Youth Helping the World
Leyana Dessauer

I asked ten other young people, "What are you doing to help the world over the summer?" Below are their responses.

I am volunteering at the New School. I'm there three hours every week. I help kids out by reading with them, helping with their work, and I help teachers out with things they are doing. Since I'm an alumna I knew what to do and could just start helping.
- Cora Cool-Mihalyi, 13

The New School gives out boxes at the end of the year that reflect what the student has gotten better at and what they love to do. I made one for a girl who loves to dance.
- Anonymous

This summer I'm helping out on an organic farm. I help out by pulling weeds and mowing the lawn with a hand mower. I also help transplant baby vegetables. I will be harvesting too. I like it because it is a small scale organic farm. They don't do factory farming. Factory farming makes a huge amount of stuff, not a little amount. They use a huge amount of pesticides and fertilizers.
- Noah Dessauer, 8

I will be gardening over the summer to help beautify the earth.
- Brianna Gillespie, 13

My new house has a big empty backyard. We're going to plant flowers and bushes. We might plant a baby tree.
- Anonymous

I like feeding stray animals. We once rescued a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. It was a new hatched robin. We looked up how to take care of it online. We kept it for a week, and then we released it because it was getting feathers and trying to jump out of the padded bowl we had it in. It was a girl, and we called it Marley.
- Anonymous

My family is riding our bikes more than we are using our car this summer.
- Carrie Watt, 9

This summer we are going to expand our garden and plant flowers.
- Lucy Purnine, 10

I like working at the Samaritan Center because you get to meet a lot of people and you know you're doing a good thing for the community. I think people should work there more so they don't need as many things as constantly. It is a good thing for the community.
- Alex Sherman-Cross, 15

For my Boy Scouts Troop we collected household items for Vera House. We cleaned up chairs and tables at my church that normally wouldn't be cleaned.
- Julian Berman, 12

September Topic: Back to School. Send submissions by August 8.

Youth Voices is a column for youth ages 6 to 18. Submissions may be essays (200-400 words), poetry (25 lines), or artwork, sent to leyanadessauer@yahoo.com.