Youth ambassadors help spruce up park fence

By Ronald Bond — Argus Observer
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 11:14 AM PDT

Members of the Academy of Young Ambassadors Lesha Miller (back left), Ana Tovar (front left) and Monteen-Alyse Ebert (right) measure a fence tagged by graffiti at Eastside Kiwanis Park in Ontario Friday. With the help of Snake River Correctional Institution, the group is hoping to cover the fence with one painted with a mural.

Ontario — Several Ontario Middle School youth are doing their part to make a difference.

The youth are members of the Academy of Young Ambassadors — a two-week leadership conference at Albertson College of Idaho — and they’re bringing back what they’ve learned to help the community.

“This is our sixth year for the Academy of Young Ambassadors,” program coordinator Suzie Douglas-Sap said. “We have 57 youth from Ontario Middle School who were selected to attend. (We do) just a lot of different activities to enhance leadership skills.”

The youth plan to use those skills to help solve five different issues around the community: domestic violence; juvenile crime; child abuse and neglect; underage drinking and gangs.

The students divide into groups of about 10 to 12 and each array of youth then tries to tackle one of the problems.

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Each group also teams with a community member to help solve its individual issue.

One group is teaming with Snake River Correctional Institution to work on the gang issue by trying to remove graffiti.

Friday afternoon, a group of Academy of Young Ambassadors came over from ACI to meet at Eastside Kiwanis Park and measure the dimensions of a fence that has consistently been a target for tagging.

The group then ordered the needed supplies to construct a new plywood fence. Eventually the fence will be the home to a mural — partly designed to help curb the graffiti — painted by some SRCI inmates.

“Snake River Correctional Institution has some very talented inmates who wanted to do a mural project,” Douglas-Sap said. “The inmates will do a mural, which they’ll place over the graffiti. It’s a beautification project.”

While the program has been about teaching leadership and the youth are using what they learn to give back to the community, this is the first year students actually set up community action plans.

“They’ve done different things for the community,” Douglas-Sap said. “This is the first time they’ve actually taken a lead on a project and are coming out of the academy with an action plan.”