Nation's youth asked to 'Do Something'
Program encourages community involvement offers grants to help
The Associated Press
NEWARK, N.J. — Gathered quietly in a faux wood-paneled room, their backpacks and winter parkas jumbled among folding chairs, about 12 young people sit down to write their obituaries.
Brenda Sanchez, 24, was "a great achiever."
Todd Behling, 25, "worked and achieved at everything he put his mind to and his love of humanity defined his chosen work."
Hoover Herrera, 23, "can be best remembered as a man who liked to do anything to make someone else's life a little happier. To his family, he'll be remembered as a strong and responsible father who never put his needs above anyone else's in his home. To his community, which was the city of Newark, he will be remembered for his concerns and efforts in helping youth by providing many positive opportunities for them to take advantage of."
Jill Rottman, 21, "will be remembered most for her focus on the successful revamping of the welfare system, which eventually brought the program to an end. She was also responsible for initiating housing programs that provided homes to millions of Americans who wouldn't have had them otherwise.Most importantly,she started a program that rid the country of
the illegal drugs that used to plague our cities."
John Hill,20, stops the exercise. Although the group has been asked to start with their endings, his talk tonight is actually about beginnings. He and his young colleagues are here to seize possibility, and commit themselves to the kind of vision their futures will require.
"Right now, everyone in here has done an obituary," says Hill, a New Jersey Youth Corps counselor whose turn it is to lead this week's workshop. "So if you have that in mind every day of your life, or every day when you wake up, everything you do should reflect where you want to be at in the end. You understand that?"
Everyone nods. It is pretty basic stuff, as basic as the name of the project that has drawn the group together tonight: Do Something.
Even though it is getting late, a certain energy moves quietly around the circle of chairs, among this multicolored group of bright people full of the kind of idealism many fear is more or less dead in young America.
It is the first program in a new community service campaign that founders hope eventually will embrace and activate young people nationwide.
The brainchild of actor Andrew Shue and his childhood buddy, Michael Sanchez, Do Something is about giving the nation's younger citizens — a group often overlooked — the chance to make a difference.
The fund, set for an official launch in May, will administer grants of up to $500 to innovators under 30, young people who might want to start a recycling effort or day care
center for single mothers, tutor peers or help build affordable housing. Programs can encompass anything, as long as they're creative and effective.
By enlisting the help of seasoned community activists who can act as mentors, Do Something plans to establish autonomous boards of young directors to administer funds in at least five cities by December. Ultimately, the hope is for such partnerships to spread and flourish around the country.
"Young people have a whole bunch of energy, enthusiasm, idealism and almost invariably want to take action, but there are few resources and structures in place," says Sanchez, 26, who runs Do Something's main office in New York.
"Our local boards can combine all this energy with a little bit of money and a lot of guidance. It has to happen on the local level. And young people know their communities."
Thanks in part to the 27-year-old Shue, best known as Billy on the TV show "Melrose Place," the fledgling organization already has received celebrity support and commitments of airtime from the Fox Broadcasting Co., MTV and Chris Whittle's Channel One. Several major magazines have offered free ad space, and Blockbuster Video has agreed to make Do Something's materials available at its 2,500 outlets.
Participants in the fund's Newark pilot program say it offers a rare opportunity to move beyond the headlines and statistics that pigeonhole them to the very real,very practical problems many can — and want —to face.
Jermaine Puryear, a new grant recipient, was standing squarely in trouble's path. His mother was into drugs and his father "wasn't really there for me." By the time he was 16, his high school career was over and a baby son soon would follow. Car-jacking, which made its name in Newark, was the crime of choice among many young men in his neighborhood.
He hadn't gotten into any serious trouble, "but I could see it coming." Fortunately for Puryear, now 21, some good people also showed up along the way. At alocal church, he found mentors and spiritual guides. They set him on another path, a path that since has only widened.
With help from Do Something and a $15,000 grant from the new Corporation for National Service, Puryear is starting a program that combines auto body repair and high school equivalency courses with life lessons, support and a strong emphasis on self-esteem.
Youths who otherwise would be in juvenile detention will instead have the chance to work off probationary community service by performing repair jobs and at the same time learning a marketable skill.
To many young people, the question is far from rhetorical. "The price of failure in this is the future of our nation," says Lawren Bridgeforth, 25, a striking woman with serious goals.
"I think everybody is open to change now because so many young people and their families are in crisis," she says. "People want to take control because at this point it's going to be a lost generation otherwise. And then the generation after that and after that. ... That's the real danger."