Jobless youths find Philly Future

LAST YEAR, Angela Pannell was a young single mom on welfare who had debt from a community college nursing program and no money to continue earning her degree.

She was an intelligent, ambitious woman with a child, no job and no prospects.

"Every day, I was harassing Welfare to Work," said Pannell, of North Philadelphia. "I'd call and say, 'Hey, how you doing? It's me again. You have anything for me?' "

Last January, they did - Philly Future Track, a life-changer.

From winter's freezing cold to summer's sweltering heat, Pannell and 132 other unemployed, at-risk young people cleaned waist-high trash, needles and dead rats out of the city's alleys in return for city-paid job-skills training.

Philly Future Track's interns cleared 1,581 tons of solid waste out of 1,087 alleys, said Frank Morelli, the Streets Department's survey bureau manager, who identified five interns, including Pannell, as having the math skills to become entry-level surveyors.

"We want them to become professional land surveyors," Morelli said, which requires 10 years of progressive experience and is highly paid.

When he told Pannell, she replied, "I'm not settling for that. I want your job."

Morelli laughed, remembering. "Angela was dead serious," he said. "I told her, 'Go for it!' "

Morelli gave his newbie surveyors a math book: Trigonometry Success in 20 Minutes a Day.

"They were supposed to do a couple of problems a night," Morelli said. "Angela came back in two weeks and said, 'I'm done.' I said, 'That was supposed to take you a year.' Her determination is incredible."

Pannell, 28, said her inspiration is her daughter, Malaysia, 6.

"I was partying before," she said. "When I had my daughter, everything changed. She was right there when I graduated community college. I want to show her that just because you have a baby doesn't mean you have to be on welfare."

Jovan Pittman, 20, of North Philadelphia, trained to be a welder at Mastbaum Area Vocational Technical High School because, he said, "I had a friend who was a welder. He was only 21, made good money, helped his family."

"I have two parents who love me," Pittman said. "I've never been in the streets. I've never sold drugs. I don't believe in fast money. I just wanted a good job."

He passed a welders test at the Navy Yard, but there were no jobs.

"So I worked construction with my dad and then went to my 4-to-midnight job at the Burlington Coat Factory," Pittman said. "I had to travel an hour each way, so I'd get home at 1 a.m. I was 18. I thought, 'I have no Friday night social life because by the time I get home, Friday night is over.' "

A neighbor who was a city sanitation worker told Pittman about Philly Future Track.

After cleaning alleys for six months, he was told he qualified for surveyor training. "I knew I was blessed," Pittman said. "This is a career, not just a job. You need the hunger to learn. I have that hunger."

This year, Pittman helped survey Trevose Road between Southampton Road and Kelvin Avenue, in Somerton, to make sure the grade was correct for a Water Department sewer-reconstruction project.

And he helped determine the grading for the Parks & Recreation Department's new soccer fields at Fluehr Park, on Grant Avenue near Tulip Street, in Torresdale, so there will be no ponding when the fields are built.

His colleague, Pannell, helped create a topographic map for a section of the Schuylkill's west bank that will become the Bartram's Mile trail from Grays Ferry Avenue to 58th Street.

She helped stake the property lines for the new 49-story FMC Tower on Walnut Street near 30th in University City.

Two years ago, despite their intelligence and their willingness to work hard, Pannell and Pittman faced a world without prospects. Now, Pannell is off welfare, and she and Pittman are each making $34,000 a year and are on track for a bright Philly future.

"Sometimes when I think about how this all happened," Pittman said, "it just brings a smile to my face." And he smiled.