Hoosiers react to Laura Bush's call to help young people

INDIANAPOLIS -- President Bush's three-year initiative, Helping America's Youth, is underway and the first lady's visit Tuesday to Indianapolis has sparked increased dedication and hope for community members serving at-risk youth across the nation.\nBilled as the first HAY regional conference, an offshoot of President Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address and the 2005 White House Helping America's Youth Conference, hundreds of social service representatives and other caring adults convened at the IUPUI campus to address such topics as the impact of caring adults in families, schools and communities, with a particular focus on increased risk factors for boys.\n"Young people want us in their lives, and they need us in their lives," first lady Laura Bush told the crowd. "And as I've learned from the remarkable men and women I've met across our country, each of us has the power to help America's youth."\nGood news from the American youth front includes today's teens are thriving: they are less likely to drink, smoke and do drugs, get pregnant, commit a violent crime or drop out of school, compared to their parents' generation, according to a "Parents -- The Anti-Drug" pamphlet distributed at the conference. Young Americans are also more likely to volunteer, explore their spirituality and demonstrate tolerant viewpoints for diverse ethnicities, religions and socio-economic backgrounds.\nBad news and real risks for American youth include suburban alcohol and drug use rates overtaking urban youth rates and an estimated 30 out of 100 young people who have admitted to riding with a drunk driver at least once in the last month.\nParents are often considered the first line of defense in leaving no American child behind in the global marketplace, but an American divorce rate of about 50 percent coupled with the reality of "unwanted" children born everyday and other socio-economic constraints affecting child care often results in a recipe for future delinquency and violence for many young Americans. \nIndianapolis resident Wanda Riesz, director of grant writing and resource development for Indianapolis Public Schools, said her school district has diversified its traditional teaching to include 60 alternative schools and programs to combat increasing young disenchantment and disillusionment with school days once filled with overpopulated classrooms, lack of individualized instruction and too few adult mentors and role models for students to choose from.\n"Indianapolis Public Schools has a very high percentage of poverty coupled with at-risk youth," Riesz said in between bites of a catered conference lunch. "We want to focus on the community input to make a difference in these children's lives in all aspects of their life: in their health, well-being, fitness, in nonviolent ways to resolve problems and in staying out of gangs. All of those things coupled together will help them have more academic success, too."\nAbout 12 million out of the 73 million America children under the age of 18 live in an environment of poverty, according to the HAY initative, including 7 out of 100 that live in severe poverty. About 2.5 million children living in rural areas are considered "poor."\nPublic schools are often considered the community forum to address youth issues and clean up the community mess, frequently created by youth delinquency and violence regardless of the young person's positive or negative environment at home.\nOhio resident Connie Cameron, a program director and nurse therapist from the Family Care Center in Toledo, said she attended the HAY conference because she is the director for several federal grants and programs that deal with teen pregnancy prevention, mental health issues and other school success ideas. She said she was "impressed" by the first lady's speech and she was "excited" Bush chose to host the first regional HAY conference in Indianapolis.\n"I think this is a wonderful initiative, and the fact that the first lady came helps support the fact I believe there is going to be some (financial) support to it also. Hopefully it will make a difference," Cameron said. "One of the biggest challenges in Toledo, and I'm sure it is in a lot of the urban areas, is poverty and children that are growing up in poverty and single-parent families with few resources. What we are committed to do is help those youth find the resources they need to be successful in life."\nOther early risk factors that might lead to child delinquency and later violent juvenile offending include, but are not limited to, early anti-social behavior, poor cognitive development, low intelligence, misguided parenting skills, family violence, divorce, parental psychopathology, teenage parenthood, family structure, association with deviant peers, peer rejection, failure to bond to school, poor academic performance and low academic aspirations, disorganized and disadvantaged neighborhoods, concentration of delinquent peer groups and access to weapons, according to a "Child Delinquency" bulletin distributed at the conference.\nCameron said her experience working with troubled and at-risk youth has demonstrated to her that all children will contribute to society in beneficial ways, if only community members continue their willingness to reach out and help young people succeed instead of continuing the cycle of blame for their failures.\n"There are no bad children," she said. "They may have some difficult behaviors, but there are no bad children. There is hope for everybody"