“Young enough you want to change the world-old enough to do it,” is the motto for City Year, a non-profit organization based out of Boston, Massachusetts.
“As a City Year corps member, you will serve as a tutor or mentor in schools, run after-school programs, plan and host day camps for kids and help rebuild neighborhoods. You will find your purpose in meeting critical community needs…you will commit to a minimum of 1,700 hours of service,” according to the website, cityyear.org.
City Year is a ten-month program for students 17-24 years old that has bases of operation in fifteen US cities, including Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington and Philadelphia, the closest base.
City Year has also successfully started a base in South Africa. One student who served in South Africa thoroughly advocates participating in City Year.
“City Year is one of the most powerful development and service opportunities available to young people in South Africa. There are very few service, leadership and education programmes that can match the quality of City Year, and I would encourage every young person to seriously consider a City Year before or after tertiary education,” James McDonald said on the website.
Students who wish to get involved with City Year can go to the website, which lists local career fairs that will have representatives from City Year and also supplies the application that needs to be submitted. The next deadline for applications is February 15, 2006.
For more information about City Year go to: www.cityyear.org.