The New York City Volunteer Corps (CVC), which began operation in 1984, is the nation's largest urban youth service corps. Though it has the same dual goals as many youth corps--community service and youth development--the CVC is distinctive among youth corps in many respects. The CVC had pioneered the large-scale use of corpsmembers in delivering human services to homeless, elderly, disabled, and other dependent populations. The corps also enables corpsmembers to pursue mainstream academic credentials during their service and offers them either $2,500 in cash or a $5,000 scholarship after a year of service. Other unique aspects of the CVC include its emphasis on service to the city rather than on employment and training, its definition of corpsmembers as volunteers who receive stipends, its nonresidential program design, and the city's commitment to provide virtually all the corps' financial support. The CVC appears to be well positioned at the end of its start-up phase to build on its initial progress. Thus far, CVC has provided nearly 500,000 hours of needed service to New York City. Although the program was too new to conduct a definitive assessment of its impact on youth development, participation in the program appeared to be particularly effective in developing a sense of service in corpsmembers. At the end of the first year, the CVC had 674 active enrollees, of whom about 75 percent were black, 21 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were white. (MN)