Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 3, 1993 TAG: 9309030230
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-15 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
"In my opinion, the most esteemed job that a person can get is going into the social service field," said McMillan, a junior at Emory & Henry College. "I can't see me going any other way."
McMillan lives in Pulaski but spent her summer in Newark, N.J., as one of 200 young people chosen from 1,300 applicants for Clinton's Summer of Service program.
"I don't see me being happy unless I'm helping other people. I don't want to sound like I'm getting on a soapbox. It's purely for selfish reasons that I do it, because it makes you feel so good," she said.
While attending Pulaski County High School, she worked in a volunteer literacy program and with special-education children. But she has done more in college, including working with A Leg Up, a program in Abingdon in which handicapped children get to ride specially trained horses on an indoor track.
"You get caught up in the silly . . . things that don't matter," she said of high school. "College really allowed me to have the time and opportunity."
This summer was her best opportunity so far, thanks to Clinton's program. McMillan found herself in an urban environment working with Latino children.
"It was major culture shock for a while, but it was the best experience I've ever gone through," she said. "I was a minority, which was the best experience of my entire life."
They called her "Cowgirl" because she was from the rural South. "But the children, they liked me in spite of it all," she said. "And truly I believe they're brought up to be suspicious."
It helped that Spanish is her major in college. She was able to eavesdrop enough to find out that they really did listen to her teaching of art, and of using fantasy to stimulate their imaginations.
"They're underestimated a lot, but they take a lot in. They're so smart," she said.
After training, McMillan and the other volunteers went on their assignments throughout the country. Newark had the second-largest program with 200 volunteers.
They divided into 20 teams of 10 members each. "It was 10 weeks of working with other people," she said. "It's the kind of friendship I've never had before. . . . They just threw us together and said, `You're a team.' "
McMillan's team worked with children at the La Casa de Don Pedro summer camp in the city's north ward. The camp was started after riots in the 1960s.
"We were considered counselors," she said. "We were allowed to teach classes and teach programs we thought were needed."
Besides being paid minimum wage, each volunteer got $100 worth of seed money to use for something that would remain after they left. McMillan's went toward carpeting for a gymnasium so that karate and self-defense classes could be offered for women. Newark can be a scary place for women, she said.
Other seed money was combined to create a play written by the children. The play was videotaped so the children could tell their experiences to other children. McMillan could have edited and "improved" their script, but chose instead just to help assemble what they had created.
"It wouldn't have been right," she said. "It wouldn't have been theirs."
McMillan found negatives with the program. There was a lot of media coverage of the volunteers in training, she said, but no coverage when they actually went to work. And sometimes their assignments were not well-planned.
A summer camp for inner-city youngsters is not going to say no when asked if it could use 10 more volunteers, she said. But not everyone had something to do immediately, "so we had people who were twiddling their thumbs," she said.
"Half my team quit La Casa. They went out and started their own programs" with the full backing of camp officials, she said.
"Newark is undergoing a renaissance," McMillan said. "There are people who want it to be right again. And they're willing to work to make it so."
She gets upset when people say inner-city people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. "That's a little difficult if you don't have bootstraps," she said.
"We've been shielded from big inner-city problems. But it is a problem because there are children there.
"I can be a little opinionated at times," McMillan said.
During the summer, she got used to a fast and furious environment, people speaking different languages and maybe not always taking time to say thanks. "But now the hard part is getting used to being back here," she said.
"There is something that is waiting for me up north, because I'm needed there."
She has bought stamps and stationery to keep in touch with other team members. "Distance is my worst enemy," she said. "I refuse to lose touch with them."
She hopes some of them can visit Virginia so she can treat them to a Southern dish of biscuits and gravy. "Up there they like bagels."
by CNB