'Outreach' from NYC to Phila.

Some people just talk about helping others. But some actually take the time to do it. College freshman Maya Gat has been leading community service groups since high school, and since November, she has been running the Youth Grant Program, which awards funding to youth groups that want to help the Philadelphia community and engages in community service projects itself. The program, an offshoot of the High School Partnership Program, is merely Gat's latest effort in community service, having already founded and managed a tutoring program while in high school. Before she came to Penn, Gat got in touch with Jon Amsterdam, program manager for the Partnership Program, run through the University's Center for Greater Philadelphia. Amsterdam informed her of the Partnership Program's work in bringing together urban and suburban kids from the greater Philadelphia area. The Youth Grant Program consists of an 11-member board of high school students from all over the Philadelphia area. Gat describes the members as coming from "all different walks of life." Each year, the board is given a $5,000 grant from the state, which the members allocate to the groups they choose to support. Gat explained that the program's four target areas are "beautification of the environment, drugs and crime, sex education and illiteracy." Amsterdam praised what he described as Gat's "entrepreneurial spirit," as well as her openness "to shouldering responsibilities," saying that Gat has led the board "to crystallize a fairly comprehensive outreach strategy." As part of that strategy, the group is helping to create a mural for the Martin Luther King Day of Service project. Their work will be unveiled in January as part of a seven-piece mural celebrating community service. Three years ago, while still a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Gat founded a tutoring program to aid children from "at-risk families." She defined such families as existing "at that sociological line, bordering on [the problems of] poverty, drugs and crime." The group -- consisting of high school students -- tutored eighth through 12th graders in Spanish Harlem, an area Gat delicately described as not "the type of neighborhood you want to stroll through." She explained that a lot of the students she tutored were "fall[ing] through the cracks" in "poor schools" which were unequipped to handle the needs of students for whom simply "surviving day by day was a priority." Playing the role of "tutor, mentor and peer," on Saturday mornings proved difficult at times, Gat said. She sometimes encountered problems in wielding authority over those students who were older than her, but said she quickly learned how to handle any resistance. "I had a speech," Gat said with a grin, "which was usually very effective." The "speech" consisted of one question: "What are you doing here at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning if you don't want to work?" The enthusiasm Gat feels for her work seems to act as a catalyst. Amsterdam noted that it was "quite evident? that she draws energy from her activities with younger folks and inspires them."