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Youth Service Day draws a crowd
The annual event attracts millions of young volunteers throughout the world.
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — If you’re out at Cascade Park today, you might notice a group of young people on cleanup duty.
They’re from the cosmetology program at the Lawrence County Career and Technical Center — and they’re just a few of many young volunteers in the western Pennsylvania region who are participating in Global Youth Service Day.
That worldwide event, in its 20th year, attracts millions into community service for one weekend in April.
It began Friday morning here with rain threatening overhead but holding off.
Some of the 15 kids gathered at the Arby’s on Wilmington Road near New Castle were wet anyway as cars — finally, some serious customers — were starting to pull in for a wash.
A potential customer asked, “How much?” Whatever you want to donate, he was told.
It was almost an hour into the carwash, which started at 10:30 a.m., and Shelby Bell, 16, of Harbor Street in New Castle, was still pretty dry.
But then, she was the one holding the hose. She pronounced the car wash “actually fun.”
These kids, some holding signs and calling out into the traffic on Wilmington and some manning the buckets and hoses, weren’t the usual group raising money for a trip or a drill team.
With the invitation of the Lawrence County Community Action Partnership, they’d gathered for weeks at the agency’s Grant Street offices to talk about what they would do to celebrate GYSD.
Friday’s carwash, the group decided, could benefit the Lawrence County YMCA’s fund that sponsors free memberships to kids who can’t afford one.
In that way, they believed, they could address issues that most concerned them — including kids at risk from alcohol and drugs.
Putting a Y membership in a kid’s hand, they figured, would give him a place to go where he could be influenced for the better, said Angie Mohr, who works with youth programs for the county partnership.
Of the many kids and young adults from five to 25 out this weekend, said Mohr, whose agency coordinated GYSD around here, this group of 15 deserved recognition.
It helped mobilize other groups into doing service projects, she said.
Its members came from throughout the community — well-represented was New Castle High School, said Mohr. Also in their numbers were kids and young adults from Slippery Rock University, Westminster College, the Lawrence County Career and Technical Center, Butler County Community College and interns from the partnership itself.
They worked to get others involved at their schools, and they made a lot of phone calls, Mohr said.
For their service, they were honored before the carwash with a breakfast at the partnership building. It included speeches from local dignitaries. County commissioners Steve Craig, Rick DeBlasio and Chief Clerk and County Administrator Jim Gagliano participated.
After breakfast, the volunteers went to work.
For some of them, the carwash would not be their only project this weekend.
Bree Smith, 17, a career center student who lives in New Castle, was also planning to help with a litter pickup in the city and the cleanup at Cascade Park. She was going to spend time answering vocabulary questions on freerice.org, which donates rice around the world for every question answered right.
The county partnership wanted to beat last year’s GYSD participation of 1,000 kids in the region.
It did and then some, with more than 2,631 volunteers out this weekend.