Social Justice - Alan Khazei and Vanessa Kirsch

Khazei is no different. He wanted President Clinton to attend the festivities for City Year's 1998 annual convention. After all, it was a campaign stop at a City Year site that had inspired Clinton to launch the $250 million AmeriCorps program in 1994. But the president's staff said that he had no time for a trip to Boston. So Khazei pulled out all the stops, lobbying everyone he knew with a connection to the White House and calling on City Year corps members to pen more than 700 letters to the president. When the day of the event arrived, "Clinton was there. Apparently, he found time for a trip to Boston," says former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford, who befriended both Kirsch and Khazei years ago, and who now runs the AmeriCorps program. "Alan Khazei got Bill Clinton to attend by sheer force of will."

Youth-Service Juggernauts

Khazei's dream of starting a national-service program germinated while he was still in college. "We'd have late- night discussions about how to change the world, and about how the United States is the richest country on the planet but it still has homeless people and illiteracy and gang violence," says Khazei. "Why do we have that disparity? For me, national service makes so much sense because it gets to the root of the issue. It gets people involved at a young age so that they will learn what's going on in a direct way. It turns on what I call people's 'justice nerves': If you are exposed directly to an injustice or a need, you want to do something about it."

Khazei went on to Harvard Law School because, as his father advised, he could always find work with a law degree if all else failed. But after graduating, he turned down lucrative law-firm offers. Instead, with classmate Brown, he founded City Year. Their hope was that City Year would spark a movement, taking hold first in Boston and then spawning parallel efforts in other cities. The premise was simple: that national service could become both commonplace and obligatory, a bridge between high school and college. Young adults (ages 17 to 24) from all walks of life would dedicate 1,700 hours a year to working together on service projects all over the city. In addition to a modest living allowance, they would get partial college scholarships.

City Year began with 50 participants and funding from Bain & Co. and Timberland, among others. Today, wearing their red parkas, khaki pants, and City Year T-shirts, young corps members have become a fixture all across the country, doing morning calisthenics in the plazas and squares of their host cities. Teams of members take on community projects such as cleaning up vacant lots, providing HIV education, tutoring and mentoring other students, and helping the elderly. Nationwide, this year's contributions will look something like this: more than 1.5 million service hours; more than 22,000 kids educated about HIV; about 970 outdoor spaces renovated; roughly 150,000 kids tutored and mentored; and almost 3,000 elderly provided with support services.

As City Year was getting off the ground, Kirsch was working for Peter D. Hart Research Associates, canvassing young people about their attitudes toward citizenship. Depressed by the gloomy results, which painted her Gen X peers as slackers and poor citizens, she decided to find out for herself if that picture was accurate. Living off of a bonus from work, Kirsch took a month off and drove cross-country, interviewing young people along the way. She found that in many cases, young people were interested in doing public service, but they didn't know where to begin.

Kirsch then discovered many nonprofits that needed assistance. They were worried about the future leadership of their organizations, but they didn't have the resources or time to recruit new blood. Kirsch envisioned a solution that would help young people, nonprofits, and their communities. "We needed to create an infrastructure and organization that would bring those resources together. We'd help nonprofits and young people, and we'd create a whole notion of national service, of citizenship, of buzz about its potential. And we would begin to change the way Gen X was defined."

Public Allies, started in 1991, places young people in 10-month paid apprenticeships with local nonprofits. "Allies" -- the teenage participants -- get anywhere from $1,300 to $1,500 a month (depending on which city they live in), plus an educational grant from AmeriCorps of up to $4,725. One day a week, they work on team-based projects, such as a citywide forum for high-school peer health educators and violence-prevention programs. The notion has caught on: With an operating budget of $4 million, Public Allies now places roughly 200 youths each year with organizations in nine cities.

City Year and Public Allies became models for the national public-service movement. Both programs acquired steady funding, a healthy dose of media coverage, and, arguably, reasonable success -- and that's when the frustration began.