Author: By Richard Higgins, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, February 21, 1999

Page: 1

Section: West Weekly

Teenagers know, perhaps too well, that making money can be hard, but it can also be rewarding. At high schools in Framingham and Concord, students are learning an important corollary: Giving it away responsibly is also hard, but can be even more rewarding.

For three years, seven Framingham High School students have been sifting through actual grant proposals and awarding $10,000 a year to a variety of nonprofit groups. During the last two years, they have been joined by another group from Concord-Carlisle High School.

The two schools have been involved with the Youth and Community Initiative, set up three years ago as a way for young people to learn about philanthropy and community service by doing it. The initiative is sponsored by the Crossroads Community Foundation in Natick and the Greeley Foundation in Concord and is funded by BankBoston and Dolphin Trust.

Last month, the students presented checks totaling $21,000 to eight local programs, including an effort to train teenage guides at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln and a Wayland Middle School program that recruits youths to do community service with the Salvation Army.

Also funded were a teen-operated hot line for suicidal youths based in Framingham, an after-school program in Needham for disabled children that includes students as aides and tutors, a project in which students help design and plant vegetable gardens at a Natick senior center, and a weeklong summer leadership institute to train students from Dover, Sherborn, and other towns in nonviolence and conflict resolution.

"We wanted to get involved in youth volunteerism," said Rebecca Donham, program officer at Crossroads. Instead of making the grants themselves, "We thought, why not turn it into a project that will educate kids about nonprofits and philanthropy while also fostering community service?" The main purpose of Crossroads, founded in 1995, is to enhance philanthropy in the Metrowest region.

Students learned about grantmaking, from the initial request for proposals to the review and evaluation of those proposals.

Almost everyone faces similar tasks, even if only to repond to mailed solicitations for money from one's alma mater or a local YMCA, Donham noted.

"In one sense, everybody has to do this," she said. "What we were asking the students to think about was what the process entails."

She said the students, who had to defend their choices before the Crossroads distribution committee of 11 adults, took the challenge seriously.

"One of the most impressive pieces of this was how well-prepared they were," she said. When questioned by committee members, `they had really thought things through."

Donham's counterpart at the Greeley Foundation, Carolyn King of Concord, agreed.

"They were very passionate about it," King said. "They read all the proposals, noticed lots of small details and picked up stuff in the budget. They were also very sensitive to the question of whether other teens would want to be involved in the projects."

Each team reviewed nine or 10 proposals and voted to fund four.

Tom Walsh of Framingham, 16, a junior at Framingham High, has been in the program for three years. He said he has discovered how large the philanthropic world is.

"If you have the initiative to start a program and it's worthwhile, there are people out there who are willing to help you finance it," he said.

Aside from the power and responsibility that flows from allocating money, Walsh said, he "loved the process" involved in making the grants.

"It's not just you deciding," he said, "but the whole group, so sometimes you have to compromise."

While that can be frustrating, he said, it can also be beneficial. He learned that the first year, when, by his own account, he was bowled over by three projects that he thought were great.

"But then in group discussion," he said, "others pointed out problems, like with the budget or where the money was going, that I couldn't see because I liked them so much. The group helped me to deal with my own bias."

Christi Claussen, 17, a senior at Framingham High taking part for the second year, said it was empowering for her that even the groups the students chose not to fund took their responses seriously.

She said in 1997-98, the students had given one nonprofit group some feedback about a perceived "hole" in its proposal and encouraged the group to apply again this year.

"It was cool how they listened to us," Claussen said, "because they had really changed their proposal to respond to what we were saying."

Another student, Mike Fleischer of Framingham, learned about the power of an advocate. He said he was a "fighter" for the Samaritans Suburban West teenage hot line service because he had heard a lot about suicide among high school students, and about national hot lines, but not about any in which teenagers could talk to other teenagers.

"I thought that was really important and pushed for it," he said, "and intially everybody else opposed it, partly for that reason. But by the end of our discussions, everybody came over to that viewpoint, that training teens to do this would be beneficial, because what they are ultimately doing is saving lives."

Donham said she believed the students grew from facing the challenge of trying to be objective in what is a subjective process.

"They recognized that all of us look at these proposals with our own set of personal preferences," she said, "that they have to ask themselves more than `Do I like this project?' They have to be able to articulate why."

She said the students wrestled with the tension between tangible, direct-service projects and those that are more systemic or consciousness building.

Noah Miller, a student at Concord-Carlisle, said he made a decision to look for both kinds of programs. He called his experience in the youth project eye-opening.

"I learned that there was a lot more to the responding to a solicitation for money than I had realized," he said.

The "hardest part" of the process, he said, was having to compromise to achieve a group consensus.

His favorite part?

"The arguing," he said. Then he added, "I mean the discussions."

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