Message from the Mayor

As a young boy growing up outside of Boston, I learned the value of giving back from my parents. My father, a book keeper at a local dairy, didn’t have a lot of extra money, but he often wrote small checks to charity. I once asked him why he was writing a check to the NAACP. He told me that he believed discrimination against anyone was intolerable and should always be rejected. And as an Eagle Scout, I learned first hand how service to your community is a core part of what it means to be an American.

Those lessons stuck with me as I grew older and moved to New York City, first for a career on Wall Street and then as I started my own company. Give back. Share with others. Be involved in your community. These values are also what brought me to my third career: public service, which has been the most rewarding of all. Working to make our communities stronger and our children’s futures brighter is one of the greatest joys of my life—and it’s what NYC Service is all about.

NYC Service is a new effort to promote service and volunteerism in New York City. It includes an innovative set of initiatives that aim to achieve two overarching goals: making our city the easiest place in the world to volunteer, and setting a new standard for how cities can tap the power of their people to tackle our most pressing challenges.

The launch of NYC Service comes at a difficult time for our economy, a time when many New Yorkers are feeling the effects of the national recession and are worried about their futures. But it also comes at a time when our new President has inspired a revived national interest in service and committed new federal resources to it. New York City has historically been a pioneer in all areas of public policy, and it has a long tradition of public service. In fact, New York City was the proud host of the September 2008 Service Nation Summit, where leaders from every sector of American life laid out plans for a new era of service in America. It is my hope that NYC Service furthers these efforts in new and innovative ways by leveraging the greatest asset we have: our people.