Tag Archives: Women’s Event

Five Things Friday

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1. Ripples of Hope: Last month, we celebrated our ninth Annual Ripples of Hope Dinner, honoring Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg and The Starr Foundation. Those in attendance experienced an energetic and inspiring event with more than 450 of New York’s corporate, civic, and philanthropic leaders, our 255 corps members, and for the first time, several of the students that we work with every day. We invite you to check out a video recap of the unique evening.

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2. Women in Leadership

“Go look at the school where City Year is and you will see that the principals, the parent coordinators, and the teachers rate the experience with City Year off the charts. You will also see that those schools have better test scores, better graduation rates, better literacy scores, better basic math scores, so it is working. We need to make sure City Year has all the resources it needs to be in every school that it is needed in every way.” -Christine C. Quinn, New York City Council Speaker

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Wednesday morning, the City Year New York Women’s Committee hosted their second Annual Women’s Breakfast. More than 130 influential New York women leaders joined for a conversation about the education crisis and the role women can play in addressing the needs of under-resourced schools. New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn delivered keynote remarks that set context for a panel discussion moderated by Chelsea Clinton.

Panelists included Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, Mithra Irani Ramaley, Vice President of Regional & Site Operations at City Year, Inc, Sally Bachofer, Assistant Commissioner of the New York State Education Department, and Jahqueena Haynes, Senior Corps Member at City Year New York.

Read the full event recap blog or click the image above to see remarks from Speaker Quinn.

3. Viva El Bronx: Last Saturday, on Cinco de Mayo, we held a Community Service Day called Viva El Bronx commemorating arts, culture, and education. Corps members lead fun activities with students, had a  face painting booth, and made cultural jewelry with youth in the community. Community-based organizations such as HPAC and Harvest Home Farmer’s Market showcased their services to the South Bronx residents. The families and residents of the South Bronx community were delighted with everything Viva El Bronx had to offer them! One little boy cried all the way down the block away from P.S. 75 because he had no desire to leave Viva El Bronx. The superb day closed out with book giveaway and a talent showcase of South Bronx youths’ various talents including dancing and singing!

4. Graduation 2012: City Year New York Graduation celebrates the accomplishments of the corps members who have given a year of their lives to make a difference in New York’s schools and neighborhoods. Please join us at this celebration!

City Year New York Graduation

Thursday, June 7, 2012
3:00 pm

The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College 
(68th Street and Lexington Avenue)
A reception nearby for family and friends will follow the ceremony

To RSVP please email Sarah Shutt or call 646.330.4147

5. National Leadership Summit:

Next week, national and local leaders from the education, business, government, and philanthropic communities will head to Washington D.C. to discuss the unique and targeted role national service can play in helping to turn around low-performing schools, at the City Year National Leadership Summit.

Not everyone is able to attend so we ask that you stay connected via twitter by following #CYSummit and to visit the City Year You Tube Channel at 11:15 am on Tuesday to watch (and share!) a special announcement regarding City Year’s Long Team Impact Strategy.

“This is a generation that is programmed to serve”

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This morning, the City Year New York Women’s Committee hosted their Second Annual Women’s Breakfast. More than 130 influential New York women, 80% of whom were brand new to City Year, came together for a discussion on the current landscape in education and to explore ways to help schools and students succeed.

Today’s event involved a panel discussion moderated by Chelsea Clinton, and included panelists Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, Mithra Irani Ramaley, Vice President of Regional & Site Operations at City Year, Inc, Sally Bachofer, Assistant Commissioner of the New York State Education Department, and Jahqueena Haynes, City Year New York Team Leader, and keynote remarks from the New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. 

Chelsea Clinton and our panelist before the event. L to R: Dan Attridge, Jahqueena Haynes, Mithra Irani Ramaley, Chelsea Clinton, Sally Bachofer, Debora Spar, Madison Gordon, Marla Ensuncho

“To put the dropout rate in context… 1.7 million people today [in New York], right now, are over the age of 16, are not in high school, have dropped out, and don’t have a GED,” said Speaker Quinn, as she helped the audience better understand the educational needs of New York’s schools. “Now those are bad statistics, but this isn’t a disease we don’t know the cure to… We have the cure to this problem: it’s multi-faceted and part of it is right in this room today, and certainty a huge part of it is the [City Year] corps.”

