Seventh-grader Theresa Werle chose to participate in City Year—a nonprofit, youth-oriented service organization—last year after the group visited the middle school. The organization recruits volunteers for its Young Heroes program.

This will be Werle's second year participating, and she is joined by sixth-grader Seferina Reynaga.

City Year is headquartered in Boston, where it was founded in 1988. Former mayor Susan Hammer brought City Year to San Jose in 1994 after she attended a National Mayor's Convention the year before and was impressed with the organization's service activities.

City Year, a public service nonprofit organization founded in Boston in 1988, recruits people between the ages of 17 and 24 to dedicate one year toward full-time community service. The purpose of the Young Heroes program is to also keep Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream alive and learn about his teachings.

The 5-year-old Young Heroes program recruits middle school students from all over the Bay Area to meet for 15 Saturdays. The students learn leadership skills and how to become active members of their community.

Werle and Reynaga were the only Willow Glen Middle School students who chose to give up their Saturdays for service activities.

"Not a lot of kids want to do it," Werle said. "They want to do other things. I joined because I wanted to make a difference in our town."

On Jan. 20—Martin Luther King Jr. Day—City Year held its Young Heroes opening day ceremony at the AMD Sports and Service Center in Sunnyvale, where Sunnyvale Mayor Julia Miller gave a keynote speech and former Sunnyvale Mayor Fred Fowler spoke about good character. Former Cupertino Mayor Sandra James also led the new class of more than 100 Young Heroes in its inaugural pledge of service.

When Fowler addressed the crowd, he said being a hero means "doing something nice, even when no one asks you to."

He tied that in with King's famous remark that someday this nation would not judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

"And that's what character is," Fowler said. "It means knowing what is right and having the courage to do it. And that's what volunteering is."

Immediately after the ceremony, the volunteers filed into buses to go to San Francisco to participate in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.

Werle, who marched in last year's parade, said, "It was long but fun."

Chris Wilder, executive director of the San Jose/Silicon Valley branch of City Year, gave a rally speech in the gymnasium of Sunnyvale's Columbia Middle School—to approximately 100 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, sharing his experience from just a few days ago when he met with author Clay Carson, a King scholar who wrote A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Carson knows more about King than anyone in the world," Wilder said. "And Carson said that in many ways we are further from Dr. King's vision today than when he was killed in 1968."

Carson had argued that in 1968 there was a national agenda to eliminate poverty in the United States but "today we rarely talk about that," Werle said.

For Werle, the organization is a way to give back and reach out to the community.

"Last year, we cleaned up graffiti under bridges and pulled weeds to make the parks in downtown San Jose look better," Werle said. "Every Saturday we go and fix something. Or we learn about the community."

Werle said group discussions usually involve City Year leaders posing questions about social topics and trainees writing their responses.

"One time we wrote a rap*we actually made a song about what we were doing," she said.

As a second-year member of Young Heroes, Werle is designated as a "Devo," meaning Devoted Hero, and her goal is to return in 2004 and 2005, enabling her to become a team leader and train other middle school youth in the Young Heroes program.

Werle's says, "We have lots of fun because we do lots of stuff, and everybody's nice at Young Heroes."

Though it's Reynaga's first experience with the organization, she already thinks other middle school youth should consider joining.

"I feel excited. It's a good program," Reynaga said.