City Year
City Year 
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City Year is a national youth service organization uniting young people, ages 17 to 23, from diverse backgrounds for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. City Year is part of the AmeriCorps National Service Network.
Young Heroes is a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders who do community service on Saturdays during the school year. Basically, it's a City Year program for middle-schoolers that takes place on the weekend instead of the week. Also, the participants do not receive a stipend for living expenses. Young Heroes is run by a group of corps members in City Year. Each site has its own group of Young Heroes.
This year Young Heroes has expanded to include high school students. 50 students who are dedicated to making a change in their community will take part in the first ever Young Heroes High School corps! By Graduation on May 6, they will be able to identify a problem in their community, gather resources from their environment, and take steps to improve their community.
City Year divides its corps up into teams. Last year I was on the School District team, the Furness Cluster teamlet.(My teamlet consisted of Jacob, Shavonne, Manny, Chris, and me.) This means that I served in the School District of Philadelphia in the Furness Cluster. The schools I worked in were Furness High School, Kirkbride, and Jackson.
In Furness High School my team led a service learning project in which a 9th grade class completed an Oral History project along with a resident of a nearby nursing home.
Another class built a rain collection system for a public garden. This class worked with a class at Kirkbride Elementary. The elementary students grew plants and flowers in lightboxes in their classroom. When it got warm they transplanted them to the community garden.
Also, several other Furness classes participated in crossage tutoring at Kirkbride Elementary School. They tutored the children in reading and literacy skills.
At Jackson Elementary School we taught five different classes the steps to creating and publishing a school newspaper. We gave youth a voice and a means to making themselves heard. The curriculum also involved conflict resolution because the students were asked to identify problems in their community and go about addressing them through the newspaper medium.
A ripple is the effect of one person's actions on another person and so on and so on... I help a child to read and he in turn helps his sister to read who later helps her cousin to read who..... You get the idea.
Camps!: When the School District has spring break for all public schools, City Year runs a free, week long day camp for kids grades Kindergarten through Eight. City Year provides a safe alternative to playing on the street. The week includes breakfast and lunch and acitivities such as arts and crafts, sports, and educational programs. The kids have a lot of fun and the parents have someone to look over their children while they are at work. The whole initiative is run by City Year corps members.