Moving Forward: CSX and City Year Celebrate More Than 20 Years as Partners

CSX believes that a strong partnership is built on shared values – and according to CSX CEO Michael J. Ward, these have been key to the success of CSX’s 21-year partnership with City Year, a national education organization that provides tutoring, mentoring and supports to more than 200,000 students in schools located in high-poverty communities across the country.

At the heart of the CSX-City Year partnership is a commitment to deliver on shared business and social goals. For instance, one of City Year’s core values is “striving to constantly walk in the shoes of others,” which perfectly aligns with CSX’s value that “people make the difference.” With these shared values in mind, CSX has supported 160 teams of City Year AmeriCorps members who have served more than 2.7 million hours to help strengthen schools and communities nationwide over the last 21 years. City Year has also helped CSX employees to give back to their communities through high-impact service events hosted by the City Year Care Force Team. Together, CSX and City Year are supporting the communities that CSX connects along the East Coast.

Below are some highlights of CSX and City Year’s two-decade partnership:

• Expanding City Year’s impact: City Year has grown from 1,000 City Year AmeriCorps members and nearly 1,500 alumni in 1995 to more than 3,000 corps members and 25,000 alumni today. And in 2013, CSX played a central role in supporting the launch of City Year Jacksonville by mobilizing local champions, including CSX leaders.
• Helping more students in high-poverty communities reach their potential:  CSX has sponsored the largest number of City Year AmeriCorps teams since 1995, which has enabled City Year to serve the students who need it most. According to a recent third-party study by Policy Study Associates, schools with City Year were two to three times more likely to increase English Language Arts (ELA) and math proficiency rates.  For example, in the school in Columbia, South Carolina, where CSX sponsors a team of City Year AmeriCorps members, 84 percent of students at City Year Schools demonstrated improvement on their English assessments.
• Involving CSX employees in community service: Since 2003, CSX and the City Year Care Force Team have engaged more than 15,800 CSX employees, partners and community members in nearly 87,000 hours of service at events across 53 communities.

For more information about the CSX and City Year partnership, please visit http://www.beyondourrails.org/index.cfm/partners/non-profit-partners/city-year/.

You can also learn more by reading CSX’s 2015 Corporate Social Responsibility Report online.