YSU students help relieve poverty
YSU students help relieve poverty
I read with dismay the recent Vindicator headline reporting that Youngstown is at a 49 percent poverty level. I am old enough to remember when Youngstown was a booming city, thriving and exciting; and jobs were plentiful and few were starving. I grew up in the age of steel.
I had a difficult time reading that article. However, I believe that there are many citizens of Youngstown who are helping to relieve that poverty level. For instance, the students, teachers and administrators at YSU give me hope in their attempts to solve our community’s problems. Every semester at YSU, I learn more and more about the poverty levels and homelessness in Youngstown from the students that I teach. I also learn that they are willing to help erase that 49 percent.
I am an adjunct teacher in the Communication department. Every semester many students in this discipline work with victims of many kinds. Students in these classes work a group project that asks the students to volunteer in some capacity to help alleviate the problems of the homeless, victims of poverty, children, animals, and even to work for the beautification of Youngstown. YSU students have contributed countless hours of volunteer work. These students are from all walks of life and vary in age. Also, they find time to volunteer while going to school and working menial jobs hoping to ride the ladder of success.
These students select from a variety of community agencies, develop a program, devise solutions, and then each student in a group spends five hours working in the agencies.
This semester, in two communication classes, students organized six groups. One group sorted and labeled food for Second Harvest Food Bank. Another read and interacted with elderly patients in a nursing home. Two groups learned about autism and watched and helped at the Rich Center and suggested ways to educate youngsters and adults about autism. Six students tutored and interacted with students at the Boys and Girls Club of Youngstown. Another group worked with 17 children in a severely poverty stricken neighborhood. This group raised money for these children who are victims of HIV and group members are looking for used computers to help them with their school work.
These are just students in my communication classes. And there are many communication classes at YSU because speech 1545 is a required course. Youngstown citizens need to know that YSU, its administrators, instructors and students are trying to do something to alleviate poverty in Youngstown.
Joanne Scarvell, Hubbard
Making trades for prosperity
Yes, the Marcellas and Utica shale drilling will bring some unfavorable conditions to the Valley. It will also bring much needed jobs to the local economy.
In the hay day of Youngstown, the steel mills were going full blast and black smoke could be seen coming from the stacks. The people had jobs, and I mean good paying jobs, the kind of jobs with which you could buy a house or car on afford the little extras for the family.
Yes, there was a negative side, but there is to just about everything. Look long term to see how this will turn the economy of the Valley around.
Jim Eidel, Boardman