Fulfilling work - Recensione dipendente - Team Leader presso UrbanFUTURE

Urban future has a great model for helping inner city students and under my leadership I could see the students grow and I saw an eagerness to come to school every day, mostly to be in urban future after school. Management wants everything to be earned by the students since that is how it will be when they start at work and compete for jobs, so we were asked to emphasize hard work and think of incentives so the students could claim little wins! I was surprised, it did work. I could see them feeling better about themselves and want to keep going. Students Love Urban future!

They wanted me to really get to know the parents and run everything through them we were doing. A couple of problems with this. I wasn't trained to work with parents. It is hard to work with them when I'm not a parent myself. Also parents are so different from each other and their circumstances are individualized. It was too hard to know what to do in different situations that come up. Believe me I wanted to, but I didn't want to call management every other day.

Working with these kids is incredibly rewarding. The board seems genuinely knowledgeable and excited to turn things around. Meeting many of the St. Louis City Public School staff was rewarding.

- The management team is completely out of touch with day to day operations, and in some cases reality. - The management team speaks in generalities about poverty, race and urban issues. It is very insulting and they have created a very "us and them" culture in the office and the program. - The management team came from for profit companies and do not understand nonprofit culture. - When asking the public about the agency they either reply very negatively or do not know anything about it. -I often experience partners in the community speak VERY negatively about the agency or worse, they dismissed us and did not prioritize our requests. - The management team repeatedly speaks to community partners with little respect. - The management team hires individuals who are very skilled in their fields, but does not offer any supervision or guidance. Meetings are not productive and the CEO is so scattered you rarely know what you are supposed to be doing. - The management team is rarely in the home office. They generally work from the Missouri Athletic Club in West County. There is no connection to staff or the people served. On average I see my supervisor about 5 hours a week. - The turnover is horrible. In the last six months, at least 7 employees have left or been dismissed. - The management team speaks very disrespectfully to staff. I often feel insulted as a professional. - There is no evidence of program success. In 13 years they never kept statistics, and have only recently looked at outcomes. - Staff is not happy. From the moment you walk through the door you learn that everyone is either looking elsewhere or biding their time.