Building Youth Leadership for Social Change

OUR MISSION
The City School develops and strengthens the power of youth to work toward building a just society. We do this through creative education and critical thinking, leadership development, action and service, and promoting understanding and relationships across difference.

Congrats, Royal Nunes!
We are more than proud of City School youth leader Royal Nunes who was featured in The Boston Herald on May 5, 2008 for "Standing up against violence" after being presented with the Special Recognition Award for Activism at the 2008 Massachusetts Victims Rights Awards on April 30. Read more... or check out the Boston Herald article.

Goodbye, Miriam!
As of March 2008, Miriam Messinger, the Executive Director of The City School for nearly eight years, has moved on! The staff, Board and youth miss her presence and are deeply grateful for her leadership and all she gave to The City School. Read more...

Just Back from New Orleans!
Eight youth and three staff just returned from a week-long trip to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. Organized by City School grad Shane Bass, this is the third City School trip to New Orleans in as many years! Read more...

Summer Leadership Program
Our powerful Summer Leadership Program is still open to teens for enrollment. Details.

Opening the Door... Thank You!
Over 300 friends made our 9th Annual Opening the Door Dinner one of our best ever, helping to raise over $100,000 for 800 youth to get leadership skills, service opportunities and social justice education . Photos and more...

Annual Report, 2007
Last year, nearly 800 teens came to The City School for hands-on leadership development and social justice education. Read about how they changed themselves and the world around them.
2007 Annual Report

ADOBE Youth Voices Project
Funded by a generous grant from Adobe, City School youth are learning the newest video media-making techniques to craft digital video and capture the core of what we do. Visit again for updates!

Five-Year Strategic Plan (pdf)

The City School is a vibrant and unique youth organization in Boston that brings together high school students from Boston's diverse neighborhoods and suburbs in programs that combine creative education and critical thinking about social justice issues with hands-on leadership, learning, reflection and action.

Our goal is simple yet powerful: to transform lives by helping young people embrace difference, tackle issues head-on, reflect, act and give back. Our model of youth work demonstrates how we educate ourselves and others to make meaningful change in the world around us. And it works.

Each year nearly 800 young people come from the city and suburbs for leadership development and social justice education in our summer, weekend and afterschool programs. Teens build relationships across race, class, gender and geography; create caring, learning communities committed to making a meaningful difference; and use what they learn to carry out action for social change in their neighborhoods and communities.

Our Programs In Brief...

The Summer Leadership Program is where teens learn that individually and collectively, they are powerful agents of social change. Sixty diverse teens unite to bridge social barriers and empower themselves with hands-on leadership training, classroom learning, internships at local nonprofits, and social action proects they implement throughout the city. 

Youth Outreach Weekends engage teens in the realities of homelessness and poverty. City School youth leaders guide the way with challenging discussions, learning games, workshops to uncover root causes and undo sterotypes, and community service at nearby shelters and soup kitchens.

The Prison Empowment Project connects people inside and outside of Massachusetts' prisons. Youth and adult participants travel to prisons to dialogue with volunteer inmates about the circumstances, behaviors and choices that have caused them to be behind bars. (Taught in collaboration with Boston Police Dept. Community Disorders Unit.)

The Social Justice Education Institute uses our pedagogy and youth-adult model to engage teachers, youth workers, administrators, civic leaders and others in developing curricula and programming with a strong social-justice-based foundation. The goal is to transform our practices and engage young people in a way that supports youth agency, voice and leadership. (Educators can receive Professional Development Points through the BPS Center for Leadership Development.)

The Grads' Program promotes youth leadership, youth power and youth action for teens who've been through any City School program. It strengthens their leadership skills and knowledge, provides a proactive place for networking, and engages in youth-adult collaboration on advocacy, service work, retreats, the Youth Summit and more.

Rose from Concrete uncovers the leadership potential in youth who are court-involved, through workshops, leadership training and and learning groups at several DYS community re-entry sites.