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 calls on young people to dedicate one year of full-time community service to their community and country. City Year Corps Members, ages 17 to 24, unite 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 realize 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.
Activities
City Year's core activities consist of:
- encouraging social entrepreneurship in people of all ages.
- running a youth service corps. Participants commit to ten months of full-time community service and also receive leadership training.
- youth service corps completing ten months of full-time community service. These projects include literacy tutoring in elementary schools, providing classroom support, assisting other non-profits carry out large-scale community service events, and special events varying by site.
- 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 eighteen year old to have answer to the question, "Where are you going to do your service year?" To accomplish this, Voices for National Service (formerly Save AmeriCorps) was created to lobby congress to support National Service programs nation-wide.
- incorporating other young people into the service City Year does through the Young Heroes, City Heroes, and Starfish programs.
History
- Begun in Boston by Michael Brown and Alan Khazei by 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.
- 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.
Relationship to Although started with private funding--and still maintaining many of its efforts via generous gifts from organizations such as Bank of America, CSX, Comcast,Timberland, and T-Mobile--City Year began sustaining its Corps Members via public funds beginning under the George H.W. Bush administration. A visit to the Boston site influenced then Governor, later President, Bill Clinton to promote the national Americorps program as a way to fund City Year and other similar organizations. City Year is now a member of the AmeriCorps program along with thousands of other non-profits. The money received via AmeriCorps allows City Year to support its 1,000 Corps Members annually.
Program sites
City Year sites include:- City Year Boston -- [Boston Site],
- City Year Chicago -- [Chicago Site],
- City Year Cleveland -- [Cleveland Site],
- City Year Columbia -- [Columbia Site],
- City Year Columbus -- [Columbus Site],
- City Year Detroit -- [Detroit Site],
- City Year Little Rock -- [Little Rock Site],
- City Year Louisiana -- [Louisiana Site],
- City Year New Hampshire -- [New Hampshire Site],
- City Year New York -- [New York Site],
- City Year Philadelphia -- [Philadelphia Site],
- City Year Rhode Island -- [Rhode Island Site],
- City Year San Antonio -- [San Antonio Site],
- City Year San Jose / Silicon Valley -- [San Jose Site],
- City Year Seattle / King County -- [Seattle Site],
- City Year Washington, D.C. -- [Washington D.C. Site],
- and City Year South Africa -- [South Africa Site].
External links
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