Create Czar to Oversee Greater Agency Sharing

I can hear the words of my mother as clearly today as when she spoke them 60 years ago when I would play with my cousins: “Be sure to share with each other and enjoy yourselves.” The “enjoy yourselves” had many meanings; however, one of them was to use the resources of each other to have an enjoyable experience and be successful.

And, so, my years in the early 2000s as Commissioner of the Department of Youth and Community Development, along with my concurrent appointment to the Central Board of Education (by Mayor Rudy Giuliani) were always filled with the memory of my mom. I realized early on in my work, to assure productive and quality after-school programs, to manage the largest youth-employment program in the nation, and to encourage communities to create youth programs which could be life-changing experiences to the most vulnerable, I could not get this done solely through silo budg­eting and programming of my agency. Rather, to make a difference in the lives of our young people, the Board of Education would need to be intimately involved in my agency’s work and the city would need to institute a formal cooperative link among city agencies.