Youth Peace Mission Heads Down Under

Like many young people, 12-year-old Jonathan Brestoff, a student at A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas, (expresses a keen interest in world peace. But instead of just talking about tolerance among nations, Jonathan, along with 10,500 other young activists nationally, is taking advantage of his summer break to travel to a foreign country to promote the concept.

A member of the Washington-based People to People Student Ambassador Program, Jonathan has joined about 40 other Southern California 12-year-olds this week on a tour of Australia, where among other activities, they will visit an aboriginal cultural center and live with a host family in New South Wales.

“We’re representing the United States to another country and explaining what our country is about,” Jonathan said. “I hope we can teach other countries that we’re not a threat . . . I also want to give a piece of our culture to them and learn about theirs.”

The People to People program was conceived in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to promote world peace and international understanding through direct contact between private citizens.

Since 1963, thousands of students and their teacher chaperons have traveled to Africa, Europe, the South Pacific, Russia and other distant lands to learn about the economic, cultural and political policies influencing the world community.

“We send such strong kids abroad,” said Alan Gaddis, People to People’s regional director. “They’re very prepared for where they’re going. We want them to realize they don’t have to be afraid of other people in the world. We’re all the same.”

Jonathan and the 11 other students from the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys who qualified for the program attended a series of training sessions in which they learned about Australia and were taught ambassadorial skills.

“I hope to meet a lot of new people I can stay in contact with,” Jonathan said. “And I hope we get more world peace out of this trip too.”

KUDOS

U.N. Winner: Tara Fitzgerald, 18, a recent graduate of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, traveled recently to New York, where she accepted $750 and a certificate of merit for placing second in the United Nations 1998 National High School Essay Contest. Her winning essay about protecting children’s rights was based on this year’s theme, “The United Nations and Human Rights.”

Fitzgerald, a Van Nuys resident bound this fall for UC Berkeley, and the two other contest winners, were selected from among 7,500 high school essayists nationwide. The three attended the annual Model United Nations summit, at which Fitzgerald sat in on a U.N. Security Council meeting.

On Board: Gov. Pete Wilson has reappointed Pierce College’s Patricia Siever to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges, where she will serve a two-year term. She was first appointed to the board in 1997 to fill a one-year vacancy.

The Pierce history professor received the Excellence Award from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development in 1994, and has received the Outstanding Black Educator Award from the Black Assn. of California Community Colleges.

While Siever says she enjoys her administrative role, her greatest fulfillment, she says, comes from teaching.

Class Notes appears every Wednesday. Send news about schools to the Valley Edition, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax the information to (818) 772-3338 or e-mail to diane.wedner@latimes.com.