Next On Q. What if teenagers ran the government?

That's the idea behind a statewide program that allows teens to take over Harrisburg for a weekend while they learn about lawmaking.

We'll show you how they did.

We'll also take a loo at two very different approaches to reaching young people through a children's ministry in Allison Park.

And in a boxing ring in Brooklyn.

And if you still have your tree up, instead of just tossing it out on the curb, see why one group would like you to recycle your Christmas tree.

It's all coming up next On Q. Welcome to On Q magazine.

I'm Stacy Smith.

We all remember our high school civics classes and those endless lectures on how government works.

But one innovative program takes hundreds of teenagers from around Pennsylvania to the state capitol.

And our sister program, Teens On Q, followed these teenagers for one intense weekend as they took over Harrisburg and got a hands on lesson in lawmaking.

I do solemnly swear I support, obey, and defend.

These teen are taking the capitol by storm, throwing away their civics books and assuming the roles of Pennsylvania's lawmakers.

Welcome to the 2006 Model Legislature.

I'm speaker of the gold House.

Chief of staff.

Assistant to the governor.

I'm the lieutenant governor.

The students of the YMCA Youth in Government program have the chance to write bills, debate them, and have a hands on civics lesson with their peers.

Is the teachers about or dislike some students?

When you're in service class, your teachers try to explai like how a bill becomes a law.

It's kind of boring.

You get to actually act it out in this program.

What role will you choose to play?

Youth and government brings together kids from all over the state to come to Harrisburg and learn about the inner workings of state government.

So we have legislature.

We have a Supreme Court.

We have a press corps.

We have a governor.

The governor has a staff, and we even have lobbyists.

Teenagers are always looking for that way to be represented.

And here you are.

This isn't real bills, but I mean, you can share your opinions and you can tell people what you think and they can be taken off the treatment.

It's completely reversible.

It's a forum for kid to talk about things that adults say that we shouldn't necessarily talk about.

And we can kind of prepare and be ready to be adults.

You're about to be covered.

For a part of this weekend tha you've been working with people that make our laws and our life how it is every day, and to be able to work besid them is an amazing opportunity.

You'd be surprised at how much you can learn in one weekend.

You're not just talking about what you might do.

You're doing that.

And these teens are doing everything.

The bills being presented this weekend are not real bills, however.

Teens wrote these bills to represent issues that are important to them.

300 bills will be reviewed over the next three days.

Some will die fast.

Some will pass through the Senate and the House, but only a select few will mak it to the desk of the governor, where he will sign the bills into laws, Congragulations what I think is really important for people is you need to understand, like, how hard it is to actually get a legislation passed.

First, the delegates write their own bills and then those bills are placed into a committee.

All for this bill.

Please stand.

I'm a committee chair.

I pretty much go over the bills before they enter the House and Senate to make sure that they pass committee, and then those bills are presented and debated in the Senate chambers and in the House of Representatives.

If it passes both chambers, it's then forwarded on to the governor, who will decide whether or no that will be signed or vetoed.

They simply write to me but they said, she just told me it is amended.

It's really exciting becaus like, I'm where it all starts.

It can pass everywhere, but I can like no.

Okay, okay.

So let's get that actually Bill Clinton.

But you don't want to let that power get to your head because you're not a leader of the people, your leader for yourself.

I heard.

Teens attending this conference were assigned their jobs, and they work year round in preparation for this one weekend event.

How would you keep college students and youn professionals in Pennsylvania?

I'm the editor in chief of the press corps.

We have to put together three papers.

One Friday, one Saturday and Sunday.

It gets very hectic.

Luckily, our reporters ar very talented and very skilled.

It's not like a school project where you just do it to get the grade.

You're here because you're interested in what you're doing and you like it and you love it, and you learn as you're going along.

I'm working really har and enjoying every minute of it.

We are teaching state government.

We are teaching civics.

But what we're really teaching is interpersonal skills.

I lear not only a lot about politics, but a lot about interaction with other people, interpersonal relationships, skills, and leadership style.

Really learned leadership, teamwork, cooperation, speaking and how to communicate with others more proudly and more efficiently.

The only way you can do it is if you convince everybody.

This is a place that I can express my experiences, and I discovered my freshma year that I'm really good at it.

Can you check on both?

People listen to me and they value my opinion, and I can value theirs.

And we can respect each other.

So there's an individual out there, and they want to be involved in youth and government.

The first thing they're going to want to do is find a caring adult role model who might sponsor that club.

