Fighting to save culture
Program engages youth to service their community

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

PINEHILL — In many Navajo communities, elderly are concerned about the land and about the loss of traditional values. For the past eight weeks at a hogan just off the main road that goes by the small town of Pinehill where the Ramah Navajo School Board is located, 17 high school and college students have been addressing those issues through a program funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

In the past, the employee programs for kids in the community sent them to existing departments to gain work experience, but this year organizers decided to do something different — to engage the youth to service their own community.

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