By SARAH WEBER

By SARAH WEBER
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- They painted their school bus, packed up their clothes and took off for a trip around the country.
Partridge Family look-alikes?
A new reality TV show?
No.
They're just a couple of kids trying to change the world.
When Nathaniel Elliott, 18, of Edgewater, Md., traveled to Gambia on a mission trip in 2005, he saw the havoc the AIDS epidemic was wreaking on the African continent.
With help from his school and church, Elliott hatched a plan to raise awareness about AIDS by trekking across the country and spreading the word.
He recruited a few companions -- Scott Brookens, 18, of Zeeland, Mich.; Christopher Franklin, 21, of Lothian, Md.; and Derick Henderson, 22 of Gainesville, Fla. -- tricked out his school bus with bunks, couches and a fridge and hit the road.
"We want people of our generation to realize those children are the same as us," Elliott said. "The only difference is we've got more. What we're trying to do is give them more."
Aspirations
The goal for the trip, aside from raising awareness among young people, is to raise $250,000 to build new schools in Zambia, one of the most AIDS-devastated areas in Africa. The group, which calls itself "Living Hope," wants to ease some of the suffering by giving AIDS orphans hope through education. They plan to stop at churches, concerts, schools and youth rallies to talk about the epidemic.
"It's not only the people suffering," Henderson said. "We want to respond to the apathy among our peers. We want to inspire our peers to get involved. We kind of get in our bubble and we forget to look outside ourselves."
"Living Hope" made a stop Tuesday evening at the West Side Baptist Church on Matta Avenue to speak with local youths. They are three days into their 8,000-mile trip that will take them from Washington, D.C., to the West Coast.
Bonnie Stone of Austintown who organized the stop in Youngstown said she is positive about the group's ability to succeed.
"If they have 250,000 people give them one dollar, that's really not that much," Stone said. "Especially if you're traveling across the country."
The trip
While the group is on a mission, a road trip is still a road trip. Some of the group members are toting tokens from their girlfriends, and Elliott brought along his stuffed husky, but they said that leaving their family and friends for a few months wasn't as hard on them as the people they left behind.
What was a momentary problem when they launched the trip was eating.
"We realized that we didn't have enough food," Henderson said. "So we started asking people, and now we have tons of stuff, mostly dessert kinds of food."
Henderson said that to keep trim, they try to get some exercise on their pit stops, which they take to shower and use the bathroom. To get some shut-eye, they've been parking the bus wherever they can along the side of the road or in parking lots.
"I never liked the idea of road trips," Elliott, who is used to taking long trips on a plane, said. "But, I was really excited about this."
For more information about donating to help "Living Hope" fund their trip or to build the schools in Zambia visit www.LHBUSTRIP.com.
sweber@vindy.com