City Year Detroit honors Joshua Brown, an outstanding Senior at Harper Woods Secondary School, with a $1,000.00 City Year Service Award Scholarship. Joshua has been accepted to Michigan State University for the fall. While at Harper Woods, he participated in
National Honor Society
Basketball Team Captain
Football Team Captain
Class President (elected all four years by his peers)
Student Council
Youth Advising Committee Member
Matt Gordon, Team Leader, Deloitte Team Serving at Cody High School
City Year gives corps members the unique experience of living vicariously through the students we serve. I believe that it is a struggle to even begin to grasp the difficulty of the inner-city until you can feel it. So, in taking a year of my time to serve the city and try to positively affect the students of Cody High School, what have I learned? I have learned that making any change takes significant time and effort. Students need to know that there is someone that has already found some type of success that believes in them and is willing to help them find a path towards a safer, smarter future. Seeing progress is a long, long fight, and that is where role models come in. I believe that City Year does a great job of creating role models in their corps members by pushing us to uphold the ideals of hard work, teamwork, and leadership when donning the CY uniform. It then falls upon the corps members to step up and help lead their students.
It is always easy to point out a lack of motivation or desire in students who fail to make it through the obstacle course that is a failing public school system. Why don’t the students work harder or study more? Why can’t they sit quietly and listen to a lesson rather than running in and out of the classroom yelling profanities? While some of these questions may be valid and can be undeniably infuriating on a daily basis, how often is one of the main causes for difficulty, a lack of strong role models, properly addressed? I ask myself–could I have pushed myself to overcome a lack of food, shelter, or safety on a daily basis and bring myself to school if I didn’t have strong, consistent role models pulling me toward the goal of graduation?
I believe that success comes from repetition. You cannot simply read a book that details how to escape from poverty and then change your life. To make any significant change, one must devote hours, days, or even years towards committing to a different future. This is why being a positive role model is so important. A positive role model demonstrates how (leading by example) to dedicate oneself to hard work on a daily basis and then provides support every at every step along the way. It is my hope that through City Year I have both helped students at Cody learn how to live better and one day become positive role models themselves, and that I have shaped my own abilities and perceptions so that I may continue living the ideals I learned at City Year through the rest of my life.
As part of our National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. Jon Schnur of America’s Alliance moderated a panel of leaders in education. The final question asked was:
“Ten years from now, what would you want to be able to be announcing?”
Here is what they had to say:
“In every city that City Year exists, there is a leader who ten years before was one of your students who was off track and at risk.” - Michele Cahill, VP for National Program & Program Director of Urban Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Trustee, City Year, Inc.
“A new long-term impact goal because this one was achieved.” – Dr. Robert Balfanz, Research Scientist, Johns Hopkins Talent Development
“Every child in America has a quality education because City Year was there for the students who needed them.” - Stacey Stewart, Executive Vice President of Community Impact, United Way Worldwide
“We not only changd the arc of many lives, but we changed the arc of the country.” – John Gomperts, President and CEO, America’s Promise Alliance
“High school graduation rate in Jacksonville is 80-90% and City Year is now a global organization impacting the world.” - Mayor Alvin Brown, City of Jacksonville, Florida
This guest post is written by Melanie Brennand Mueller, Senior Director of Recruitment, Admissions, and Alumni Affairs at City Year HQ
Every morning when I walk into City Year Headquarters, I read one of my favorite quotes prominently displayed on the wall:
“Never doubt that a group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
- Margaret Mead
As of today, more than 1,650 young people have already committed to serve with City Year next year. I’m inspired and reinvigorated every year at this time, as we look to fill the remaining spots in the corps over the next month, identifying the final few hundred more men and women who are ready to commit to a year of full-time service in schools and communities across the United States.
Not coincidentally, I also think about the thousands of young people who – today – are deciding which college to attend. At the same time, thousands of graduating college students are preparing to graduate and enter the “real world,” at the end of this month. All of these paths require careful consideration and thoughtful choices.
But for the 1,650 confirmed corps members, this decision has been to serve.
Mead’s quote is considered one of City Year’s “Founding Stories,” a collection of quotes and reminders of the work we do and how we approach it.
This particular interpretation goes on to note,
“…But the critical component for success is “commitment.” Those who succeed in world-changing activities have an unwavering, passionate, almost irrational commitment to their cause. Any of us can choose to use this formula, to find a cause we are passionately committed to, to recruit a team as passionate as ourselves, to generate ideas and strategies, and to stay the course, to be committed, fundamentally committed, until success is achieved.”
As the confirmed corps members for City Year’s 2012-13 corps continues to form as one of the most diverse groups to date, I am inspired and humbled by their commitment, as I honestly believe that it is the critical component for success: the success of the children we serve, the schools we support, and the success of our organization to change the world.
Watch the video to see some of our employees talk about the service work they will be doing on this year’s Comcast Cares Day – April 21, 2012.
