Powell Urges Mentors for at-Risk Youth

Warning that the multiple crises confronting children have “the potential to explode our society,” retired Gen. Colin L. Powell called on his fellow Americans on Monday to make an extraordinary personal commitment to serve as mentors to at-risk youth.

Together with President Clinton, former presidents, 30 governors and 100 mayors participating in a conference on volunteering, Powell said that as many as 15 million young Americans need mentoring to help them overcome the adversities they face.

“They are at risk of growing up unskilled, unlearned or, even worse, unloved,” Powell said, standing outside Independence Hall, the birthplace of the republic.

“They are at risk of growing up physically or psychologically abused. They are at risk of growing up addicted to the pathologies and the poisons of the street. They are at risk of bringing children into the world before they themselves have grown up. They are at risk of never growing up at all.”

Clinton appointed Powell as general chairman of the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pledged to ensure that promises made during the celebrity-packed event are fulfilled long after the hoopla is over.

“This may be your most important mission and I thank you for reenlisting,” Clinton told Powell. The few thousand delegates from across the nation who were seated on the lawn outside the historic structure rose to their feet in applause.

By encouraging volunteering, the president is trying to promote positive change in American society at a time when the GOP-led Congress and the bipartisan emphasis on balancing the federal budget make it politically difficult, if not impossible, to create new government programs to address the country’s pressing social problems.

“The era of big government may be over, but the era of big challenges for our country is not, and so we need an era of big citizenship,” Clinton said during the morning event.

Despite the president’s rhetoric, many participants argued that he had made the challenge of meeting the needs of disadvantaged young people--particularly those who live in areas of concentrated poverty--even more daunting by signing the GOP-drafted welfare reforms into law last year.

The sweeping measure drastically curtails eligibility for public assistance and analysts estimate that it will push millions of low-income children deeper into poverty.

Powell, who has experience orchestrating successful operations, has made it his own personal crusade to recruit an army of millions of volunteers around the country. He has committed himself to being able to certify by the year 2000 that the 2 million children lacking mentoring, safe places to play and learn, health care, marketable skills and a good education will have those needs met.

Quoting the famous African American poet Langston Hughes, Powell said: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

“For too many young Americans, that dream deferred does sag . . . like a heavy load that’s pushing them down into the ground,” Powell said in response to the poet’s query. “And . . . it does explode--in violence, in youngsters falling dead, shot by other youngsters. It does explode, and it has the potential to explode our society.”

In speech after speech Monday, an unusually impressive assortment of high-profile political leaders from both parties conveyed a sobering message: The kind of volunteering most needed is a time-consuming commitment to building a relationship with a child who lacks adult role models.

California Gov. Pete Wilson said that he mentors a child. He has pledged to enlist 250,000 new mentors in California by the year 2000, and he encouraged other governors to do the same.

“God knows state budgets spend too much trying to fix what’s gone wrong in kids’ lives,” Wilson said. “How much better it is to prevent crime than to punish it.”

Perhaps no one put the challenge more simply or compellingly than former First Lady Nancy Reagan, known during her White House years for her anti-drug slogan “Just Say No.”

Speaking for herself and her husband, ailing former President Ronald Reagan, she implored: “From this day forward, when someone asks you to help a child, just say yes.”

Delegates from Los Angeles said that the officials’ message was a welcome change from the frequent directives that tell children not to smoke or drink or engage in sex--or else.

“It’s not a question of telling them what not to do, it’s a question of taking them by the hand and walking them into a future that seems very uncertain to many of them,” said Father Gregory J. Boyle of Homeboy Industries, an organization of Jesuit priests that works with gang members in Los Angeles.

“We’ve abdicated our responsibility,” he said. “We haven’t accompanied them.”

Boyle believes that all children who do not have consistent contact with caring adults are “at risk,” but his years of working with children in the Aliso Village and Pico Gardens public housing projects have shown him that poor children are particularly vulnerable.

“It’s a sad and tragic irony that precisely when our leaders are accurately articulating the problem of our troubled youths, we have welfare reform, which will only create more economic distress in their lives and chaos in the country,” he said. “You need to catch kids who will be brutalized by the impact of welfare reform.”

Boyle was one of hundreds of delegates from all 50 states who, after the speeches were over, met in small groups to share ideas and plot strategies.

Noemi Soto, 20, a participant in the president’s AmeriCorps national service program who works full-time mentoring young people in South Central Los Angeles, said she knows from experience that the effort is worthwhile.

“I know mentoring makes a difference, especially when there’s consistency,” said Soto, who grew up in the neighborhood where she now works.

“Everybody wants to better themselves. That’s why it works.”

Soto also stressed the difference that volunteers can make.

“I think everybody can contribute,” she said, noting that the adults who supervise after-school activities at Kedren Community Center, where she works, are far outnumbered by kids. “There are plenty of young people who need to be mentored.”

* ANGELENO ACTIVISTS: Some are already answering the call to volunteer. E1