Year Up Bay Area Community

I am a part of the Year up Bay Area community. Year up is an organization that enhances information technology, business communications, and professional skills to young adults ages 18-24. When you complete not only did you grow as a person but everybody around you grew and we will all be positive and be ready to work in the corporate world. We will have knowledge of the technology that is out and will be coming out in the near future. We receive a stipend bi-weekly so not only are we college students but we are also working towards our success.

A big disadvantage in the program is that when you get to a certain amount of points or just don’t meet the expectations you “fire yourself”. 85% of year up students that have completed are full time college students, full time, or part time workers for different corporate partners that work with us. People come into the program computer literate, savvy, and some knowing very little about PC’s and Lap tops. We have supportive staff members that work with us from the time we start orientation until after we graduate. To stay in the community you really have to make high expectations for yourself and exceed them weekly and not monthly.

The biggest problems I see are that we get a lot of infractions over the little things that can be avoided and sometimes don’t need to be recorded at all. People come in the program saying I’m going to do this that way but when those infractions come it changes what you came to do because you kind of hold yourself back by losing points. So you really have to stay on top of your work and be persistent with the core values and what they ask of you. Missing’s assignments, being tardy and absences are the biggest and most popular in fractions I have seen so far. I think that we should not be infracted for wearing jackets in the building or chewing gum, just little things like that should be pushed aside and the bigger picture be focused on.

Year up bay area is a community of positivity, high support, a mission for some, and we are one big family working together to close the opportunity divide. There is not another program that I know of that puts money time and effort into each and every individual that comes into those glass doors. Year up should be a program we have to do in order to step foot into the corporate well, because the training we receive will carry us a long way.