Agency Details:

City Year San Antonio (AmeriCorps)

What does City Year do?
City Year unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service, giving them the skills and opportunities to change the world.

City Year's vision is that one day the question most commonly asked of an eighteen year will be: "Where are you going to do your service year?"

Description:
What is City Year?
City Year is a nonprofit organization built on the belief that young people can change the world.

Why does City Year matter?
As tutors, mentors, and role models, City Year’s young leaders make a difference in the lives of children and transform schools and neighborhoods in 17 cities across the United States and in South Africa.

City Year is an innovative national service corps that unites young people, ages 17-24, in a demanding year of community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. Through exciting partnerships with private sector and community-based organizations, City Year seeks to address unmet community needs, break race and class barriers, and demonstrate that service can strengthen communities.

The San Antonio corps provides in school, after school and out of school programs to high risk, low income children and their families. The corps also leads physical service projects throughout the city that improve communities and leverage both public and private resources.

The name “City Year” reflects the idea that just as young people enroll in a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year, so too should they be challenged – and provided the opportunity – to dedicate themselves to a “City Year” of full-time service, idealism, civic engagement and leadership development. City Year is committed to the idea that providing a year or more of service to community, country and world should be a civic rite of passage in a modern democratic age – making our young citizens engaged experts in the needs of their society, passionate believers in their own responsibility to help meet those needs and effective “leaders for life”.

History:
In 1991, President George H. Bush appointed San Antonio native, Dr. Maria Hernandez Ferrier, to the Commission for National and Community Service. While serving on the commission, Dr. Ferrier met Alan Khazei, co-founder of City Year. Mr. Khazei's vision and commitment to national service inspired Dr. Ferrier and she determined that San Antonio would have the opportunity that City Year provided to youth and communities. City Year San Antonio (CYSA) was launched in the fall of 1995 with the support of the bipartisan Texas Commission for Volunteerism and Community Service, the City of San Antonio and regional grocer, H-E-B.

Now in its thirteenth year, City Year San Antonio is led by an active local board of directors and has established diverse federal, state and local political relationships, received several municipal proclamations and maintains corporate partnerships with Wells Fargo, the Cavender Auto Family, Valero Energy Corporation and numerous local and regional foundations.

Contact people:

Paul Garro, Executive Director, (210) 247-4427, (email) Tramelle D. Jones, Recruitment Manager, (210) 247-4423, (email) Mary Elyse Farah, Program Manager, (210) 247-4426, (email)

Office fax number: (210) 247-4499

Address:

109-B North San Saba San Antonio, TX 78207 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.cityyear.org/sanantonio

Directions:

City Year San Antonio is located downtown inside the Wells Fargo Bank at 109 N. San Saba between W. Commerce and Houston.

Last updated on May 18, 2009