What are those kids up to?
    Volunteering, it would appear.
    Monday’s “youth superheroes for service” event (page A9) points up a long and diverse list of organizations served by the youth of our community.

A booklet describing reasons the students have been honored contains numerous statements such as “an inspirational role model,” “demonstrates through her everyday activities her commitment to community,” and “works to involve others.”

Groups that benefit from the service of hundreds of youths in the community include FISH, Soul Cafe, Mt. Hood Town Hall, St. Francis House, Parkdale Fire Department, Gorge Teen Theater Group, The History Museum, Heart of Hospice, FFA, Girl Scouts, CAST, Teen Court, STAND Club for Darfur, Prime Time, Columbia Riverkeeper, Upper Valley Lions, Home At Last, Big Brothers Big Sisters, CLHS OSSOM, HRVHS Inspiration Circle, elderly care centers, Leos Club, and Relay for Life.

Kids are recognized for collecting bottles and redeeming them for money to serve a good cause, for trash pick-up and river clean-up, serving as decoys in tobacco awareness efforts at retailers, raising money for a sick friend, tutoring, counseling at vacation Bible schools, and even rescuing silverware from school trash bins.

The list goes on. And the list of 150 kids honored by the Hood River County Commission on Children and Families is only the start. Many kids went unrecognized Monday. Furthermore, the superheroes’ recognition is just the start of a one-year effort by the Commission and its partners to document what kids do in service to community, including an extensive video of kids doing good works. Lightwave Communications will be a regular presence in the lives of kids throughout the next year.

Maija Yasui of the Commission said one long-range goal is documenting youth acts of service in order to put some kind of specific dollar figure on the value of what young people do in the community.

Speaker Clay Roberts on Monday made the well-reasoned statement that our culture tends to depict teenagers in a negative light, but that most teenagers want to be positive contributors to society.

What stands in the way of that, he argues, is not the kids, but the adults, who often allow unfair perceptions of youths to interfere with engaging them in conversation or actively empowering them.

Make youths real partners in community service, Roberts said. He is right, and he was the first to acknowledge that the “superheroes” recognition demonstrates that this kind of cooperation and understanding exists in healthy measure in Hood River County.

Yet he is also correct in saying that “our age-segregated society robs us of our interactions,” and that peers and the media have become “the most powerful shapers of values” in our youth. The case that institutions such as schools and churches are suspicious of each other is, happily, far less an issue in Hood River County, by virtue of the integration of Faith In Action and other efforts that truly do bring together community organizations, government, and faith groups.

So do you want to take Roberts up on his challenge to engage youth in service to the community? No better opportunity exists than the May 1 “Community Work Day.” Hood River Valley High School students will spend the day working for businesses or individuals, with the day’s $45 wage going to three community groups in need. Turn to page A2 for details about how to get involved.

Meanwhile, congratulations to the 150 youth “superheroes” in our midst. What they do for the community is invaluable, and the vast majority never ask anything beyond “what can I do next?”