Calling all youth: Serve and be heard

Young people make impressive contributions to their communities. For the past 16 years, these contributions have been recognized on National Youth Service Day.

The 17th annual youth service day, which has expanded to a three-day weekend event, is set for April 15-17, 2005, when millions of young people will mobilize to address the needs of their communities and educate the public about the year-round contributions youngsters make as community leaders. Youth Service America, which organizes the event, has three goals: Getting young people started on a path of service and civic engagement, mobilizing youth to identify and address the needs of their communities, and recruiting a new generation of volunteers.

Activities in the past have included a project designed to help disabled elementary school students, a 5K run to raise funds for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, and voter registration drives.

Youth in over 100 countries will celebrate the sixth annual Global Youth Service Day in tandem with the U.S. event. The AFT is among the nearly 100 partner organizations that participate in National Youth Service Day. For more information, visit www.ysa.org/nysd/.

Young readers don’t break the newspaper habit as years go by

The results are in: Young adults who use newspapers in school are more likely to become lifelong newspaper readers.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) Foundation, which conducted the first study of its 50-year-old Newspapers in Education program, has found that 62 percent of the young adults who had a class where newspapers were distributed and used as part of the curriculum read a weekday newspaper regularly. Only 38 percent of those who were not exposed to newspapers in school say they are regular newspaper readers today.

The study of 1,500 adults, ages 18-34, “proves that when newspapers are an integral part of the education process, there is a lifelong impact in encouraging readership and literacy,” says Margaret Vassilikos, senior vice president of the foundation.

The study, “Growing Lifelong Readers,” is part of the NAA Foundation’s efforts to document how using newspapers in school can foster literacy and readership in children as well as help them to develop lifelong reading habits. Americans who participated in the Newspapers in Education program as students are more interested in government and politics, and are more likely to vote, according to the study.

Nearly 105,000 schools and 380,000 teachers currently participate in the Newspapers in Education program.

For more findings of the “Growing Lifelong Readers” study, visit www.naa.org. (Enter the code 6432 in the address bar in the lower right-hand corner of the home page.)

Disparities in access to Internet persist

Not surprisingly, a child’s access to the Internet often depends on the income and education level of the child’s parents. New data released by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicate that children ages 8-18 with less-educated parents or who attend school in lower-income communities are significantly less likely than other children to use the Internet in a typical day or to have Internet access at home.

The Kaiser issue brief, “Children, the Digital Divide and Federal Policy” includes new research findings and reviews the latest information on wiring the nation’s schools and libraries, including points of access, the speed of connection and what activities children engage in online. It also examines current federal policies and policy ideas that might help narrow the new digital divide.

Among the report’s key findings:

• In 2004, about 80 percent of white children age 8 and older have Internet access at home, compared to 61 percent of African-American children in this age group. Similarly, 82 percent of children whose parents have a college education have home access to the Internet, compared to 68 percent for children whose parents have a high school education or less.
• Only 8 percent of children ages 6 months to 6 years old from families with incomes of at least $75,000 a year did not have a home computer compared to 40 percent of children from homes with annual incomes between $20,000 and $29,000, and more than half (55 percent) of those from families with incomes under $20,000 a year.

The issue brief and survey snapshot are available at www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia091604pkg.cfm.