Young People

This summer Pennsylvania has $27 million from Washington to fund jobs for disadvantaged youth - about $6 million less than last year. Yet the state is making hundreds of these summer jobs more costly by making them part of team- oriented projects. Why? Because the teams are worth it. In too many summer jobs kids just pick up a paycheck. By contrast, teams in the Summer Youth Service Corps get the self-esteem that comes from creating something concrete. These creations include the nature trail in Media's Rose Tree Park - built last summer by a dozen young men whose common traits, at first, seemed limited to loud mouths and run-ins with the law. Then there's the nursery in an erstwhile church rectory in Germantown - rehabbed by disadvantaged young women who took pride in their new skills in the male-dominated field of construction.

Twenty-one-year-old Erik McDaniel was stabbed to death with an ice pick in January, becoming another young corpse that the city's funeral home directors say they'd happily do without. They are spending part of the Memorial Day holiday calling attention to a brisk but painful part of their business: Burying the young victims of violent crime. The public may be under the mistaken impression that "we profit from death . . . and we want to let them know that's not the case," said Janet Powell Dailey, of the Powell Funeral Home in North Philadelphia.

More than one million Pennsylvanians 18 to 29 years old did not vote in the last presidential election - 61 percent of that age group. Which was why Renee Gilinger was on South Street recently asking the jeans-and-T-shirt crowd waiting in line for a heavy-metal concert, "Are you planning to vote?" Gilinger's outreach is part of what is shaping up to be the nation's biggest and most expensive effort ever to get out the youth vote. "It's crazy to ignore this constituency," said Gilinger, Pennsylvania director for the Young Voter Alliance, a coalition of Democratic and Independent groups working to register young people in five swing-vote states, including Pennsylvania.

On Sunday mornings at Old St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, parishioners say, you can see something you wouldn't have seen a few years ago: Baby strollers. Parked in the courtyard. Their presence is a small but telling sign of how Philadelphia's oldest Catholic church is accomplishing a feat that vexes so many others - attracting young members. "It's very important to us," said Louise Cruz-Vizcaino, who has attended Old St. Joe's for 25 years. "You need the longtime members to give support and encouragement, to be the mentors, but you need the young ones to give new blood.

Pen and paper - for some, they're a thing of the past. The Internet is being used at least occasionally by more than 17 million American youths between the ages of 12 and 17, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That's a full 85 percent of people in that age bracket. Young people are using mobile phones and computers for all of their communication and information-gathering needs. The fact that young adults are almost totally in the dark when it comes to traditional forms of ink-and-paper communication appears to be scaring a lot of people (not just newspaper and magazine owners)

Hope is rising from the bloody streets. Community organizations have launched 1994 with a spate of activities aimed at stemming violence among young people. "POW!," an anti-violence musical staged by the Freedom Theatre, will open tonight at William Penn High School in North Philadelphia and run through Jan. 23. The first of four youth meetings on violence will be held tomorrow. The meetings are sponsored by the City Wide Improvement and Planning Agency, a community group based in North Philadelphia.

When Scott Silver was 10, he heard the call of the streets in his East Camden neighborhood. Many of his friends had already answered. "My peers were selling drugs by the time they were 10 years old," Silver said. But Silver said that even at an early age, he knew he didn't want to become a high school dropout or drug dealer or be put in a detention center. At the same time, he heard through the neighborhood grapevine about Urban Promise, which had started a summer youth program.

On a stage outside a North Philadelphia theater where some of the greatest R&B artists once performed, Jay-Z and other members of the hip-hop elite exhorted 10,000 young people yesterday to become part of history by voting for Sen. Barack Obama. A throng of energized young people, many of them Temple University students, gathered in front of the historic Uptown Theater on Broad Street about 1 p.m. to hear rappers Jay-Z and Sean "Diddy" Combs and singer Mary J. Blige urge them to cast ballots for the senator from Illinois.

It would be unwise for anyone, even us, to make predictions for an election this close, with a volatile electorate. Except for this slam-dunk: No matter how low the turnout, the least among them will be the youngest Americans. Their turnout in the last presidential election was abysmal: 31 percent for 18- to 20-year-olds, 33 percent for 21- to 24-year-olds. Which brings us to a college professor's statement during Tuesday's presidential debate: "It seems that when we hear about issues of this campaign, it's usually Medicare or Social Security or prescription drugs . . . I hear a lot of apathy among young people who feel that there are no issues directed to them and they don't plan to vote.

The ideals of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were praised in Bucks County yesterday by area youngsters who danced, sang and spoke about the themes of tolerance and peace. The annual commemoration of the birthday of the slain civil-rights leader was held in a packed auditorium at Bucks County Community College. Titled "I Too Have A Dream," it was an interpretation of Dr. King's life and work by dozens of young people who were not born when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968.