City Year corps members work with youth in communities across the United States.
By Christine O'Keefe
Staff Writer
“Where are you going to do your year of service?” Cesar Cervantes hopes someday young people will be asking each other this question as commonly as they ask, “Where are you going to college?”
Cervantes, 25, is serving a second year with City Year, a national service organization that provides young people between the ages of 17 and 24 with a demanding year of community service and leadership development. The corps members of City Year work with youth in communities across the United States, acting as mentors and tutors, running after-school programs, and leading community service days. Cervantes is part of the effort to bring this program to Los Angeles, which will be the program’s 18th site in as many years.
The inaugural Los Angeles corps of 75 members will be the largest in the organization’s history. A typical corps in another city might be about 50 members. Los Angeles director Allison Graff-Weisner said the effort to start a new corps in Los Angeles has been challenging, but has been aided by interest from donors, volunteers, and willing partners, such as Union Avenue Elementary School. Some City Year members, such as Cervantes, are already engaged in helping Union Avenue students, who are 90 percent English Language Learners, improve their reading fluency.
Once they begin their service on September 4, Corps members will be split among seven teams, six of which will serve at elementary or middle schools, and one of which will be a civic engagement team, charged with engaging Angelenos in service.
The new corps members working at schools will work to improve the academic achievement and character development of students while enhancing the overall capacity and performance of schools. Specific services will include one-on-one classroom support for struggling students, after-school and out-of-school programs focusing on academic and leadership development, and in-school enrichment clubs based on the interests of students at the school.
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Cervantes spent his first year as a City Year corps member in Boston, where he taught second and third graders an environmental education curriculum that included topics such as the water cycle and seed distribution.
“The idea was to teach students to see that their city was built in an already existing natural environment, and not the other way around. We worked in the school garden, and at first the students wanted to kill the bugs and tear the leaves from the plants. Over the year, you saw care and appreciation develop. The students started to understand why the worm and the spider were there, and that tearing bark off the tree was like creating a wound,” Cervantes said.
Cervantes said his desire to serve comes from his faith and his upbringing. He explained, “My family is an immigrant family and it’s part of my upbringing to want to give back because of the opportunities we had. My father is a captain in the Army and my mother is a nurse, so my family has a strong identity of service. So for me it’s beyond a desire to serve—it’s a duty.”
Graff-Weisner said the common denominator among corps members is their leadership potential. “They want opportunities to develop skills as well to give back. And they are significantly changed by their experiences with City Year,” adds Graff-Weisner. She cites a study, performed by an outside agency, which found that City Year alumni vote at higher rates, volunteer more, and have more diverse groups of friends. “These findings are very much in line with the mission of the organization, which is to promote democracy,” she said.
City Year Los Angeles will officially launch its inaugural year with its Opening Day ceremony on September 28, 2007, at which the founding corps will publicly pledge to serve the communities of Los Angeles. The organization is still looking for individuals to become a part of founding the site. Benefits provided to members include a weekly living stipend of $250, basic health coverage, federal loan deferment, and a $4,725 education award upon completion of service. Corps members are drawn from those who have completed high school, those who have completed college, and those who are somewhere in between, such as students who might be taking a year off from college to perform service.
For more information or to get involved, please visit www.cityyear.org/sites/los_angeles or contact
Allison Graff-Weisner at agraff-weisner@cityyear.org
City Year Los Angeles corps members perform community service.
