Los Angeles is Fired Up! City Year Opening Day

Fired Up, the answer when you ask City Year members how they are doing.  If you ask if they are ready for the task, they respond, “City Year is always ready.”  And what is that task?  Their motto is “Give A Year, Change the World.”  What they do is place teams in schools that help change the course of children’s lives. As a tutor and mentor, they work in under-resourced neighborhoods where they become a powerful role model to youth and help create solutions for community problems.  Today, 200 young women and men were inducted into the 2010/2011 class.  Mayor Villaraigosa, along with other officials, spoke.  This year LA was honored to have City Year co-founder Alan Khazei.  Alan, with Michael Brown, founded City Year and developed the model that led to the creation of AmeriCorps.  Alan just wrote a book that was released last week titled Big Citizenship.  City Year is an amazing program that I have been following for years.  I was able to help with the establishment of the LA Chapter four years ago with a founding partnership from Disney.  Last year a close friend’s son participated as a member and it truly was life changing.  And the classes that are luckily enough to have a City Year team do better in their class work, have fewer behavioral issues and increased attendance.

http://www.cityyear.org/losangeles_ektid1909.aspx