Sureya Melkonian/Staff

High school students, teachers and administrators from eight cities gathered at UC Berkeley’s Alumni House last week for a three-day national summit for Y-PLAN, an initiative that invites youth to engage in city planning for struggling neighborhoods.

Participants from high schools in areas ranging from Richmond, Calif., to Tohoku, Japan shared their community projects with each other before working on the redevelopment of Telegraph Avenue. The event culminated in participants presenting their ideas to a panel of judges, including a representative from Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates’ office, UC Berkeley professor emeritus David Stern and Moe’s Bookstore owner Doris Moskowitz.

Deborah McKoy, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Cities and Schools, first created Y-PLAN as part of her dissertation when she completed her doctorate in educational policy at UC Berkeley. Y-PLAN stands for “Youth – Plan, Learn, Act, Now!” and is a five-step program that gives youth the opportunity to collaborate with each other and educators to present ideas for change to city officials.

“I was frustrated because we do so many school reforms that are great for adults but don’t make learning particularly relevant for kids,” McKoy said. “Y-PLAN is really about getting young people at the planning and policymaking table.”

Recent Richmond High School graduates Melissa Avalos and Jose Castillo presented ideas to integrate the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory campus into the Richmond Bay neighborhood as part of their high school senior project. Avalos introduced a farmers market to help diversify the community around the new Berkeley Lab campus, and Castillo worked on ways to make transportation efficient around the campus.

On Friday’s summit meeting, participants used Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue as a case study of an area that could benefit from redevelopment.

After a 45-minute visit to Telegraph and a 15-minute brainstorming session, small groups presented their findings to a panel of judges.

Some ideas that came out from the workshop included replacing the street’s uneven pavement with cobblestones, closing it to traffic during the weekends for festivities and replacing empty storefronts with artwork representative of Berkeley’s history.

Moskowitz said she was excited to see some of the ideas applied to Telegraph, which, in recent years has seen some of its businesses struggle financially.

“If teenagers really cared about this street, it could come back in a minute,” Moskowitz said.

Moskowitz said the ideas were judged not solely on their feasibility but also on the innovation and dedication behind them. All suggestions for Telegraph Avenue redevelopment will be sent to the mayor’s office for consideration.

“We’re incredibly grateful for all of the ideas and the time that the youths have provided to us,” said Sbeydeh Viveros-Banderas, senior aide to the mayor.

Contact Lydia Tuan at ltuan@dailycal.org.

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The Tomodachi Summer 2012 SoftBank Leadership Program, that will take place from July 21 to Aug. 10, is part of the Tomodachi Initiative, a public-private partnership spearheaded by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. The program intends to support Japan’s recovery from the devastation of the 2011 disaster while trying to develop cultural bonds and long-term economic bridges between Japan and the United States.

The program will be run through a collaborative effort by Ayusa — a San Francisco-based nonprofit created to provide educational exchange programs — and the campus’s Center for Cities and Schools, which will administer the academic component of the program.

“The goal of the program is to create effective agents of change to help them return home to rebuild their communities and country,” said David Beiser, the director of Ayusa Grant Programs.

After attending leadership courses in the mornings, the students will partake in a wide range of activities planned by Ayusa such as a community service project at Clark Kerr Campus assembling water purification kits, talks with speakers such as Kristi Yamaguchi and other events like attending an Oakland Athletics game.

Ayusa and the center have partnered over the past five years for similar programs with students who have come to Berkeley from many different countries in the world, according to Susan Hartmann, the program and operations manager at the center.

Hartmann also said the Japanese students would be providing input to the city of Berkeley Downtown Area Plan, which was passed by the Berkeley City Council in March and aims to bring new economic life to that part of the city.

“The students will be working on projects for the mayor and will help provide input to city about the (Downtown Area) plan, housing, economic development, public spaces and energy and sustainability,” Hartmann said. “This program was chosen because it is important to Berkeley and relevant to the area that the students are from.”

Hartmann said the participating students will have class in Wurster Hall and will be instructed by 12 teachers hired specifically for the program who come from all over the world due to their Japanese and English speaking capabilities. The program will be taught mostly in English with Japanese assistance, as most of the students have elementary English skills.

According to a Feb. 28 press release put out by global education and volunteer program-coordinator Intrax, the students will be on campus on full scholarships and the program will be funded by Softbank Corp., a telecommunications company whose Chairman and CEO is Masayoshi Son, a 1980 UC Berkeley graduate in Economics.

The students, all from the Tohoku region of northeast Japan and ranging from ages 15 to 18, will live in campus dorms during their stay. Ayusa is also currently outreaching to campus faculty and staff as well as other interested hosts in Northern California in order to find places for the students to stay for a weekend homestay during the first weekend of August, according to Beiser.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made an appearance at the students’ orientation in Japan this past weekend while she was in the country for diplomatic purposes, according to Beiser.

Beiser said the program’s goal is to instill hope in the students, many of whom came from unstable living conditions and difficulties surrounding life after the natural disasters in Japan.

“One student lost everything — her entire family, parents, grandparents, house — all at 17,” Beiser said. “Some of the students are still living in temporary housing units and in tents.”

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