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.

Strong Youth Leadership!

Join Our 3-Day Social Justice Workshop, August 21-23, 2008!
Take social justice education to the next level with the young people you work with! Click here for details on this transformative 3-day workshop at the Schrafft Center in Boston, August 21-23. Use our online form to apply. Make your payment here. Questions? Contact Alison Gross.

Summer Program Ends... Youth Leadership Continues!
Fifty-five emerging teen leaders capped six weeks of leadership training and social justice action. All summer they worked on immigration, poverty, homelessness, health and violence -- and completed Community Action Projects throughout the city. Pictures and more details coming soon! Contact Justice Williams to inquire about SLP 2009!

Seeking an Executive Director
The City School seeks a dynamic individual to embrace our learning environment, realize the organization's potential to grow and strengthen our community of young people who develop insight and skills to be leaders for social justice. Deadline to apply is July 7, 2008. Details here. Questions? Email Nancy Jackson

Job Opening: Youth Staff Coordinator
The City School seeks a motivated, skilled and energetic individual to work with our teen leaders as Youth Staff Coordinator. Deadline to apply is Friday, August 15, 2008. Click here for a job description and application details. Contact Justice Williams for more information.

We're on YouTube!
Check out The City School on YouTube! Thanks to a generous grant from Adobe, City School youth leaders participated in the Adobe Youth Voices project and put their digital video-making skills into action!

Goodbye, Miriam!
We said a fond farewell to Miriam Messinger, former Executive Director of The City School, in March 2008. The staff, Board and youth want to express their deep appreciation for all she gave to The City School. Read more.

Congrats, Royal Nunes!
City School youth leader Royal Nunes was featured as a Herald Hearo in The Boston Herald on May 5, 2008 for "Standing up against violence". In April ee also received the Special Recognition Award for Activism at the 2008 Massachusetts Victims Rights Awards, and was featured in the Boston Banner soon afterward. Read more or check out the Boston Herald article.

New Orleans, 2008
Organized by City School grad Shane Bass, eight youth and three adult staff travelled to New Orleans for a third year, to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina. Details here.

Opening the Door... Thank You!
Over 300 friends helped us raise over $100,000 from our 9th Annual Opening the Door Dinner, making it one of our best events ever. Photos and more...

Annual Report, 2007
Last year, 796 teens came to The City School to learn how to lead, and to make a concrete impact with their leadership skills. Read about how they changed themselves and the world around them.
2007 Annual Report

Five-Year Strategic Plan (pdf)

The City School is a vibrant and unique youth organization in Boston that brings together teenagers from Boston's diverse neighborhoods and outlying communities 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 and communities by helping young people embrace difference, tackle issues head-on, reflect, act and give back. Our model of youth work demonstrates how we educates 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 outlying communities 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.

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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 projects 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 The City School's pedagogy and youth-adult model to assist teachers, youth workers, administrators, civic leaders and others in developing curricula and programming with a strong social-justice-based focus. The goal is to transform our practices and engage young people to help support 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 learning groups at several DYS community re-entry sites.

Contact Us:

The City School
614 Columbia Rd.
Dorchester, MA  02125
(617) 822-3075
fax (617) 822-3073
Directions by Google