Young voices emerge

Tim Penberthy, 17, is a skateboarder, a Yuba City High School student, and now, a community activist.

Through his role as a committee member for the Youth Development Community Action Coalition, he says, he has become outspoken about what he feels is a woeful lack of resources for the area's young people.

Over the course of six months, Penberthy and about 100 other youth participants — kids ages 10 to 18 from communities throughout Yuba-Sutter — helped collect survey data about what needs are or are not being met for young people in the Mid-Valley.

Sierra Health Foundation funded the study through Friday Night Live, and has held out more than $600,000 in potential seed money, should viable improvement plans result from their work.

Each of 11 coalition groups from Camptonville, Wheatland, Sutter and Live Oak, as well as from the more populated communities in the Mid-Valley, came together for two town hall-style meetings last week at the Allyn Scott Youth and Community Center in Marysville and in a community room at Yuba-Sutter Mall in Yuba City.

Participating youth and their groups' adult supervisors and mentors helped present their findings to a total of about 60 area residents who attended the meetings.

Penberthy served on the Substance Abuse Steering Coalition, which met each week at Sutter-Yuba Mental Health Services in Yuba City.

His work in surveying area residents, he says, taught him a great deal about his community.

"There are more health resources than I was aware of," he says. He had not been aware of youth discounts at the Cinemark movie theater in Yuba City, or the free bowling passes Nu Generation bowling lanes offers kindergarten through eighth-grade kids during the summer.

But transportation is a big problem for young people throughout much of Yuba-Sutter.

Penberthy says he has had his own challenges getting around.

His home off Highway 99 near Oswald Road is a 21⁄2-mile walk from the nearest Yuba-Sutter Transit bus stop on Bogue Road.

"And there are so many pot holes, you can't skate to get there," he says.

Cost, too, is a problem.

Several parents, grandparents and other adults present at Thursday's town hall meeting expressed their disgust over the costs involved in putting kids in organized sports, or in simply taking them to Gauche Aquatic Park.

"The economy affects what people can afford," said Judy Werdahl, 62, of Olivehurst.

And kids, she said, "need things to keep them off the street and out of the house — someplace safe and lighted and supervised."

A small group of adults, including Tony Blackwell, former sports director of Friday Night Live and a Yuba City City Council candidate last November, is making a push to bring the Boys & Girls Clubs of America into the Mid-Valley.

"We've got 13,000 kids here (in grades 7-12), and they don't have nothing," Blackwell says.

A lack of local exposure to — and information about — Boys and Girls Clubs, he says have made efforts to develop a chapter here difficult in the past.

He says he hopes the Sierra Health Foundation's grant money and resulting public discussion about a lack of youth resources might finally help spark momentum.

"Once they know what it is," he says of the organization, "it's on."

The next step for the youth coalition participants will be to assess feedback from community members, and design a plan for improvements.

That plan, according to FNL's Carmen Smith, who coordinated most of the project, must assess the cost for each proposed improvement, and work within financial parameters set by Sierra Health Foundation.

Should those proposals meet approval by governing councils in the communities involved, they will be submitted back to Sierra Health Foundation to await funding.

Meanwhile, says Penberthy, the area's lack of activities, mentors, and transportation is having a seriously negative effect on young people.

"If there's nothing for kids to do, what I think is they're going to experiment with drugs and alcohol," he says.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com