Lancaster Education Foundation

Our Youth, an ethnically and culturally cosmopolitan sample, report that Lancaster offers them few opportunities for engagement, personal enrichment, or even suitable entertainment. This problem is twofold: it is the community-wide feeling of age discrimination that city youth experience, and perhaps in part because of that discrimination, this pro... blem is also a deficit of good community-based extra-curricular opportunities for young adults. Both aspects are detrimental, and they feed off of each other as well. From a young person's perspective, the discrimination looks like a sign on a pharmacy storefront window reading: "Only two students permitted at a time, and no backpacks," meaning that under most circumstances, youths are a threat, for theft or worse. McCaskey High School senior and lifetime Lancaster resident Stephen Maldonado notes that even though he shops at the pharmacy near his house a few times a week and has done this for years, he still is required to leave his backpack by the door when he shops as though he might steal something. Even though he knows all of the clerks by name, he expects their eyes to follow him as goes about his business. "It doesn't feel good to know that for no reason some people just dont trust me. I know someone might have done something to ruin it, but that wasn't me," Maldonado says. To the disconnected youth of Lancaster, the deficit looks like a city of opportunities for everyone but them. Everything good to do in the city has age-specific barriers to entry or simply won't allow them access at all. They report that they have a choice between the mall and the movie theatre, and that is the extent of it. On the topic of building a professional resume, they think that in order to do that, one waits until they leave Lancaster and go to college to even begin. I know there are supposed to be opportunities in Lancaster, but for me they are difficult to find. "I've been looking hard for things to do to get a career started, but I don't know very much of what's available. ...Read More