and each other.
What is it like to live in Harlem?
Harlem is a neighborhood of contrasts, suffused with tradition and change. 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!
Please contact Sarah Nazimova-Baum (see Contact Us page). She will send you an Application, which includes essays and some other forms.
When do I apply?
We urge applicants to have their materials to us by the end of March, so that we can make final decisions in April, for the following September. Occasionally we have openings in later months. 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 much free time do interns have?
Interns generally work M-F, 9-5 or 10-6, from the beginning of September through mid-August. The NYIP year includes five Retreats, which generally take place Thurs-Sat at beautiful, restful and inspiring locations. In addition to whatever holidays/sick time the worksite agency grants, NYIP offers interns 10 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. Generally, the Kooperkamp family hosts the interns at dinner two-three weekday evenings each week. One Sunday afternoon a month is spent on group process with NYIP staff. 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.
How are worksites assigned?
We make recommended matches based on each intern’s priorities and goals. This takes place during the Spring and Summer preceding the internship year’s start. Usually this involves 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, select and participate in some aspect(s) of this diverse community life. In fact, these are unique aspects of NYIP’s 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 support and deepen their entire year’s experience by living together thoughtfully, and sharing the joys as well as the challenges.
To foster this, NYIP staff and the Kooperkamp family provide an array of supportive and formational activities in various settings, designed to deepen the group’s understanding of themselves and each other.
What is it like to live in Harlem?
Harlem is a neighborhood of contrasts, suffused with tradition and change. 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!