City Year Washington DC: A Year in the Life

It’s only the first month of the 2007 and even though I’ve only been here a year and a half, I think I can honestly say it’s been one of, if not the busiest months in CYDC history. Sometimes the holiday break puts things on a slight pause and it takes corps members a few weeks to get back into the swing of things – this has not been the case for this corps. They came back from their break ready to go!

The CYCLE Team (City Year Campaign for Literacy Education) put on an event called Literacy Island. Athletically- talented youth are often given opportunities to showcase their talents through school and community sporting events, but students who have more literary talents aren’t often given that opportunity. That’s why the CYCLE team put on Literacy Island.

Literacy Island was an evening event held at the MLK Library in downtown DC. It was for 6th to 12th grade from all over DC. Some students came and read pieces that they had written. Others simply displayed their written work and let visitors read them. I was quite blown away by some of the younger poets that I heard. The older ones were of course excellent too, but I guess my expectations were much higher for them. There was a DJ, some of the students sang, and a number of people wondered in from the library to see. Again, I think it most importantly showed the young people that their talents are not going unappreciated.

This year, we had over 500 volunteers serve with us at our MLK Day project at Cardozo High School. We knew this year’s MLK Day was going to be big, but we had no idea how big it would eventually get.

One week before the event, we found out that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was going to attend our service project. What we did not know were the friends he would bring with him: namely, the President of the United States!

President Bush showed up at Cardozo High School around 10:30am. Followed by a sea of television cameras and secret service, his first stop was a mural we had designed that depicted U Street (where our Headquarters are). He painted with some CYDC alumni for a bit, then moved upstairs to meet with the Young Heroes in the library, where they were writing letters to victims of Hurricane Katrina. The President addressed the crowd of middle-schoolers with some words of appreciation for their work and went on with his busy day. Needless to say, we were all a little star-struck. To view the CNN clip of the President’s visit, check out: http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/us/2007/01/15/nat.mlk.day.celebrations.wbma