You begin to recruit your friends and students in your school, students at your YMCA, students in your community, and you form that club.

And once that club is formed, then the students take over from there and begin to run their own affairs.

The weekend holds lots of lessons, even for those teens who aren't interested in a career in government.

Looking out for the best interests of the children.

You don't have to go int government to be part of youth and government.

It can help anybody.

You live in a country that is the greatest democracy in the world, and you have the privilege that a lot of peopl don't have to speak your voice.

It feels like when you're no the eligible age to vote, people don't usually listen to what you have to say because they like oh, she can't make a difference.

It feels like you're actually doing something useful.

And I think a lot of other teams get involved in that.

And for more information about the YMCA Youth and Government program, you ca visit our website wqed.org/on Q and for more stories that matter to you and your teenagers, be sure to watch our sister show, teens On Q Sunday Nights at 7:30 right here on WQED TV 13.

Now, still to come, a local pastor who runs the largest children's ministry in the Pittsburgh region.

You'l will hear his inspiring story.

And we'll also take you to the Pittsburgh Boxing Club and show you why it's better to recycle your Christmas tree rather than just toss it out to the curb.

It's all still to come, so stay connected.

You.

You're watching On Q magazine because these foundations care enough about local programing to help pay for it.

The Howard Heinz Endowment, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the McCune Foundation.

The Pittsburgh Foundation, the Grable Foundation, the Eden Hall Foundation.

Corporate funding for On Q is provided by Highmark.

Can you picture a world where healthy habits start young and never grow old?

We're taking steps to make it happen through Highmark Healthy High five, a program that target five critical areas in promoting lifelong healthy habits in children at home, at school, and in the community.

Creating a brighter future for us all.

To learn more, visit Highmarkhealthyhigh5.org.

And we couldn't do it without you.

The members of WQED.

If it's happening to teens today, it's happening at teens On Q. Lear how to navigate peer pressure.

Find out the latest health and safety news and see cutting edge school programs that could help you.

Plus, every episode of Teens On Q takes teens behind the scenes to explore the hottest jobs for jumpstart on smart career planning.

Teens On Q is the right resource to hel teens make it in the real world.

Teens On Q. Sunday nights at 7:30 right here on WQED.

It is always inspiring to read or see a story focused on someone who is overcoming adversity.

Jim Car Callahan is one of those people, and today he leads one of the region' largest children's ministries.

But the outlook for Pastor Carl as he is known to the children that he ministers to, was not always so bright.

On Q, contributor Susie Meister met with Pastor Carl recently to find out how he overcame a physical disabilit and a painful childhood, and why he calls his ministry reaching the one.

I heard a voice and now I know it was God.

And he said, Carl, don't quit on the kids.

We need people who will stay with him and take care of him and teach them and train them and be there for the in their greatest times of need.

And Pastor James Carl Callahan has been doing just that for more than 25 years.

So I asked this natural storyteller to tell his story of overcoming adversity and creatin and leading one of the largest children's ministries in the Pittsburgh region.

So I just want to start a the beginning, at the beginning, a beginning in Bellevue, where Carl was born with underdeveloped lungs and began a life filled with overcoming obstacles.

What happened was I couldn't breathe and, that they couldn't get the oxygen in my lungs.

They put me into an incubator and they put me in there.

So I started, my lungs developed, and I was able to breathe.

But we didn't know until later that that might have contributed to my hearing loss.

But then something unique happene when I was in the second grade.

Third grade?

They started me in a class.

The speech class.

She gave us a book that had five stories in it.

On Monday she said, read a story every night, and then at the end, we're going to take a test on what brought the book back the next day.

And she said, what are you doing that for?

I said, well, I read all the stories.

And she said, that can't be possible.

What do you mean?

I said, well I can tell you all the stories.

And then as soon as I told her a little thing from each of the stories, she said, it sounds like you could be a storyteller.

Get on your mark.

Get set.

Go.

It was unbelievable.

I never read a story like this in my life.

Tell me about your childhood and your mom.

That's when I started to notice that sometimes my mom would get real quiet for a long period of time, like couldnt understand what was going on.

My mom suffered a really bad depression, and it was the first time that I realized when she was being taken away from us, she was going down what they called Woodville State Hospital.

We're going to go to the orphanage.

So we prayed real hard.

And it was a really, moving moment.

Talking to my mom by the stove.

Not only did Carl's mom struggle with depression her whole life, but his brother died in a devastating car accident after returning from Vietnam.

I was very frustrated, and I started thinking, there has to be more to life than this.

