Area kids help clean up their neighborhood

Michael J. Rochon, Philadelphia Tribune

Friday, May 22, 1998  

The residents living adjacent to Connell Park in Southwest Philadelphia are beginning to notice a strange occurrence in their neighborhood.  

“I can’t believe those kids are doing that,” said one local bystander. “I just can’t believe it.”  

And as the kids brandishing paint cans and brushes, begin to invade the park, the leering onlookers are astonished to see the youngsters painting on the walls…over the existing graffiti.  Approximately 30 students from John Bartram High School’s environmental club participated in the Connell Park clean-up effort, a community project initiated by the National School and Community Corp. The park restoration effort was just one of many service programs that the NSCC has instituted aimed at bettering the lives of area youth.  

“That’s the beauty of something like a neighborhood clean-up,” said Martin Friedman, the executive director of the NSCC. “These kids are like magnets – the neighbors see them out there cleaning out the park and they start to feel a sense of pride for their neighborhood. It really sends a positive message to everyone in the community, especially to our youth.”  

Sending positive messages to the youth in one of the main goals of the NSCC, a service program initiative of the national AmeriCorps. By developing and engaging in community service activities, the NSCC goal is to improve the lives of local adolescents, thus providing safe, educationally fortified environments for children.  

Started as the Urban School Service Corps in the early ‘90s, Friedman founded the organization to attack the plight of urban youth in New Jersey with a series of school programs aimed at improving education. With governmental support and funding, the USSC traveled from city to city, imploring volunteers to get involved.  

“We started in the worst schools, with the lowest income families, in the roughest neighborhoods,” recalled Friedman. “About 120 people were involved, ranging from concerned parents, to community activists, to teachers and principals, to the bureaucrats – and within six months, we were doing great things.”  

After establishing the organization as a force within the New Jersey state system, Friedman left the USSC to embark on a new plan to combat the state of urban decay within Pennsylvania.  Now armed with over 200 volunteer corpsmembers, the NSCC is the largest America program in Pennsylvania. They work in conjunction with 65 area schools, and the applications of 11 more schools looking to get involved are pending.  

The NSCC focuses on teaching youth through “service learning.” Students acquire knowledge through real life experience, thus fortifying what they learn through their own actions.  Friedman maintains the NSCC concentrates strictly on neighborhoods that are “struggling,” thus refusing to get involved with suburban communities that have more than enough resources to fix their own problems.  

“The difference between the city schools versus the suburban ones is that they can afford to send their kids on field trips and take care of their own communities,” he said. “So we take [the city students] on field trips. We take care of [certain inner-city] communities.”  “No,” he added, “the middle-class suburbs are just not for us.”  

Heather Margolis, the NSCC corpsmember who instrumented the Connell Park clean up effort, says it was the students who came up with the original plan. After asking the students, who all voluntarily joined the organization, what they would like to do.  

“All I did was provide a vehicle for them to get involved,” Margolis admitted. “They were the ones who wanted to do something for the environment. I asked them what they wanted to do, and they said to paint murals on the facility’s walls with environmental messages.”  

Margolis said that the environmentally conscious programs are not the only types of service learning events that the NSCC offers adolescents. Students also volunteer to spend time with the elderly and get involved with the functioning educational programs, such as the recent “Dinofest” exhibit at the Philadelphia of Art.  The Bartram High students realized that their efforts were more than just merely painting over graffiti and planting various trees. Most saw cleaning up the park as a way to build neighborhood esteem through actual service.  

“It’s good to do nice things for the neighborhood,” said Rufus Farmer, a 10th grade student at Bartram High who lent his art expertise to the park’s mural. “Most people think we don’t care, but we know it’s important to keep this park clean because we hang out here."