
DATE: Thursday, May 22, 1997                TAG: 9705220481

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NIA NGINA MEEKS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  124 lines

BEACH STUDENTS LEARN THAT YOU'RE NEVER TOO YOUNG TO VOLUNTEER SUMMER VACATION IS A GREAT TIME TO GIVE EXTRA HELP, LOCAL AGENCIES SAY.

Students at Kemps Landing Magnet School recently put aside their physics and Latin textbooks for a different kind of lesson from some different kinds of teachers.

Their instructors represented agencies that help the homeless, and the pupils got the lesson: Anyone can be a volunteer, regardless of age.

The students spent last Friday morning in rapt silence. By the afternoon, they buzzed about applying their new knowledge. They made games, activity books and birthday cards for local shelter residents. They planned food drives. They became volunteers.

``No matter what age you are, it's always something somebody can do,'' 12-year-old David Herzing said.

That's a point volunteer agencies want to stress as the school year draws to a close, and students gain more free time. Opening opportunities for younger volunteers poses a challenge but creates no hurdles that cannot be cleared, students and experts said. For the most part, it just takes ingenuity and re-education.

Plenty of young people want to help save the world, or at least their corner of it. But while volunteerism by college or high school students is encouraged, the efforts of the kindergarten through middle school set more often are stymied.

The major roadblocks include lack of transportation and age cut-offs, VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads director Paula Barclay Cook said. Maturity is another.

``I mean, you can't have a 10-year-old on a suicide crisis line,'' Cook said.

Because of the presidents' summit on volunteerism in Philadelphia, Cook said her organization is redoubling its efforts to persuade agencies to develop more volunteer slots for children.

``Hopefully, we'll have a lot more new ones,'' she added.

Yet, when standard avenues to volunteering are closed, children can forge a new path, Ruth Hayes-Arista said. She is co-founder of Ignite the Community Spirit, a Seattle-based motivational organization. It focuses on getting people involved in volunteerism through national programs.

``What they (children) have to realize is that their imagination and free thinking is one of their best assets of solving a problem,'' Hayes-Arista said. ``Youth may not be aware of how many gifts and talents they have and how powerful they are.''

The students in Positive Alternative Club at Norfolk's Ingleside Elementary School do.

Like many third- through fifth-graders, they like arts-and-crafts activities. So they make puppets and paper toys for patients at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters.

Community service for students at Portsmouth's S.H. Clarke Community Academy manifests in a gardening club. The students donate the dividends of their labor to seniors and people in need.

Hayes-Arista said such activities build empathy in young people. In recent years, social scientists and psychologists have said empathy is an essential building block for character in children - responsible for their ``emotional intelligence.''

Still, not every child uses that vehicle to build that intelligence.

Sometimes, they don't know what the need is, as was the case for many of the Kemps Landing students at Friday's program. Others don't realize that people under 18 also can make a difference. And even after those factors are established, time concerns persist.

``It's not hard to convince them that the cause is good,'' 12-year-old Katherine Farr said. ``It's just that they give an excuse, that they're busy.''

The key, experts said, is to focus on something that already draws an interest - reading, drawing, sports, for example - and figure out how that interest can benefit others.

``You can have a baseball-a-thon, soccer goals for charity (asking people to donate canned food for every goal),'' Hayes-Arista said. ``That can be part of their regular schedule, part of their hobbies or interest. It can become a part of their life.''

Many of the Kemps Landing students at Friday's program already include volunteerism in their lives - re-stocking library shelves, tutoring younger students, cleaning the Bay and so on.

Sharon Bowers just wants to raise their consciousness another notch. She and three other Kemps Landing teachers organized Friday's community outreach day.

``When you talk about what matters for the world, rearing children who feel some responsibility for the world is a really important thing to do,'' Bowers said. ``Unless we instruct them not to be, they'll just take, take, take.''

By Friday's end, 12-year-old Michelle Mallo was ready to give time to Habitat for Humanity. While she's too young to swing a sledgehammer, Michelle wouldn't mind doing some typing or other clerical work.

``I got their number for that,'' she said. ``I was thinking it would be fun to help out with that.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot

Kaitlin Riddle, 12, a student at Kemps Landing Magnet School, works

on a quilt that will be given to a Portsmouth homeless shelter.

A CHILD'S GUIDE TO VOLUNTEERING

So you want to get involved, but you don't know where to start?

Don't ever let your age discourage you. VOLUNTEER Hampton Roads

offers these suggestions for kids under 15:

Decide how much time you have to give.

Pick something within your field of interest or skill.

Determine with whom you would like to work - children, animals,

seniors, etc.