Docent-in-training Isaac Bolivar, 9, practiced his tour speech Friday in front of a mural at La Pilita Museum. The museum's youth docent program will be recognized with an award at the White House today. Between 15 and 20 youngsters, mostly from Carrillo Magnet School, are serving as docents at any given time.

Greg Bryan / arizona daily star

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A youth docent program at a tiny Downtown museum will be honored today at the White House, partly for teaching Tucson children "the extraordinary history of their hometown."

The program at La Pilita Museum, which trains children ages 8 through 11 to lead site tours, is one of 18 community arts and humanities programs nationwide to earn a 2007 Coming Up Taller Award.

More than 350 programs were in contention for the honor, says a news release from the award program. First lady Laura Bush is expected to present the awards.

La Pilita Museum will receive $10,000 as part of the reward. Two representatives of the local program will be in Washington, D.C., to collect the award today — Joan Daniels, La Pilita's development and education director, and former senior docent Jacob Mejias, who is 12 and completed his docent service last year. Jacob's mother will also be at the ceremony.

Children, typically from Carrillo Magnet School across the street from the museum, usually participate in the docent program for three years. They must apply to be part of the program, which has between 15 and 20 young docents at any given time.

The commitment is one hour per day, four days each week. Students conduct museum tours, tend the gardens and give histories of a vibrant mural, of the adjacent El Tiradito, a historic wishing shrine, and the El Ojito spring.

They have interviewed dozens of residents of Barrio Viejo, where La Pilita is located, as part of an oral history project. Part of their training also includes studying local and Arizona history, and setting up exhibits at the museum.

On Friday, the master docents, who wear blue caps and vests, were training youths newer to the program, reminding them why their jobs are special. Until they achieve master status, the junior docents wear orange caps and vests.

"It's really nice to see what the barrio used to look like and what used to be there," master docent Krysta Williams, 10, told the group.

Emma Barrett, another 10-year-old master, spoke about the importance of having a sense of place, and the value of people who can provide personal stories about Tucson history.

Outside, 9-year-old master docent Armando Gomez recounted a legend about El Tiradito.

Armando explained that people light candles and leave them at El Tiradito overnight. Legend says that if the candles are still burning in the morning, their wish will come true, he said.

"The La Pilita Youth Docent program is especially notable for its success in teaching youngsters the extraordinary history of their hometown, spurring a greater interest in their families' roots and teaching the skills and confidence that will help them succeed well beyond La Pilita and Tucson," Adair Margo, who chairs the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, said in a prepared statement.

The Coming Up Taller awards are an initiative of the committee.

The children who become docents gain an understanding of what it means to serve their community, said Carol Cribbet-Bell, executive director of La Pilita Association.

"We felt that basic understanding would create strong citizens and strong citizenry in the future," Cribbet-Bell said. Cribbet-Bell and Daniels are both former Carrillo educators.

The youth docent program began in 2001 and has received other honors, including Gov. Janet Napolitano's Youth Service Award in 2003.

Downtown's La Pilita, built in the late 1940s at 420 S. Main Ave., is named for a restaurant that operated there briefly in the 1960s.

Though the building itself isn't historic, the location is ideal for giving lessons on Tucson's past. It sits at a spot that in the late 1800s was the entrance to two Tucson parks: Carrillo Gardens and Elysian Grove.

In 1977, the city used a federal historical preservation grant to buy it, along with the historic El Tiradito wishing shrine next to it.

Carrillo Intermediate Magnet School across the street from La Pilita began using the adobe building as a living history lab in 2001, with sessions such as a costumed retelling of the story of El Tiradito.

La Pilita Museum is now operated by the non-profit La Pilita Association and has a board that includes historians and community residents. The museum's mission is to develop it as a center for research and regional history education, and to serve as an extended classroom about early Tucson for students, the neighborhood and the Tucson community.

The museum is sponsoring a lecture series with the Arizona Humanities Council. The next lecture is 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the museum, and it is free

Arizona State University professor Ann Hibner-Koblitz will talk on "Women's Health in Territorial Arizona: Local Healers, Proprietary Medicines and Frontier Docs."

Among the topics addressed will be women's health movements, home remedy books, indigenous herbal remedies, nervous conditions, childbirth options and aging.