Caring Is Part of This Summer Job : National service: ‘Building Up’ program puts young people into needy communities. Participants get $4.25 an hour and a $1,000 scholarship.

Standing near Figueroa Street and Exposition Boulevard, Jose Jacobo--”Quest” to his friends--looked back at the manicured lawns and graffiti-free buildings of the USC campus.

“This is where we step out into the community,” he said, nodding eastward toward garbage and graffiti, barren lots and closed storefronts. “And we’re going to see a great difference.”

But for Jacobo and his three companions, viewing the urban decay was more than just a reminder of racial and economic injustice. It was an inventory of the area’s opportunities for improvement and a way to earn some money for college this fall.

Jacobo, 22, is one of 150 young people participating in “Building Up: Summer of Service in Los Angeles,” a project organized by a coalition of educational and community-based organizations that is part of President Clinton’s national service program. It is one of two such programs based in Los Angeles this summer.

As part of the 9 1/2-week project, the young adults, ages 18 to 25, will tutor schoolchildren, help health care professionals immunize children, plant gardens at elementary schools and lead crime prevention seminars. They will be paid $4.25 per hour for community service work and be awarded a $1,000 stipend toward college at the end of their service.

The participants got to wet their feet with a two-day orientation last week at USC. They then were sent into the neighborhoods surrounding USC on an observation walk. Their assignment: Identify and take mental notes of things that the community’s residents might want to change and look for resources that could be salvaged and used. And most important, keep to the map provided by the organizers to make sure no one gets lost.

Along with USC and Cal State Los Angeles, three other universities and colleges, 29 community organizations and more than 20 secondary and elementary schools are involved in the project this summer.

Building Up was one of 16 community service projects selected from the 430 proposals submitted in March by agencies and colleges nationwide in response to the Clinton Administration’s call for national service suggestions.

“By the time they’re through, they will have reached 20,000 kids,” said Richard Cone, director of USC’s Joint Educational Project, which is coordinating the university’s participation.

Participants will work a 40-hour week and receive the scholarship at the end of their tenure, Cone said.

They will spend eight hours a week in a leadership training program and the other 32 doing community work.

“I had a choice between coming here and going to summer school,” Jacobo said. “But the more I read about (Building Up), the more interested I got.”

Under the guidance of 20-year-old Grace Ramirez, the team’s leader for the observation walk, Jacobo, Marisela Limon, 18, and Isaac Avila, 20, set off on the two-mile trek armed with a Manila envelope full of instructions and a pragmatic outlook on the summer.

“My dad’s unemployed right now and my mom doesn’t work and I needed money for college,” said Limon, who plans to attend East Los Angeles College in the fall.

But it is not just a summer job, Quest said. For a majority of the young people involved in the project, there is the desire to take the city’s problems into their own hands.

“If we all get together, we can see the problem (and try to) fix it, because putting out more cops and putting more people in jail ain’t going to do it,” Quest said.

For Cone, Building Up is more than just a way for students to earn much-needed college funds. It is an “attempt to break down the Balkanization of Los Angeles,” a way to help many of these young people and the organizations involved get acquainted with people and parts of the city they have never seen.

“We share the same problems, so we should try to use our resources to work together,” Cone said.

Stopping at the entrance to Menlo Avenue Elementary School for a lunch break, the group was joined by Anna Ouroumian, 22, a UCLA senior majoring in economics.

Unable to participate in the walk because of an astronomy final, Ouroumian raced over as soon as she finished, eager to be involved.

“I have never been in this neighborhood,” Ouroumian said. “I want to help because I believe there’s so much potential. All of us come from different backgrounds.”

After the two-day orientation, participants in all 16 of the country’s Summer of Service programs--a total of 1,500 young people--were flown to San Francisco for a five-day “boot camp” experience at the Treasure Island Naval Base. On Monday, Vice President Al Gore addressed the participants, likening the summer service programs to the Peace Corp and other public service programs.

Other projects receiving grants are in Atlanta, Baltimore, Oakland/East Bay, New Orleans, Newark, N.J., New York City, Philadelphia, Delaware, Ohio and Minnesota.

The other local program, “It’s About Health,” is being run primarily by the UCLA School of Nursing. Fifty minority high school and college students have been recruited to conduct medical assessments of at least 1,000 at-risk children at clinics and residences. The information they gather will help the university understand what barriers prevent these children from getting quality health care.

“Only four of the programs are west of the Mississippi,” said Cone, who pointed out that the East Coast bias in the selection of the summer service projects might reflect an attitude that “L.A. can’t work.”

“That’s the kind of feedback we get from our colleagues back east,” Cone said. “And sometimes we think it can’t, but that’s the challenge we must face.”