City Year Washington DC: A Year in the Life

Now that we’ve been in service about a month, all the corps members seem to be finding the service challenging, but all the more rewarding. The AOL Civic Engagement team has already planned and implemented four service days at three different elementary schools and one homeless shelter! Our City Bridge Foundation DECYDE – Dramatic Empowerment City Year Drug Education - team has taught their drug education curriculum in 17 middle school classrooms AND performed their skit show eight times in school auditoriums all over the city! The Case Foundation Young Heroes team, in addition to serving as teachers’ aids three days a week at Garrison Elementary, has also already reached their goal of students interested in their spring semester service learning program – this is after giving only two-thirds the number of recruitment presentations they expected to. The CSX HOPE – HIV/AIDS Outreach Prevention Education – team has begun delivering the Making Proud Choices curriculum to 15 middle and high school classrooms around the city with many more to come! Our Acacia Group CYCLE – City Year’s Campaign for Literacy Education – has been vigorously tutoring one-on-one with kids of all ages while also preparing for their first literacy showcase at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library.

Despite our busy service schedules team’s, we have been given some pretty cool opportunities to experience Washington, DC. Being in the Nation’s Capitol, there are often events at which corps members get to represent City Year and meet prominent figures in politics. Just the other week, a City Year alumnus who is now a Georgetown undergraduate called us about a conference on campus he was going to attend. The conference was about serving the common good and featured Georgetown Alumnus, Bill Clinton. He had an extra ticket and thought it would be great for a current corps member to join him. Fortunately with only a single day’s notice, we were able to send a corps member the following morning. When President Clinton walked out on stage he immediately spotted our corps member Jess’ City Year red jacket. Upon noticing the corps member, President Clinton promptly saluted her in front of the rest of the crowd! After he spoke, at first Jess went to stand in line to get to meet him, but realized it was way too crowded. Plus, she had kind of already gotten her acknowledgement from him, so she was satisfied. As she walked away, she felt someone grab her on her shoulder and turned to see who it was. Before she even realized it was President Clinton, he was hugging her. He hugged her and said, “Thanks for doing what you’re doing.” We often get recognized in our jackets by children all across the city. Sometimes we’ll get called out by a local sponsor. These encounters are very uplifting, but this one is even more so. To not only be publicly acknowledged with a salute by the former Commander in Chief and founder of Americorps, but sought out through a crowd of fans and then hugged and thanked means a lot. Part of being a City Year Corps Member is humbly serving, but after an encounter such as this, it’s hard as a City Year Corps Member to not add at least a brief strut to our step.