TEENS MAKE LONG-TERM DIFFERENCES IN THEIR COMMUNITIES

When a teen volunteer went to a shelter for homeless women, the only thing on his mind was rejuvenating a dilapidated garden to cheer up the women. After the last vegetable had been planted, a gift awaited the women - a garden full of life.

The volunteer left with a warm heart and felt his job was done. The garden looked better, and he thought he had made a contribution to these women.

Did the volunteer go far enough? People often volunteer with the intent of making a difference, but they depart after their minimum-service requirement has been met. Do these volunteers merely scratch the surface or are they helping to solve deeper problems facing their communities?

Children's Express recently conducted phone interviews with teen volunteers working in inner-city programs in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston and Seattle. These kids say they are trying to make long-term differences in their communities.

Here are their voices.

What do you learn?

DOMICO CURRY, 20, Seattle: It gives you skills, as far as public speaking, as far as organizing, as far as learning what a nonprofit agency can do, in case you want to break off and start your own. So you learn how to be a manager and you learn how to supervise others and you learn just basically the tactics that you need to know in everyday life.

You're not just sitting back and saying, "Well, I'm going to let this happen." You're actually standing up and (sharing) your voice.

KEELY O'BRIEN, 14, Minneapolis: I've learned how to speak in front of crowds. I've learned a lot about how to talk to certain people and get what you want done, and (how to) work in a group. I've learned how to agree.

It's really made me have self-esteem.

JEREMY CARR, 13, Minneapolis: It helps you interacting with adults and people your own age. And hopefully, it'll help as we all get older and start careers.

A program like this, you learn that your opinion, though important, isn't always the right one. And you should listen to someone else's opinions.

RACHEL MIKAS, 13, Minneapolis: We work with people and it teaches us to be more responsible, and it helps us to understand politics.

(You learn) to stick with stuff and be organized, (to not) give up easily and to fight for what you want.

MONIQUE SHIREE JONES, 17, Seattle: Well, for one thing, (I learned) social (skills) - being able to meet new people and see what they're all about - how they work and how they feel on the inside versus just working at a regular job where you're just placed in a room with some people and you're told to do a certain task. You know, work this, work that. And you don't really get a chance to sit down and talk to any other person to see what that person's about.

RORY KEOHANE, 18, Boston: They do a very good job with teaching about diversity and accepting diversity. You really begin to think of people as people. You really forget any stereotypes that you may have had prior to City Year. I feel that any of the stereotypes I had are gone. I just look at people, just in a very open-minded way now.

Role in organization

KAREN SHARE, 18, Minneapolis: I think that the adults like to think that kids have a say in things, and they really don't.

RORY: I think the corps members like it more with younger people in charge. . . . City Year is a pretty young organization.

JEREMY: It's the kids, the people really involved in it, that are going there and getting the groups together. I think that we are the ones who are mainly involved in this. We play the biggest role. . . . (Adults) don't get in your way and they don't tell you what to do. They're not controlling you.

KEELY: I wish the kids had more control.

DOMICO: Adults should (spend) more time being concerned with youth issues and youth problems and (use) youth as an information source, rather than just saying that they don't know what's going on.

Do you think you helped?

DOMICO: (I hope by volunteering) that our neighborhoods would be safer, our houses and streets would be a lot safer and the community would be more a whole rather than separate.

I help my community in many ways, by showing that not all young black men stand on the street corners and sell drugs. I also help out my community by being a role model to young people and showing them that if you work hard, later on, the skills that you've learned from not getting paid for what you're doing will eventually lead to a job that you'll get paid for.

RACHEL: (I don't think we are helping the community), just my school. I stopped harassment in our school. There wasn't much of it, but I still stopped whatever little there was.

KAREN: You have to understand the 4-H system. It's based on what they call clubs. Individual families come together in each community, and then they do projects.

Your community sees that whole club. . . . then the community kind of respects that. They respect the fact that youth are doing something other than sitting in front of the TV just being a vegetable.

RORY: Where we did our work, there was a City Year team there last year. And there's gonna be another one in the fall. And we set up some projects that we couldn't finish, but they'll finish. And we've definitely made a lot of community contacts around the neighborhood.

It depends on each program, but most of them try to get the community involved, so that when City Year leaves, the community can keep up what they have done.

National service

DOMICO: I would (participate in President Clinton's national service plan) but I'd have to think about it and see where and which way he wants to go. . . . Will it actually be helping the economy or would it actually be just like paying back the bank?

We might get more people who would be doing it just to work off their college loan. But then again, we might get more people who actually like doing social service work and see that there's a need for it. And that's basically what volunteering is - devoting your time to work on something that you feel deep down in your heart is important.

RORY: I think (Clinton's plan) is a very good idea. . . . I don't know how I'd like to see it done, but I think it's definitely a good idea if it could be done in some way similar maybe to ROTC - that you give back. Instead of giving back military service, (you) give back community service.

I guess it probably would (bring in reluctant volunteers) compared to the volunteers you get now, that are coming in totally because it's up to them. . . . But it would still be work that needs to be done.

KAREN: Clinton, along with a lot of other administrators, needs to realize that there are already programs in place, and that maybe they should just support those instead of starting their own.

BEN CARTER, 18, Boston: I think he should still try to do it. A lot of college kids don't have the money to pay for school, but a lot of kids, or young adults, want to do community service.

Why volunteer?

JEREMY: (Our school administration) began to take us more seriously. . . . More students started coming forward with issues that concerned them, and they weren't shut out right away. You know, people began to listen to them.

DOMICO: I think the thing that keeps driving me is that I never forget where I came from. I never forget what it was like growing up in the ghetto. And I never forget what it was like being on the street and hanging out with friends.

KAREN: (I volunteer) to improve myself. . . . A goal more important than that is to help other people. I find that through helping other people, I grow, knowing that what I'm doing makes a difference, instead of sitting at home watching television.

RACHEL: I (volunteer) to get something changed that I want to have changed or work for people I think need help.

Most paying jobs are something that is someone telling you what to do. But volunteering, for me, is what I want to do, what I choose to do.

Volunteer organizations

City Year: The Boston-based group has been used as a model for President Clinton's national service program. Applicants to this nonprofit, privately funded "urban peace corps" compete in a highly selective process for the 300 yearlong positions and numerous summer service jobs, which pay a weekly salary and a $1,000 stipend to college.

Address: City Year, 11 Stillings Street, Boston, Mass. 02210.

Phone: (617) 451-0699.

Public Achievement: Volunteers for Public Achievement, a program of Project Public Life at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, see politics as a practical and essential part of life. Using a hands-on approach, teens look at politics as the everyday public work of citizens and learn how to be effective players in democracy.

Address: Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Humphrey Center, 301 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minn. 55455.

Phone: (612) 625-9505

Seattle Youth Involvement: This network for kids ages 6 to 21 was created to provide input to the city of Seattle on youth issues. Using summits, periodic meetings and youth involvement days, their goal is to gather young people's opinions on a variety of topics and then deliver those opinions to city officials.

Address: Seattle Youth Involvement Network, 107 Cherry Street, Fifth Floor, Seattle, Wash. 98104

Phone: (206) 461-8524.