City Year: Banking on Young People

Now that the campaigns are about over and working for Dukakis or Bush seems about as interesting as listening to them, are the only high-energy careers left for Harvard graduates in investment banking, consulting, or making superconductors? Does entering public service mean doing social work that relies on dwindling federal funds or being an anonymous bureaucrat in the Department of Inefficiency?

No, says Mitch N. Berman '88, who this summer will join Law School graduates Alan A. Khazei '83 and Michael H. Brown '84 at one of the most creative public service initiatives in Boston--City Year, a non-profit venture which uses college-age volunteers in public service projects.

Founded by Khazei and Brown, this "urban Peace Corps" program will get into full gear in a few weeks. Although it was developed from an idea to a reality just this year, City Year has drawn together a working group which includes recent graduates and students of Harvard College, Law, Business and Kennedy Schools. Equally critical to making the City Year experiment fly is its impressive and expanding group of advisors and sponsors, which includes former U.S. Senator Paul Tsongas, Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner and the Bank of Boston.

Ironically, the model for this fresh venture is a quarter century old. Just like the original Peace Corps, founded by John F. Kennedy '40 in 1962, City Year will ask young people to take on the challenge of aiding needy communities. City Year participants are not, however, going to Nepal or rural villages in Kenya. These 17 to 20 year-olds from Greater Boston will be serving their own backyard, assisting local social service agencies and non-profit groups in places like Roxbury, Dorchester and Cambridge.

City Year advisor and Kennedy School Fellow Winthrop Knowlton '53 calls it "the most exciting public service initiative any of us have seen in our lifetimes."

For many of its 50 participants, including Harvard sophomore Chris K. Murphy '90, City Year is a chance to try something different. Although many of his friends are spending their summer as interns in law and business offices, Murphy says he believes there will be plenty of chances to do that after graduation.

Murphy will be working with the Boston Food Bank and the Adopt-a-Nursing-Home Program. "Harvard is an intense forum for liberal discussion, but City Year is finally a chance to turn words into action while we're here," he says.

This year's volunteers will work all summer and will receive a $500 stipend and a $1000 scholarship, provided in part by City Year's corporate sponsors, which include the Bank of Boston, Equitable Insurance and the Riley Foundation.

Although this year's project is for the summer only, the program's founders says they hope to expand it into a full-year program beginning in 1989.

Unlike the Peace Corps, City Year was founded in a Law School student's apartment, not the White House. The program is an independent, privately funded venture, and Khazei and Brown drew heavily on students and faculty at the Law School when creating it. Even President Bok participated, appraising and discussing a 10-page sketch of City Year which the two presented to him.

City Year's working members see it as part of a tiny but potentially booming national youth service movement. The idea of a national youth service program has been bandied about for a long time and Brown and Khazei--roommates at the College and the Law School--both researched a national service bill while interning for members of Congress on Capital Hill. They and other proponents of national service now say that using a decentralized network of local groups like City Year might be the most practical way to realize their ideal.

Berman, who wrote his government thesis on national service programs, has decided to make national service a career objective. Three summers ago, Berman worked with City Volunteer Corps, a New York City government program that is similar to City Year. That practical experience and his work on his thesis have convinced him that now is a most critical time for the national service movement, and he says "City Year has the potential to be the model for other similar programs."

As evidence of a need for a national public service program, City Year organizers point to what they call a crisis of values among young Americans. According to a study of college student trends from 1965 to 1985 done through University of California at Los Angeles, the values placed on money and power have skyrocketed in importance, while the "helping" values all plummeted in priority. As a result fewer and fewer people were entering fields like public service and education. These changing values also relate to increasing drug and alcohol abuse among those without jobs or college degrees, City Year organizers say.

They posit that the United States needs more institutions to ease students' transitions from being irresponsible high-school kids to acting as adult citizens. City Year, Khazei says, "is more than taking a year off; it is developed as a bridge between youth and adulthood."

Khazei's vision of public service has inspired a wide variety of people to join the City Year team. The program has been able to tap a pool of recent college and professional school graduates to spur its fundraising effort. In fact, City Year was officially launched in late April at a spring benefit thrown by the Voluntary Fundraisers Association (VFA). VFA, which was founded by a group of young management consultants, teamed up with City Year to target more than 1000 people by mail, inviting them to attend a dance benefit or to contribute by mail.

While City Year has a rare combination of committed people and original ideas, its organizers concede that they cannot make the program work without help. Knowlton warns, "The big question is whether the private sector has the balls and the brains to get behind City Year."