Editorial: Young people show us the world isn't all bad news
Another school shooting. An on-again-off-again first summit with North Korea. A constantly fishtailing stock market. Arguments in the capitols of the nation and the state.
The bad news is so prevalent these days it can be enough to make you want to put down the paper, shut off the TV, disable your Twitter account and just tune out the world.
But hold on a moment. There is hope.
Hope in the form of people - many of them too young to vote - working to make the world a better place through achievement, problem solving and merely giving of themselves. They give hope that in our dotage there will be good people looking out for our welfare.
In our never-ending quest to bring to you examples to which we can aspire, here is a sampling of the uplifting stories we've brought you in the last few weeks:
• On May 20, Burt Constable wrote about a faith-based program that brings teenagers from underprivileged parts of Chicago to the suburbs in order to expose them to stronger schools and pull them out of unhealthy environments. Five young men from the South Side spent the school year in a big house in Inverness attending Fremd High School as part of the InZone Project. The privately funded project is expected to move to Barrington next year with 15 students.
• On May 10, Marie Wilson wrote about Naperville North High School students Richard Li and Ryan Robbins who both got perfect scores on the ACT and SAT. Ryan also achieved a perfect score on the PSAT last fall.
• On May 17, we published a story about students, parents and teachers at Patton Elementary School in Arlington Heights doing their 11th annual walkathon to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In 11 years, the school has raised $120,000.
• On May 23, Madhu Krishnamurthy wrote about a group of Batavia High School entrepreneurs who won $2,000 for their creative solution to the school's parking problem. Adrian Osborne, Drew Lutzwig, Jake Paoletti and Thomas Prosser figured out a way to reduce overflow parking on side streets near the school by renting unused student spots in back lots when those students were out sick, on college visits, absent or in need of a little extra dough. This project was pitched in conjunction with the schools INCubator Entrepreneurship course.
• On May 10 we published a piece on middle school students in the Mundelein area serving dinner to 230 veterans. This was done under the guise of the Mundelein After School Coalition, which offers outreach services to the community.
See, it's not all bad news out there. Our purpose in publishing these stories is twofold: to congratulate those who've done well and to inspire others to build on the accomplishments.