Kansas City inner-city teens promote green

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Until about a year ago, Jyra Hill never had a green thought in her life.

Hill, who turned 17 recently, admits she regularly threw trash out the car window.

And recycling?

"That was for fools," she said.

The problem was that Hill grew up in a Kansas City core neighborhood where people don't have much time or money to spend on rain gardens and solar panels.

But everything changed a year ago when Hill was invited to attend a new after-school environmental program at DeLaSalle Education Center.

She visited trash and recycling centers, got a chance to monitor water pollution in rivers and lakes, and planted rain gardens and trees. She toured drinking water and wastewater treatment plants.

For the first time, she even went hiking in the woods, although it took persuasion.

"I ain't going in there," she remembers saying, shaking her head. "I've never ever been in the woods. There's bugs and snakes. It's nasty in there."

And now she recycles, talks to her friends about not littering, and works one day a week at the Discovery Center, a state conservation center on Troost Avenue.

The DeLaSalle program, Environmental Connection Opportunities for Students, or ECOS, is sponsored by the not-for-profit Green Works in Kansas City. It offers inner-city students hands-on experience in environmental science.

Kate Corwin, a local businesswoman, said she began Green Works because she thinks many programs don't include inner-city teens.

"We have things like Wild Oats and Whole Foods and farmers markets and people who recycle, and all those kinds of things," Corwin said. "Their neighborhoods have fast food, payday loans and convenience stores. They have a hard time even finding fresh food, let alone organic."

Many houses on the street near where Hill lives are boarded up and painted in graffiti. Instead of grass and shrubs, some yards are full of weeds and trash. Others have enough cans, paper, plastic bottles and other containers stacked up along chain-link fences that they could serve as a mass recycling center.

Mario Ramirez, a quiet 16-year-old, has lived all his life in the Northeast area of Kansas City. The green movement was nothing he thought about.

So it was memorable when Corwin gave Ramirez and his classmates city recycling bins. He's seen the blue bins on curbs, but he had been unclear on the concept, as were his parents when he took one home.

"My parents were like, dang, what is that big bin for?" he said.

A goal of ECOS is to provide internships in green jobs, and Ramirez got one last summer at Habitat ReStore in the East Bottoms. There he unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. But the managers soon took advantage of his Spanish skills and had him translating for Spanish-speaking customers.

Ramirez said one of the most eye-opening tours was to the wastewater treatment plant. He learned where sewage goes and what happens to it.

He just hadn't thought about where the water goes.

"I didn't know that pouring something down the drain ... you're hurting the environment," he said. "You just think it goes away, just like the trash."

Ramirez hopes for another internship at Habitat ReStore. He will graduate from DeLaSalle in 2010, when he hopes to go to a tech school and eventually get a job rebuilding cars.

He now tells his friends not to litter and pollute. Sometimes his advice isn't well received.

"A lot of people don't know there is an alternative way to do things," he said.

Lindsey Ogle, a DeLaSalle spokeswoman, said the school works at "shifting their perceptions of the world."

Corwin holds degrees in finance, computer science and economics. She left a strategic planning position at Sprint in 1997 to launch a furniture manufacturing company.

After she sold the business, she established Green Works in 2006. She now has the time to show students why the earth should be important to them.

"I saw a growing disparity that we were not involving a lot of people I thought we should involve" in the green movement, Corwin said.

For example, Corwin said, Kansas City's rain garden program "is not designed around the reality of these kids' lives."

Most of their families don't own property and don't have $500 or $600 to buy plants. They also would have a hard time carrying a flat of plants on the city bus.

Even the rain garden video that advertises the city's program shows only "blond-headed kids."

Corwin thinks the city also should have programs affecting families in their daily lives, such as teaching them not to pour motor oil down storm drains.

Colleen Doctorian, at Kansas City Water Services, said the city provides reams of information to those interested in the environment. The city also has held hundreds of meetings discussing sewer issues.

Jyra Hill's mother, Elena Hill, said she's seen the change in her daughter. Jyra Hill had always been a "neat freak" about her bedroom, but now she's applying it to the world.

Hill even did some composting at her grandmother's home.

She used to hate plants.

"I wouldn't touch a plant. I thought everything was poison ivy," she said.

Now she would like to garden with her grandmother, but because roaming dogs are so prevalent, her grandmother is afraid to be in the yard and wants to wait until she can put up a fence, Hill said.

Hill, who plans to be a psychologist, will attend Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley in the fall.

DeLaSalle employees were especially supportive after her brother was fatally shot at a large party last summer.

"We're going to plant a tree for him this spring," Hill said.