A City Year

A City Year is the story of twelve young people enrolled in a program that aims to re-engage America's youth - not by serving them, but by asking them to serve others. In the fall of 1990, journalist Suzanne Goldsmith signed on for a year of participant-observation in City Year, the widely praised, Boston-based community service program President Clinton would later draw on as a model for his national service program, AmeriCorps.

This book is the story of Goldsmith's experience, an honest and gritty account of the triumphs and setbacks faced by an idealistic social program in its infancy.

It is also a window into the lives of Goldsmith's teammates: twelve young people who faced enormous personal and group challenges in the course of their effort to become "part of the solution." They were from extraordinarily diverse backgrounds: a Burmese immigrant, a white prep school graduate, a foster child, an ex-convict, a black middle-class college student. Together they helped renovate a building for the homeless, tutored school children, and reclaimed a community garden from drug dealers. At the same time, they experienced challenges of their own: homelessness, college application essays, unwanted pregnancy, arrests, and a confrontation with death. They also experienced backbreaking but gratifying work, the sense of family that comes from collaborative labor, and the potential strength of diversity.

A City Year is both the story of an uphill battle in urban America and an uplifting recipe for social change.