What's a white girl like you doing in a place like this?

• Author: Goldsmith, Suzanne
• Position: City Volunteer Corps

What's A White Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

Running a volunteer program for tough New York kids wasn't easy. But it was worth it.

I was driving through a desolate Brooklyn neighborhood one day when a group of tough-looking black teenage males rescued me from what appeared to be certain death at the hands of an angry motorist. I was at the wheel of a 12-passenger van loaded with a couple of tons of USDA surplus food and ten members of the City Volunteer Corps. Our cargo, flour, powdered milk, rice, and cheese, was going to the elderly and handicapped who could not go shopping. I had not mastered the van, and at a difficult corner I brushed fenders with a car that had pulled into my blind spot. The driver, large and threatening, jumped out and began pounding on my window. He got a surprise: the doors of the van flew open, and five menacing teenagers piled out and surrounded him.

"She had the right of way!" said one, flexing his muscles. Another bent to examine a dent on the man's fender. "That's old, man. Years old." The others simply stared. Meekly, the driver backed away and got back in his car. "See, Suzanne?" said Reece, the one with the muscles. "We'll take care of you."

It was the fall of 1985 and I was a team leader in the City Volunteer Corps (CVC). Since graduating from college a few years earlier, I had been working at a public television station. I had been doing research for a documentary program on poverty in America, but reading Moynihan and Harrington reminded me that my knowledge of the other America was, at best, second-hand. The TV work took me to neighborhoods like Roxbury and Hyde Park, Boston, but only for fleeting visits. I wanted to get closer. I quit my job and moved to New York.

CVC, which in 1985 was only a year old, bills itself as a model national service program. Like other youth corps throughout the country, it recruits young people to do public service work for little pay, but with the promise of other rewards: solid work experience, scholarship money, and a chance to care for others. Unlike most other youth corps, which focus on backwoods conservation, CVC was designed to test youth service in an urban center. In addition to fixing up parks and buildings, volunteers tutor in schools, assist the frail elderly, help the handicapped, and feed the homeless. Similar programs have subsequently spread to other cities, including Boston and Philadelphia.

Supporters of national service programs can turn misty-eyed about the values of "community" and "service" such programs are meant to instill. I had a lot of that mist in me too when I joined CVC, but I soon learned that "community" and "service" meant reining in the restless and the rageful: firing volunteers for being absent, for stealing, or for acts of violence. I had no idea how much discipline my job would require, or how I would hurt when a graduate from my team squandered a bonus on gold jewelry instead of saving it for college or wound up jobless or on crack. In the end, I did feel that national service can promote these democratic values: we did become a community, and we did serve. But make no mistake, it was bruising.

The Corps contained about 700 volunteers when I joined. All New York City teenagers between the ages of 17 and 20 qualified if they had no criminal charges pending and cleared a drug test. While one of the Corps's stated goals was to recruit volunteers of all economic backgrounds and ethnic groups, 96 percent were black or Hispanic, most from poor neighborhoods. Seventy-five percent were high school dropouts. Some were fathers and mothers on public assitance. Some had had minor, or not-so-minor, brushes with the law. Many were upwardly mobile, recent immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America, or Southeast Asia who saw the Corps as an Americanizing experience--and a place to learn English. Mayor Koch, who started the program, had envisioned CVC as a social equalizer, but college-bound whites were not beating a path to CVC's door.

City Volunteers (CVs) work full time for a year in teams of 10 to 15. They also go to school at night, either preparing for college, for the high school equivalency exam, or studying English or basic literacy.

To promote esprit de corps, the volunteers are required to wear a uniform. This caused small rebellions: "accidentally" spilling paint on the sleeves, refusing to hem the pants, tearing off the logo. But others used their meager stipend--$80 a week--to have it professionally cleaned and pressed.

With a stipend so low, most live at home, but the big incentive is the promise of a $5,000 scholarship or $2,500 in cash if they stay a year. Even so, when I began at CVC only a quarter lasted a full year. (Today, 33 percent complete the program.) Roughly half of those who leave are asked to do so; the other half drop out. Of those who do graduate, only 6 percent take the full scholarship option. Another 13 percent take part cash and part scholarship. The rest take the cash in lump sum, many cashing their checks the day they receive them. Reece called me a month after he graduated to confess, sheepishly, that he had already spent his entire $2,500: he'd bought a bicycle, some gold, some leather pants.

Donut argue with me

My first day in the field, I was issued my own uniform: gray polyester chinos, heavy work boots, a baseball cap, gray bomber jacket, a red belt, and a red pin-striped shirt with an apple-shaped logo and epaulets to denote my rank. The pants were too long, so I hemmed them with scotch tape.

My assignment was to take over Team 17, whose leader, Reggie, had suddenly resigned. He was twice my size and carried a physical education degree and a don't-mess-with-me attitude. I didn't like his way of maintaining order. I had wonderful visions of my own style of leadership being different--firm but friendly, hands-on, leading by example. By using the carrot rather than the stick, I imagined I would make the volunteers want to do good.

Fat chance. I would have to begin with rules--not reasoning, not democracy, just letting everybody know I was boss. I was not used to this--in the first two months, I lost almost ten pounds because my stomach was in such knots that I simply couldn't eat.

I had a couple of days to observe Reggie before taking over. The first day, he delivered a harangue that lasted 90 minutes. They were in trouble...