Youth volunteers, clockwise from bottom left, Morgen English, 17, Andrew Muse, 13, Jeaux Pender, 15, Megan Bearden, 13, and Steve Kane, 16, work on a wheelchair ramp on a home. The Teaching & Helping Program is run through the Volunteer Center of Southern Arizona and benefits low-income homeowners.

Greg Bryan / arizona daily star

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Student volunteers hold the beginnings of a wheelchair ramp as a mentor pounds it into place with a sledgehammer. The ramp will allow the owner of this South Side home to get in and out of her house with ease.

On Monday, it was the completion of a water-harvesting project for a low- income homeowner who had wanted such an improvement for 10 years but didn't have the means. Later in the week, the group will begin plumbing and electrical work.

The Teaching & Helping Program, working in partnership with the Volunteer Center of Tucson and with funding from Pima County, gives teenagers valuable home and job skills to prepare them for the world on their own.

Program Manager Tres English said the program fills a need in skills that have fallen by the wayside in today's youth. He said it has to do with being sustainable and self-sufficient, while also helping others.

Teenagers are teamed with experienced mentors — professionals in their fields — and work on projects for low-income homeowners. The mentors receive a small stipend, the homeowners pay for the supplies and the volunteers provide the labor. Adults can volunteer, too.

Sixteen teenagers are taking part in two one-week programs through the end of June.

On Tuesday morning, volunteers began building a wheelchair ramp for Lydia Williamson's trailer home.

This was the second wheelchair ramp Ramon Quiroz, 17, has worked on with Teaching & Helping.

He has taken wood shop at Howen-stine High School for three years and also helped build two houses for Habitat For Humanity. He said he wants to go into carpentry or home building.

"I'm glad for the program because it gives me more experience and gives me a chance to do what I like to do," he said.

English said he works with a number of housing agencies and neighborhood associations to find the right homes for the students to tackle. He went through Community Home Repair of Arizona and found Williamson, who has a hard time getting around.

"This (program) is very good. I need the ramp real bad, and now I can use my scooter. I have real bad legs," Williamson said.

On Monday, student volunteers, mixing cement and working as a team, installed a 500-gallon water tank as part of a water-harvesting system that will supply 1,800 gallons of rainwater throughout the year to the plants in Mary Jane Schumacher's yard. It's water that otherwise would have gone to waste.

"I'm amazed," Schumacher said. "They came in, and it's done. Eight kids put that together, and they're learning something important."

It was a valuable skill for the teens to learn, said Matthew Bertrand, a Teaching & Helping mentor. Bertrand is a youth leader at the Volunteer Center of Southern Arizona, which teamed with Teaching & Helping to bring students to the project. The Volunteer Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening communities through effective volunteerism, according to its Web site. Bertrand's focus is environmental projects, such as the water-harvesting cistern.

"These kids are the future, and this is the future for Tucson," Bertrand said. "We need to figure out how to live in harmony with the desert. It's about going out into your yard and doing what makes sense."

English said there's enough rainfall in Tucson to turn the city into an "edible forest" that could provide shade, food and a wildlife habitat.

To him, Schumacher's new water-harvesting cistern could be the beginning.

"It's about making good use of your resources," English said. "Teaching & Helping trains the next generation of Tucson to make the city sustainable."

Student volunteer David Berens, 16, also helped with the water-harvesting project.

He said living in harmony with nature has always been innate to him. One day he hopes to be an environmental lawyer.

"This is a real hands-on thing, and we're doing it on a community level," he said. "Hopefully this will create a ripple effect."