I finally figured out what the problem was.

I never felt that I was good enough for God.

I never felt that.

And, s I went into this Baptist church where there was an evangelist that came in and he gave the most wonderful sermon about how much God loves us.

From that point on, things begin to change.

How about you, God?

What do we say?

Hey, hey, I have talent.

Callahan.

His wife, Vickie began working at the nursery at Allison Park Church.

Carl was driving trucks all night and working with the children during the day.

It wasn't long before people began telling Carl that he had a gift.

The Sunday school supervisor, he.

He saw us working together, and he came to us and he said, I want you to pray about something.

And I go, what's up?

And he goes, we have a need for the junior church.

We need to get a couple in a solid couple.

We want to know if you're going to teach.

I said, okay, let's give it a shot.

Did you just see something?

I thought I saw something.

And at that time, Vickie had gotten interested in some puppet ministries or whateve we could do to make it happen.

And it happened.

And she started to take it off.

How many years have you been doing junio church and children's ministry?

Well, officially, they were locked in 25 years after we.

We've been doing it for ten years.

We developed a unique styl that was able to hold the kids interest.

Two, three go!

So what did junior church lead into?

I saw more and more of the children in the inner city, more like out on the streets.

And a concern came to me.

We need to do something.

So let's have a big Vacation Bible school.

But something sad was happening.

At that time we only had 55 passenger busses.

Halfway through the week, there were kids wanting to get on the bus.

And you have enough room.

We need to do something to reach these children.

We put together what's called Sidewalk Sunday School.

So we took the church to all these different neighborhoods.

We had 40 different sites a week all over the whole city of Pittsburgh.

We're doing these outreac city outreaches, and these kids are coming out of the woodwork.

I was praying, at the altar by myself one day, and, I heard God speak to me.

He said, I want you to reach all of my children.

And all of a sudden it dawned on him.

He's talking about the mentally handicapped.

We're going to reach the mentally challenged.

It was called the Maniacal Bible and when we give an altar call to invite them in, the family of God, you know, is so called as the one that can walk.

It's a I want to be part of God's family.

They'll walk up, but they won't come to the altar until they get one o their friends in a wheelchair.

And I pray that you'll be with me.

Each and every day of my life.

Now, after overcoming his own disability and hardship, Carl made it his life's goal to do something he calls Reaching the One.

He said, I don't want you to worry about the 200.

I don't want you to worry about the 1200.

I just want you to care for the one.

That's what it's all about.

Reaching the One I love you And Susie tells us that after 20 years of volunteering his time for the children, Carl became an official pastor at Ellison Park Church and now, in addition to working with the children, he heads the senior citizens group as well.

Well of course, the church is one way to try to reach young people.

Another way to try to reach them is to punch them.

Well not really.

It's to teach them how to punch in the ring with gloves.

It's all in a day's work at the Pittsburgh Boxing Club in Brookline, where champions are made in the boxing ring and in the community.

Boxing king.

Boxing has been king in Brookline since 1957.

It keeps them off the street, builds their confidence.

This is a multicultural center.

The face of Brookline is many faces, many nationalities that many religions, many ethnic backgrounds.

And we tell the parents fla out, when a kid comes in here, we let them know that family in the school comes first.

Then we're going to teach them how to.

We teach them the sport of boxing.

We get a lot of the younger kids and we start them off with the basics and we build on that.

John, he came to us from the, football team.

Local football team.

He was 12 years old, 205 pounds.

Coach told him and some other boys, you're on the team, but you can't play because you're too fat.

Check the chin.

I came here, I did all the exercises and about 6 or 7 months, I'm down.

I was down to 155.

Now I'm down to 145.

And that wouldn't have happened for John or any of these other kids if they didn't have a place to go.

No teammates, no timeouts, no excuses.

The reason it's on there is because this ain't like the football and baseball.

Basketball.

You don't have somebody there to back you up when you're playing.

You're on your own inside that ring and it's what you learn.

And up in that gym, it's going to keep you going.

I want to take care of thes kids like I was taken care of.

I don't want to see them go to a place where they're going to be fed to the wolves.

The jab comes in.

You don't slip up with the uppercut.

I got a great relationship with the guys.

Ready?

I get to push myself, become faster, train harder to become the best athlete I can.

Go.

This is why it's so importan that they learn at the young age how to parry, how to duck, how to slip a punch out, a counter punch.

The headgear that we use.

If a kid gets hit that headgear the punch is actually absorbed and spread out through that headgear.

So he's not taking that full impact.