Kicking off our panel discussion was Chelsea Clinton who shared her own motivations for being personally invested in education and helping others, “I am obsessed with what works and obsessed with trying to highlight what works in ways that are distilled, approachable, and accessible,” and she went on to say that “City Year is fundamentally important to me not only because I’m obsessed with what works, because that’s a motivating force in my life today, but also because I am deeply proud of my father for starting AmeriCorps,” of which City Year is a part of. 

Throughout the discussion our panelists shared their experiences and elaborated on the roles that women in service are playing to solve some of society’s largest problems. “This is a generation that is programmed to serve. And I think that that’s really a wonderful thing,” said Debora Spar. “Not everybody has to start a school for rural girls in Africa, as wonderful though that is, in fact; you get more muscle, more power by joining an existing, wonderful organization where you’re adding your resources and energy to something that’s already working.”

“The big idea behind City Year is if you take thousands of young people and you focus them on an issue—on solving an issue, that means young, idealistic, energetic people can literally solve any problem in the world. That’s the idea behind City Year,” shared Mithra Irani Ramaley.

The major theme from the day was asking the audience to find their own specific way to get involved because “we can’t do this by ourselves,” said Sally Bachofer. “There is a unique opportunity that we have to partner with our civic partners, our partners in philanthropy, our business leadership, and the people who are actually on the ground doing the work in schools… It’s not something that one organization can do by itself. It is power in numbers and this collective sense of civic engagement is so critically important.”

We would like to thank everyone who attended today’s event and for their continued support of City Year. Leaving the event there was a great sense of unity and the feeling that the crisis that we are facing in education today is solvable and that we all have a role to play.

Thank you Chelsea Clinton, Debora Spar, Mithra Irani Ramaley, Sally Bachofer, Jahqueena Haynes, and Christine C. Quinn for participating in today’s event and for inspiring our audience.  

Thank you Jill Iscol, President of the IF Hummingbird Foundation for closing out our program and for providing all of our attendees with your new book Hearts on Fire.

Thank you Robert Todd Lang, Senior Partner and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP for providing us with a great space for today’s event.

And finally we would like to thank the City Year New York Women’s Committee for their dedication to spreading the work of our corps and for mobilizing New York’s women to make a difference.

Erin Berger
Tricia Black Brogan
Binta Brown
Tracy Collins
Darin Eydenberg
Emily Griset
Jill Iscol
Keri Larkin
Dianne McKeever
Henrietta Pertuz
Cynthia Ryan
Janice Shepps
Lisle Whitworth

Please CLICK HERE to see more pictures from today’s event.

We Can All Do Little Things In A Great Way

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Today we hosted a Breakfast Discussion on the Roles of Women in Service and Education in New York City, hosted by Credit Suisse and attended by more than 200 guests.

Featured speaker Caroline Kennedy shared her passion and dedication to helping students in New York City; she also asked those in the room to join her by investing their time, knowledge and resources to bettering education. Caroline also spoke about her experience visiting a City Year afterschool program in the South Bronx years ago. Click below to hear about that visit.

Next was our a panel discussion moderated by Tina Brown, Editor in Chief of The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. Our panelists included: Adrianne Edmunds, City Year New York corps member; Anne Marie Fell, Director of Grant Making and Communications for the Credit Suisse Americas Foundation; and Diahann Billings-Burford, Chief Service Officer for the City of New York. Tina asked questions that inspired our panelists to share their experiences about giving back and being in careers that promote social change.

The goal of today’s event is to inspire the women in New York  to get involved with service and education. Caroline Kennedy shared with us the Dorothy Day quote, “We can’t all do great things, but we can all do little things in a great way,” and we would like to share with everyone a few examples of little things that we can all do to support the schools and students we work with everyday.

We would like to thank everyone who attended today’s event and for their continued support of City Year.

Thank you Caroline Kennedy for all that you have done to promote service and support City Year New York.

Thank you Tina Brown for leading an inspiring discussion on the roles of women in service and education.

Thank you to our panelists for sharing your insight and experiences.

Thank you Credit Suisse for providing us a great space.

And a special thank you to our Woman’s Breakfast Planning Committee:
Cathy Cramer
Catherine Curley
Anne Marie Fell
Emily Griset
Anne Herrman
Regina Hitchery
Jill Iscol
Cynthia King Vance
Diana Koshel
Jennifer Lindenauer
Stacey Maites
Sharon Meadows
Stephanie Mudick
Jamie Renwick
Katherine Soll