| Redcoats are coming, and they're very young
By Patrick Gerard Healy
Globe Correspondent The redcoats are coming to Boston this week, but this time the city can expect a different kind of American revolution. Nearly 1,000 City Year Corps members and alumni in their trademark red jackets from across the country have already begun to arrive on the campus of Northeastern University for a weeklong convention called "cyzygy," from the Greek word that refers to a rare alignment of celestial bodies. In addition to awards ceremonies, forums, and a National Physical Training Championship, corps members will be touring through the city and cleaning, painting, and working on landscaping projects in the Boston neighborhoods, with a focus on the Grove Hall neighborhood in Roxbury-North Dorchester. City Year will also be commemorating its Boston beginnings 15 years ago. The program, which is the model for the AmeriCorps national service program, has grown from an eight-week summer pilot program with 50 members to a national vehicle for social change with 15 locations and more than 700 members per year across the United States. Traditionally, corps members are youths in transition from school figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Members, who range in age from 18 to 24, spend 10 months working in the community, such as cleaning parks and teaching children in Boston neighborhood schools. David Satterthwaite, who has just returned to City Year as director of development, was with the organization at its humble beginnings. "We moved offices twice in that summer," he said. "We were truly bootstrapping." Satterthwaite said the core of the corps is people who are young enough to want to change the world, and old enough to do it. "The power of working in a diverse team of young people to build democracy is really something special," he said. Alan Khazei, chief executive officer and founder of City Year, said the key to its success has been the notion of idealism. Reflecting on the past 15 years, he said he's "more appreciative than proud." "I'm incredibly grateful because what this has meant is that literally thousands have become involved with and supported this organization," he said. "If the numbers keep growing, think about that. If we had a million people in AmeriCorps, this country would change drastically in 10 years with all of that energy and idealism." Senior corps member Aaron Marquez said that seeing such a large number of participants coming in for cyzygy (pronounced 'si-zi-jee) is heartening. "The really cool part about it is that we have 100 corps members in Boston, and during the 10-month period of City Year these people become like brothers and sisters," he said, "and then people come to cyzygy and it's basically 1,000 red jackets and these people are all like really close cousins." Khazei said he has heard the cyzygy referred to as a reunion of people who have never met. Marquez agreed with that analysis. "The inclusiveness is so consistent across all the sites that when everybody is together at this big conference you really realize that you are part of this much larger movement of people doing service work," he said. |
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