Advice For An NYC Applicant
National Youth Council Applications are coming out soon and I would like to offer some advice to any potential applicants!
The most common question proposed during interviews is regarding the time commitment. How flexible is your schedule? Will you be willing to make time for this position? For National Youth Council applicants, I feel that it is important for everyone to understand the time commitment required to participate in this organization. This council requires passionate and enthusiastic members who are willing to devote their free time to serve their national community.
Since joining the council in July, my commitments have taken up at least three hours a week. There are all council calls, which are calls with all of our council members that are scheduled for an hour every other week. Additionally, there are working group calls, where the majority of your work for the council is done, and those calls are scheduled every week for an hour. Our council has two main working groups, Youth and Chapter, with half the council members on each one. There is also another working group that is optional for council members to join the Communication working group, which has calls scheduled once a month.
Aside from the calls, you are putting in your time to complete the work that was delegated to you during the call. For instance, as a member of the chapter working group, one of my assignments has been completing case studies. Case studies are projects where we take successful events from certain chapters and write reports about them. The reports are then distributed to other chapters to replicate the events. For case study projects I interview chapter staff and students who run successful events and then compile the information with whomever worked with me on that specific case.
Aside from your working group tasks, you have your own position tasks. I was the National Youth Involvement Month Liaison, so I coordinated and organized an entire month where the focus was to keep youth volunteers engaged. It involved sending many emails, creating many promotion materials, following up with people, and a significant amount of planning, which took at least 3 three hours a week for about two months.
Though the National Youth Council is a time commitment, I believe it’s all worth the effort. You get to work with amazing people you would have never been able to work with before. You get to reach out to Red Cross youth and chapter staff from all around the nation. I personally have spoken to club officers from Michigan who I would never have had the opportunity to talk to if it weren’t for the council. I have been volunteering with the Red Cross for over 4 years now, so even though it is a time commitment, it doesn’t feel tedious. I love this organization, I love its missions, and I love its people. I encourage anybody who is interested in applying for the National Youth Council to do so because it’s truly a once in a lifetime experience!
— Michelle Glauberzon, National Youth Council Member, National Youth Involvement Month Liaison
