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Until this year, Detroiter Allen Jackson’s summers had been filled with sports. But at sixteen, the eleventh grader decided that this summer, it was time to get a job.
With the city’s unemployment at record highs, Jackson’s chances of finding a job would have been slim if it were not for the Summer Youth Employment Program. Instead of being frustrated and broke this summer, Jackson found himself in the middle of a surprising adventure.
“I thought I’d be assigned to work outside,” Jackson said of the day he signed up for the federally-funded employment program. “I never thought I’d be running a magazine.”
This summer, Jackson and 25 other teens landed at Young Detroiter magazine one of the creative job placements that City Connect Detroit, the program’s administrator.
“We will have placed 7,000 youth in jobs by the time the program ends in March 2010,” said City Connect CEO Geneva Williams. “All work experience is valuable. But in addition to traditional placements with government or non-profit agencies, we were looking for opportunities to expose youth to business, green technology and creative jobs.”
Young Detroiter Magazine was one of those creative work sites. The magazine was started in 2007 by Rosetta LaMar, a 19-year veteran of General Motors who left when the company was downsized.
“It has long been a dream of mine to give back to the youth of Detroit,” said LaMar. “When I saw how negatively the media was depicting Detroit’s kids, I thought I would start a magazine to counteract that image.”
Her magazine—a non-profit supported by advertising, sponsorships, grants and old-fashioned fundraising—is now in all Detroit public high schools, along with schools in Highland Park, Oak Park, Inkster and Southfield. LaMar hopes to one day own a string of youth magazines in various states, with Detroit as the headquarters.
This summer, she agreed to accept 25 randomly young people from SYEP and expose them to journalism. Jackson turned out to be one of the stars.
“Like some of the other kids, Allen had his own personal issues,” said LaMar. “But he chose to step up out of his circumstances and make himself a better person.  He was such a remarkable young man.”
Jackson felt that his experience on the basketball court helped him succeed this summer. “This is a team effort, just like sports,” said the Allen Academy High School student. “But this job also took me out of my shell.  It was my job to make assignments and keep them on a publication schedule. I had to keep everyone on track.”
Jackson had said he wanted to attend Michigan State University to become a dentist before his summer job. Now, he’s also considering a career in business.
LaMar was also impressed by 14-year-old Briana Moore. Unlike Jackson, Moore had journalism in her blood before she worked at Young Detroiter Magazine.
“I love magazines, and after watching reality shows and TMZ, I knew I wanted to work on a magazine,” said Moore, who exudes a maturity beyond her years.
Moore was surprised, however, to find her place on the magazine was not in editorial, but marketing. “I tried marketing because I love to sell things, but having to write press releases also uses my writing skills,” she said. “I liked the idea of having to protect the marketing image of the magazine.”
Moore is entering Martin Luther King, Jr. High School this fall with a newly-kindled passion. “They should make the experience longer,” she said. “I love this job; it’s so exciting.”
“I just talked to Briana and her mom,” said LaMar. “They’re waiting for me to find the funding so that I can hire her back into the program.”
It has been LaMar’s life dream to launch a vehicle to promote the positive experiences of youth in Detroit. So it’s no surprise that in volunteering to train a random sample of teens this summer, Lamar found exactly what she was looking for: plenty of hope and lots of promise.

Believe it or not, electric cars have been around for a very long time. In the early 1900s, there were more electric cars than there were gasoline powered cars. Back in the early 1920s when vehicles were becoming more popular, gasoline was very expensive. It also was hard to start a gasoline engine, you had to turn and turn and turn a crank in front of the car to get it to start. There was no key to start the car like we have today.

Gasoline vehicles were also noisy and put out lots of smoke. The cars either had no mufflers, or the mufflers did not do a good job. So, electric vehicles were a big hit. At one time there were 50,000 of them on the roads and streets of the United States.

But electric cars soon faded away like the horse drawn carriage. New ways to make gasoline cheaply were being discovered. A new invention called an electric starter was made. It started an electric car with a key instead of a crank. A gasoline car could go much farther than an electric one. So, gasoline powered vehicles soon became the main method of transporting people.

Now that there is a push for cleaner green cars, electricity is once again being looked to as a way to help reduce greenhouse gases released into the air by gasoline and electric cars could be one of the answers to this problem.

Electric cars do not burn gasoline in an engine. They use electricity stored on the car in batteries. Sometimes, 12 or 24 batteries, or more, are needed to power the car. Just like a remote controlled, model electric car, electric cars have an electric motor that turns the wheels and a battery to run that motor.

To charge an electric cars batteries, the car is usually plugged in at night. Some electric cars can plug right into a regular electrical wall outlet. Others need a larger outlet, like the kind that a stove or electric clothes dryer plug into. Electricity, is then stored in the batteries of the car.

The batteries can be lead acid batteries, like the batteries you find in our flashlight or in regular gasoline cars. Or they can be ni cad nickel cadmium like the kind that run portable video recorders or a portable video game player only much larger. Better batteries that hold more energy and last longer are being developed. In 2001, by the time todays fifth graders are ready to drive, electric cars should be able to travel 150 to 200 miles before recharging.

Car manufacturers and scientists are constantly coming up with new ways to fuel our vehicles in a cleaner, more environmentally friendly way. The production of the electric car is an exciting one that is being embraced by more and more people every year.