Back and reserve thing about sparring is that you always got to think about what's going to happen next.

It's kind of like chess.

You got to think about what your opponent's going to do next.

Where there's a weakness we're going to find a strength to build it around their form.

Well, go, go.

If they're afraid of something.

It's going to give the the courage to face that fear.

Go.

Go on your chest.

You can get your cultural needs here.

You can get your exercise, needs here.

We're not laughing at you.

I can't give you spiritual, but I certainly will give you spirit.

And I'll give you self-worth.

And I'll pick you up and make you go.

This is our future.

Our children are our future.

We're going to come on.

Good jobs.

For more information about the Pittsburgh Boxing Club, the Brookline Recreation Center, and Rec centers in your area, you'll find a lin at our website, wqed.org/On Q. Recycling has become such an ingrained part of our culture that for most people, tossing aluminum cans or glas bottles and plastic containers into a kitchen recycling bin is so routine that we just don't give it that much thought.

But most probably don't view a Christmas tree as something that can be recycled.

Well, one local group hopes that you will add Christmas trees to your list of things to recycle.

Post-Gazette columnist and On Q contributor Doug Oster has the story on this New Year's recycling resolution.

We all know about recycling cans, bottles and newspapers, but what about recycling your Christmas tree?

Folks here at Construction Junction can show you how to keep this Christmas tree out of the landfill.

It's a terrible waste to send perfectly good organic matter like that into a landfill.

It consumes landfill space.

It's just not a wise use of resources.

And why not send it back to be chopped up and turned into mulc and become something beneficial?

Mindy Schwartz is Construction Junction's development and IT manager.

And she's hopin that you'll bring your Christmas tree to their location in Point Breeze on January 13th, to be recycled for only a dollar.

You can help do your part t keep the Earth a little greener.

Well I think we're planning on three.

Each year, the nonprofit collects enough tree to fill three large dumpsters, and it's collected close to 1000 trees since the program started in 2004.

When a Christmas tree grows and it consumes energy from the soil and from the sun and consumes water, and it becomes, it becomes what it is.

Its natural cycle is to return to the Earth and to decompose and become compost.

When the tree is sent to th landfill, we break that cycle.

We have had since 2004 over 40 volunteers.

Jeanette Walker Vincy is environmental program coordinator for the Pennsylvania Resources Council, the agency that oversees construction junction.

They're the oldest nonprofit environmental organization in the state, and one of their goals i to promote reuse and recycling.

Jeanette says Christmas trees are sometimes considered hard to recycle items, but they shouldn't be.

What happens to the tree after you get it back?

We work with a company called Emery Tree Service and they come down here and they pick up all of the Christmas trees and bring them bac to their facility in Indianola, and then all the trees get ground up into mulch and set up on their compost pile.

And eventually it just turns into compost.

But if you can't get your tree to this event, there are some other things you can do at home to recycle the tree.

You can keep it outside and it, you know, provides great habitat for all the birds and the bunnies and little critter that hang out in your backyard.

It's like this variety of tree.

And there are other things happening around our area that really aren't the best way to dispose of the trees.

But you want something?

The other thing the municipalities are doing with their Christmas trees is actually hosting big bonfires.

They're burning the trees.

And not only is that not good for the air quality, but it's not really promoting a sense of responsibility and and recycling of the Christmas trees.

For Jeanette, trying to reduce the amoun of materials sent to landfills is important.

And the only way to d that is by getting the word out and educating the community.

I want people to recycle s that they don't waste resources.

I think it's so important for people to realize that there's a second use for these materials.

You don't have to just throw something away.

People need to start thinking of other uses for materials that they're currently using and want to get rid of.

The recycling even runs from 10:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, January the 13th.

And Construction Junction is looking for volunteers to assist.

For more information you can log on to our website wqed.org/OnQ.

Now, before we go.

Here is a quick look at a story we have coming up next week.

I'm Michael Bartley at Busy Murray and Forward Avenues here in Squirrel Hill.

Many of you have driven by here wondering, what is that place right ther at the Howard Levin clubhouse?

No, it's not a furniture gallery.

It's not a fitness club.

It's a place, say, clubhouse members, that has given them a second chance at life.

If you come into a group, a clubhouse, the difference is just unbelievable.

You'll find out what this place is all about Tuesday night at 7:30 on the Emmy Award, winning On Q. Thank you for watching.

Tomorrow night at 7:30.

Joining us for a look back at all of the big news of the week on Off Q. We will see you then.

Have a good night.