City Year

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Founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1988 by two Harvard Law School students, Michael Brown and Alan Khazei, City Year helps young people to dedicate one year of full-time community service to their community and country. City Year corps members, ages 17 to 24, come from across all racial, ethnic, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds to serve and lead on diverse teams. Corps members work in 16 cities across the United States and in Johannesburg, South Africa to work toward the vision of community service as a meeting ground for a whole society.

Inspired by the historical precedent of people rising up to change the world--from Mother Teresa, Robert F. Kennedy, and Gloria Steinem, to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and César Chávez--City Year offers young people an opportunity to address the world's pressing challenges. Corps members help to intervene in the lives of children in their city--ensuring that they learn to read, stay in school, and care about their neighborhoods. Besides their work with young people, corps members engage thousands of people of all ages in beautification and renovation of community centers, parks, and schools, all while promoting active citizen service and the power of informed civic action. Throughout their year of service, corps members are trained to be leaders and active citizens.

From corps members and their students, to corporate volunteers and civic leaders, City Year is committed to engaging and encouraging committed citizens and social entrepreneurs of all ages. City Year envisions a day when voluntary service will be a common expectation of all citizens.


Contents

[edit] Activities

City Year's core activities consist of:

  • encouraging social entrepreneurship in people of all ages.
  • running a youth service corps. Participants commit to 10 months of full-time community service and also receive leadership training. Their projects include literacy tutoring in elementary schools, providing classroom support, helping other non-profits carry out large-scale community service events, and managing special events to promote service and strengthen communities.
  • generating policy ideas and initiatives related to community service.
  • promoting the adoption of a national system of voluntary citizen service. One of the stated goals of City Year is for every 18-year-old to have answer to the question, "Where are you going to do your service year?" To help accomplish this, Voices for National Service (formerly Save AmeriCorps) was created to lobby Congress to support national service programs nationwide.
  • incorporating other young people into the service City Year does through the Young Heroes, City Heroes, and Starfish programs.

[edit] History

  • Begun in Boston by Michael Brown and Alan Khazei with private funds, City Year sought to bring young people from the community together in a year of service to the city.
  • Initially, corps members focused their efforts on community rehabilitation, beautification of neighborhoods, and building a sense of community throughout Boston.
  • *A City Year by Suzanne Goldsmith helps to describe these early years of City Year.
  • Over the years, the organization has opened sites, branches of the same City Year organization, in 16 cities throughout the U.S. In early 2005, the first international site was opened in South Africa. In fall of 2007, a Los Angeles site will be inaugurated.
  • Each year, City Year holds an "Annual Conference of Idealism" called cyzygy where all corps members from across the nation, and some from overseas and other AmeriCorps programs, convene for a week of idealism, discussion about the principles of social entrepreneurship, and service.

[edit] Relationship to AmeriCorps

Although City Year was started with private funding and still maintains many of its efforts via generous gifts from organizations such as Bank of America, CSX, Comcast,Timberland, and T-Mobile, the program also began sustaining its corps members via public funds during the George H.W. Bush administration. City Year also receives support from local and national nonprofits, such as the Case Foundation, which brought City Year to Washington, D.C., in 2000. While he was still Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton visited the Boston site, and that experience partly inspired him in his first term as President to create the AmeriCorps national service program as a way to fund City Year and other similar organizations. All AmeriCorps members earn an education award while performing service, which can be used to fund education or training or to repay student loans. City Year is now a member of the AmeriCorps network, along with thousands of other non-profits. The money received via AmeriCorps allows City Year to support its 1,000 corps members annually.

[edit] Program sites

City Year sites include:

[edit] External links

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