PTD in the news

When Teen Dynamo Talks, City Listens

By Cristina Silva,
The Boston Globe
October 31,2005

The bickering volleyed back and forth for more than half an hour. Two groups of residents during a recent neighborhood watch meeting in the South End argued that they weren't being listened to. Between the shouting, it was difficult to make out what anyone was saying.

Jewel E. Cash Jr. listened silently. Finally she stood up.

"I'm glad we got that venting off of our chests," she said. Then she urged them to move on. They did.

Cash is someone that people are listening to these days. A speaker to national audiences who sits on a half-dozen committees and community groups in Boston, she has contributed to discussions on education and public safety. In the confrontational universe of Boston's neighborhoods, she is seen as a voice of reason. She is also 16 years old.

A junior at Boston Latin Academy, her calendar includes meetings with Mayor Thomas M. Menino and engagements as a public speaker for groups such as Blacks in Government, Project: Think Different, and Teen Empowerment.

"I see a problem and I say, `How can I make a difference?' " she said. "I was raised not to complain, but to be a part of the solution."

Cash has captured the attention of city councilors who have begun to encounter her at meetings, where she has swayed audiences. At the recent neighborhood meeting in the South End, the group rallied around her proposal to launch a winter jobs program. It was Cash who, on behalf of students, recently persuaded the Boston School Committee to consider forgoing the longtime practice of locking tardy students out of class.

City Councilor Chuck Turner of Roxbury said he often runs into Cash at meetings across the city.

"People are just impressed with the power of her arguments and the sophistication of the argument," he said. "She has a power in and of herself."

Scherazade Daruvalla King, director of Project: Think Different, a youth advocacy group, said the organization has approached Cash about becoming a spokeswoman because of her "ability to empathize."

"She has the innate ability to really connect to the heart of an organization's mission and what they are about," Daruvalla King said.

Menino said simply that Cash is "everywhere."

"You can see when you look at her that she is just one of those young people who is going to be a real positive role model," he said. "She knows her subject.

"Cash was raised by her mother, a single parent, in the South End's Villa Victoria housing project. Before Cash could read, her mother began taking her to conferences and community events across Boston, she said. Her mother would tell her she could either ask a question at the event or write a five-page essay summarizing it.

"Her education started here," said her mother, also named Jewel Cash, pointing below her stomach. "It begins in the womb.

"Mother and daughter are often together. The younger Cash jokingly calls her mother her press secretary.

In the past two years, Cash! has placed first in the Blacks in Government National Oratorical Contest in Washington, D.C.; helped organize Know Thy Neighbor 'hood, a community event sponsored by Team Empowerment that drew 200 South End residents this summer; and was appointed to the mayor's youth council.

She also joined the Boston Student Advisory Council, a citywide body of student leaders that reports to the Boston School Committee. Recently, she was elected by the advisory council to serve as youth representative on the School Committee.

Cash also mentors children in her neighborhood, volunteers at a local woman's shelter, dances in two troupes that she manages, attends weekly lectures at Harvard University, and is one of the core members of a South End neighborhood watch group.

"I can't take on the world, even though I can try," she said. "My goal now is making sure people in my community, young people, have what they need to make a difference for themselves."

Cash wants better education for Boston teenagers and wants her neighborhood to be safer. Despite her heavy involvement in the city, she sees no future in politics.

Instead, she wants to earn degrees in medicine and law. Her dream: opening a community center where she can provide therapy for children and physically injured animals.