Teens take on vandalism at park

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Wednesday, April 22, 1998

Sanetta Parmley

It was a false alarm.

Someone had called 911 to report dozens of teenagers armed with bats at Connell Park in Southwest Philadelphia yesterday. They were about to fight, the caller warned. But police didn't find any kids with bats. Instead, they found young people pushing brooms, raking leaves, priming a graffiti-covered wall, and digging into the ground with shovels to plant flowers. And the only struggle going on was a fight to preserve and beautify a community park at 64th Street and Elmwood Avenue by 27 students from John Bartram High School. They were among 500 students from about 60 schools across the region involved in environmental and park-restoration projects as part of National Youth Service Day.

"This is for the little kids in the neighborhood so they can have a nice place to play," said Syisha Jones, 19, a senior at Bartram who picked up litter that dotted in the park. "People don't need to come here and have to put up with that. This should be a place to have fun and relax."

This marks the 10th year of National Youth Service Day, which encourages young people to improve their surroundings through community service. AmeriCorps, a federal program headed by former Pennsylvania Sen. Harris Wofford, is one of the national sponsors of the service day, which is part of National Volunteer Week. The week will end with a cleanup along Ridge Avenue on Saturday. The cleanup, from 11th Street to Dell East at 33rd Street, will also mark the one-year anniversary of the Presidents' Summit for America's Future. One of the primary goals of the summit was to encourage young people to volunteer.

"The events are all getting connected," said Marty Friedman, executive director of National School & Community Corps, which organized events for National Volunteer Week in Philadelphia and New York City. "That's what the summit brought forth…a sense of coherence. We're all linked together and it's really made a difference." Friedman said that more than two million students were expected to participate in National Youth Service Day.

"This is really an empowering mechanism for kids to gain self-esteem," said Todd Bernstein of the Citizenship Project, which organized the Martin Luther King Day of Service on January 19 and was a national planner of the presidents' summit. "They need to be told that they matter and they can make a difference in their community."

The students from Bartram adopted Connell Park across from their school. They plan to spruce it up over the next several months. As part of the volunteer service program's environmental art theme this year, plans are in the works to create aluminum-can mosaics set in concrete to create a border around the park's playground.

Also, murals will be painted on a graffiti-covered building. Yesterday, the building was primed with white paint I preparation for two murals designed by 16-year-old Cynthia Cain. One mural will depict hands holding a globe to symbolize unity; the second will depict a person throwing out pieces of trash marked "violence", "drugs" and "drug-dealing."

"The kids around here don't need to play out here with all this glass in the ground," said Cain, who dreams of one day drawing animated cartoons for Walt Disney, as she glided a roller brush over the building. "We're trying to build it up so it will stay a nice environment."

Christina Jennings, 18, a senior who planted flowers most of the afternoon, took a breather and admired how far the park had come in just a few hours. "It looks good," said Jennings, who plans to study business at Community College of Philadelphia in the fall. "It looks better than it did before. It makes the effort really worth it because the change is right before our eyes."