PS 75

As my service year comes to an end I am becoming a little more introspective of CY’s impact at PS 75. In this past year my team has volunteered over 13,000 hours, taught over 532 Bringing Books to Life lessons, and received raving evaluations from the students and staff of our school. We were able to meet and exceed our goal of setting up a successful first-year school partnership and forged relationships with children that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. One of the best lessons I’ve learned in CY comes working with my peers, that in the “real world”, not everyone has to get along but that we all should put aside our differences in order for a greater cause. My team had some difficult times, working in such a diverse setting, but in the end we really did make a difference to our students, to the teachers, with one another, and within ourselves. So in battling with injustice, for now I will hang my red jacket for a while and reflect on how to use what I’ve learned in this past year to make a greater impact on the world next time around.

Yours in service,

Roma

Alas, The year is coming to an end. The Young Heroes program graduated over 100 Young Heroes at PS 57, in East Harlem, two weeks ago. The Auditorium was packed with an astounding number of over 300 people who came out to support the Young Heroes as they graduated from our program. Some of our students graduated having completed as many as 140 community service hours. The ceremony was beautiful. We had a parent speaker from the Bronx, a Young Heroe keynote speaker, we awarded the Young Heroe of the Year awards to two outstanding young people, and we all relaxed afterward with a huge potluck supper.
The Young Heroes teams are staying busy wraping up the program and leaving a strong legacy for future teams so that they may carry on a strong program.

The Young Heroe of the year awardees will be going up to New Hampshire with the corps for the week of CYZYGY.

The Credit Suisse East Harlem community service day was by far one of the most fun and inspiring days I have had at City Year. It’s very empowering to realize myself and other corps members lead projects that totally transformed a disgusting overgrown courtyard into a beautiful place where residents can lounge, hang out and play in this summer. Our volunteers re-landscaped the gardens, created some amazing benches and even fixed a broken jungle gym! Some other service that went on also included mural painting, bookshelf building, and blacktop painting. The most gratifying part was seeing the look on the local residents faces in excitement. Overall it was a very powerful and inspiring day!

Yours in service,

Rick Wolfsdorf

May

Hi All!
Retreat! We just retruned from Fishkill, NY at Camp ABC with around 100 YH’s! It was crazy and exciting, never a dull moment with any of them. Despite a freezing night, all of our students loved being able to get out of NYC into into the country for s’mores, an awesome talent show hosted by our very own ‘banjo’, and some really great teambuilders and games. It was so exciting to be able to see the East HArlem Young Heroes mingle and make quick friends with our Hunts Point Heroes. They all really were able to feel apart of something huge and transformative! All in all it was a great 24 hours of tiring work with our middle schoolers! Only a week until YH graduation, it’s flown by!

Thanks!
Hope Krause
Hunts POint Young Heroes
Hunts Point, BX M.S. 201