THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502050038
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COLUMBIA LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
Despite the cold weather, 11 young adults reported to work in khaki uniforms and began their day at 7:30 a.m. with calisthenics in an old school bus garage on the outskirts of this small town in Tyrrell County.
After about 20 minutes of exercise, the group settled into a sparsely furnished classroom for 20 minutes of discussion and a safety briefing by their two supervisors.
The word for the day - ``quality'' - was written in chalk on the blackboard.
Then, four women and seven men loaded power generators and a variety of heavy construction tools onto a camouflaged pickup and drove two miles to the eastern bank of the Scuppernong River, where they spent most of the next eight hours building a wooden boardwalk.
The young people are members of the Tyrrell County Youth Conservation Corps, an updated version of the Depression era's Civilian Conservation Corps.
Their goal is to complete by spring a 2,300-foot boardwalk that will skirt Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. When finished, the boardwalk will serve as an interpretive trail and overlook for tourists who stop at a soon-to-be completed visitor center and the Walter B. Jones Center for the Sounds, an environmental education center planned for Tyrrell County.
In the process of building the walkway, program sponsors hope, the construction team members will have redirected their lives.
``The work ethic of these kids is really strong,'' said Youth Conservation Corps director Joyce Crosthwaite. ``It isn't a problem getting them to work. It's a problem getting them jobs.
``Our goal is to provide them with a future, helping them move toward independence so they're not on public assistance . . . so they're out there working,'' Crosthwaite said. ``We're teaching them to help themselves.''
``And at the same time, we're helping the region with economic development.''
Tyrrell County's program began in September with funding and support from Eckerd Family Youth Alternatives and several local organizations, including Job Training Partnership Act funds through the Albemarle Commission, the Tyrrell
County Community Development Corp., the county commissioners, Columbia town council, U.S. Forest Service and other organizations.
``It's really a team effort,'' Crosthwaite said.
The program has its roots in the Great Depression.
Sixty years ago, the CCC put 3 million young men to work in forestry and public-works jobs across the nation, including projects in Beaufort, Hyde and Tyrrell counties not far from the current conservation corps headquarters.
Today, a growing number of communities and groups are resurrecting and expanding CCC-type programs to teach job skills and work habits to disadvantaged youths.
One of those is the Eckerd Family Youth Alternatives, a non-profit agency in Clearwater, Fla., founded in 1968 by Jack Eckerd and his wife, Ruth, with money from the family drug store chain.
Eckerd Family Youth Alternatives operates 24 programs in seven states along the Eastern Seaboard. The programs serve 1,800 children, youth and young adults every day with a staff that numbers more than 900. Its oldest program is a series of wilderness camps - including several in North Carolina - for troubled 10- to 17-year olds.
Its youth conservation corps are targeted to help young adults - the average age of Tyrrell County corps members is 20. The Tyrrell County program is one of only three Eckerd-sponsored youth conservation corps nationwide and the only Eckerd corps in the state.
Generally, the success rate of such programs is high. In a recent survey of Eckerd program graduates a year after they left, 30 percent were in college full-time, 30 percent held full-time jobs and 30 percent were in college part-time and working part-time, about 5 percent could not be located and another 5 percent had reverted back to old behavior, Crosthwaite said.
``Our primary goal is to help youngsters who have had a bad turn in life . supervisor, a Tyrrell County native and longtime community activist. ``This is the best thing that has happened to Tyrrell County within my lifetime.''
Wearing the same khaki uniform as the younger workers in the program, Basnight paused on a section of boardwalk his work crew had completed a few days before. His conversation was partially drowned out by the sound of a generator whirring nearby and the sound of hammers ringing throughout the forest.
Each week, the work crew members carry nearly a ton of material and equipment to their work site at the end of the boardwalk.
They hoped to add 30 feet onto the boardwalk this week as the project neared a planned river overlook before it loops back inland.
But while most youth conservation programs concentrate on helping the young people who participate, Tyrrell County's program has a second goal: to help bring economic prosperity to one of the state's most distressed counties.
``It's a win-win situation for everyone,'' said Crosthwaite.
With a population of about 3,900 people, Tyrrell County is the least populated county in the state and is regularly listed among those with the highest unemployment rates.
The boardwalk that the corps is building is just one part of a regional eco-tourism project known as the Partnership for the Sounds. Begun about two years ago, the Partnership for the Sounds is designed to help Tyrrell County and a four-county area in eastern North Carolina become an eco-tourism mecca.
Crosthwaite hopes to expand the program next year to neighboring Hyde County, where corps members could help with eco-tourism projects there, and then to other nearby counties.
The program isn't for sissies.
``It's really challenging,'' said Crosthwaite. ``It's very hard, physical labor.''
In Tyrrell County, corps members live at home and spend four days a week on the construction site, mired in mud up to their ankles in the swamp, working for minimum wages.
Besides their work, corps members spend one day a week in classes designed to gain them high school diplomas, admission to college or a job requiring reading, math and computing skills. They are also instructed on community responsibilities and such workplace fundamentals as being on time and dressing appropriately.
Program participants also receive internships - working in the local school system and local businesses in exchange for job experience.
Truants and rule-breakers are disciplined or expelled, depending on the frequency and severity of their transgressions.
After one year with the corps, Crosthwaite and others in the community will help the participants move on to better jobs or enter college.
Despite the rigors of the work, the corps has a backlog of applicants; about 50 people applied for the initial 11 slots.
Addie Marie Ward, 20, one of the corps most recent recruits, has worked with the program just over two months and said the prospect of a year of difficult, muddy work did not dampen her hopes for a better future for herself and her son.
In previous years, Ward had worked as a housekeeper for a small Outer Banks motel.
``I knew it was swampland, and I said to myself that this can't be too bad,'' she said. ``For one thing, I knew I didn't want to be a housekeeper all of my life.''
Among the corps members who have stuck it out the first six months of the program, there are already victories - signs of changed attitudes and directions.
No one knows that better than Tyrrell County native Carolyn Regina Combs.
Combs, 19, graduated from Columbia High School in 1993. She was working as a potato grader in the summer and receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the winter to help support her daughter Andrea when Basnight stopped by to see her last summer.
``I had my mind set on going to college,'' she said. ``But I didn't have enough in me to get up and do it.''
After six months with the corps, Combs said, the program has given her the self-esteem and motivation she needed to go on to college to get a degree in computer programming.
When she is not working on the boardwalk or in the classroom, she is an intern at a local radio station while her mother cares for Andrea.
``It's something that helps you make decisions, something to help you make up your mind,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
Members of the Tyrrell County Youth Conservation Corps put timbers
into place as they build a boardwalk around a wildlife refuge in the
county. In the process of building the walkway, program sponsors
hope, the construction team members will have acquired the drive to
better their lives.
by CNB