Global Grass Roots : Environment: Teen-agers from tough spots around the world learn about getting along and working together as they tackle conservation projects in the Southland.

It was a blazing hot morning and the only sane place to be outdoors was at the beach. The asphalt island that separates Fairfax Avenue from Genesee Avenue, just north of the Santa Monica freeway, would top any list of places not to be. It was a little patch of ugliness: no shade; noxious traffic hurtling by nonstop.

And yet at 10 a.m. about 50 young people and a handful of adults were converging on this spot, some pulling bright orange road-crew vests over their T-shirts, others helping to unload pickaxes, sledgehammers and crowbars from the back of a pickup truck.

Ilya Pokusaev, 19, of Moscow, lifted a pickax, shrugged and announced with dry humor, “We are proletarians.” Ronnie Tucker, a burly 16-year-old from inner-city Washington, D.C., was authoritatively telling a crestfallen David Pinon, a 14-year-old from West Los Angeles, “No, you cannot use the sledgehammer. You’re too weak, man.”

Within minutes, Pinon was hacking at the asphalt with a pickax. Wendy Crooks, 18, of Belfast, Northern Ireland, her skin reddening and freckling by the minute, studied the implements uncertainly for a moment and got to work. Two young women from Novosibirsk, Siberia, staggered together, giggling, under the weight of the chunks they were hauling to a wheelbarrow. Tucker swung a crowbar into a huge slab that Pokusaev and Andrew Kennedy, 20, of Belfast, had pried loose. It split in two as Pokusaev and Kennedy let out exaggerated “wows” in admiration of Tucker’s macho feat.

The young people worked steadily, stopping only for cigarette breaks, escaping to the shade of the trees that dot the yards of the modest, neatly kept houses on Genesee. By 11:30, not a piece of asphalt remained. The island was now a dirt expanse, waiting to be be planted. By week’s end, the group would return and plant 64 low-growing juniper shrubs and a liquid amber tree, with a second liquid amber due to arrive in November.

The Earthstewards are in town and they are planting “urban peace trees.” It is a grass-roots effort if there ever was one, except in this case the grass roots are global.

On Oct. 1, 25 young people from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Soviet Union, Southern India, Northern Ireland and inner-city Washington, D.C., joined 25 Los Angeles-area youths, described by organizers as “inner-city teens.” They have been staying at the Presbyterian Conference Center in Pacific Palisades, a campsite off Sunset Boulevard that is instant wilderness, where they are being trained in leadership, team building, cross-cultural communication, environmental issues and tree planting.

Most of the young people come from some rough places, have seen hard times and violence, and face bleak or precarious futures.

The Irish kids, for example, out of school at age 16, invariably described themselves as unemployed, with few prospects for jobs. All of the young people came to Los Angeles through groups previously associated with Earthstewards work. The Irish were selected through their involvement with a Belfast program that works with underprivileged Protestant and Catholic youngsters. The Washington teen-agers came from that city’s “Youth at Risk” program, which seeks to intervene positively with young people from high-crime environments.

The Earthstewards Network, “an international peace and environmental service organization,” was founded by Danaan Parry in 1980 and operates out of Seattle. Parry, who runs his group with forceful good cheer and wary observation, said he is a former nuclear physicist who worked at Livermore Laboratories for seven years until he decided that whatever the particular research, it was all going toward “building a better bomb.” He became a clinical psychologist, concentrating on conflict resolution, and started Earthstewards, engaging in “citizen diplomacy” visits that characterized many peace group efforts of the 1980s. He moved into the more tangible tree-planting effort in 1984.

Parry has organized similar programs in India, Costa Rica and Washington, D.C. Locally, the young people were co-sponsored by the L.A. Conservation Corps and TreePeople, who helped locate sites, organize community support and train the group. The Earthstewards leave Los Angeles on Thursday, having planted trees in Griffith Park at Dante’s View, watered and nurtured dying trees along Martin Luther King Boulevard in South Central Los Angeles, done more planting in Pacoima, and transformed the median island on Fairfax.

At the Fairfax location last week, Dolores Reece, a community activist from the area who calls herself a “citizen forester,” stood watching in happy disbelief. She’d been trying to get something done since 1987, she said, and had almost given up on the Fairfax island when this help came along.

To the international effort was added local support funds from KRTH radio station and Quintessence perfume company. And club sandwiches, sweet potato chips, green apples and banana coconut cake for lunch that day came from City Restaurant, one of several dozen local restaurants providing meals for the young people.

It has not been three unrelieved weeks of poster-perfect “see how these wonderful young people from around the world live and work peacefully together,” although that is certainly one of the lofty goals of Earthstewards. Parry said the ultimate goal is “to teach youth what is possible through understanding and cooperation and to show them that each of them is capable of making a positive difference in the world.”

About the experience in Los Angeles, Parry said, “It’s been as expected. These are at-risk kids. This is not Huntington Beach. We just have to create more and more situations where they can get beyond their stuff.”

Their stuff is tough, and they wear a lot of their experiences visibly. It goes beyond the jarring first impression of seeing so many “environmentalists” working with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Many have “show me” or “says who” attitudes. Like most youths, they balk at rules and resist being ordered around. Yet those few who have been given some authority, a new experience, tend to become bossy.

It is an occasion where the adults seem more idealistic and starry eyed than the young people. It is the adults who offer relentless good cheer and upbeat enthusiasm.

Most of those in the international group had never been to the United States before. Now they are dropped into fabled Los Angeles, living in a church camp, working in the sun, and following orders.

Sasha Prokopenko, 19, a geology student from Novosibirsk, seemed to give voice to more than his own frustration when asked about the experience. “There is a difference between this camp and America,” he said. “There are such strong restrictions. It’s a bad experience. I passed this experience already in my own country, in Pioneer camps. They were children’s gulags. I never expected to meet it here. I’m surprised.”

Prokopenko was by no means writing off the whole experience, however. He was working hard that day, was friendly and cooperative. Besides, he said, they had had a relatively free weekend in San Diego. “We had a few days without schedule and I felt that I was making my reality.”

And, scheduled promises for a boat ride, some free time, a concert and Disneyland lay ahead. Spirits seemed high and the young people seemed at least tolerant of each other, often forming affectionate bonds.

Saying he liked everybody, David Pinon pointed out his “real good friend,” nodding his head admiringly in the direction of an older youth. “See that guy, Vadim from Moscow? He’s an Afghan vet.” In general, Pinon said, he got along well with the people from Russia. His bowed head not concealing a dimpled, sheepish smile, he explained, “I thought they would be, like, mean.”

By mid-afternoon, work had slacked off, and most of the Earthstewards had turned themselves into a tangled pile of bodies, using each other for pillows, as they sprawled on a lawn across from the median. The temperature was in the high 90s and Parry had ordered the bus to come early and make a stop at the beach.

Claudia Cruz, a 16-year-old from Los Angeles, staggered out of the sun and threw herself, laughing, on the ground and up against the chest of Belfast’s Kennedy, 20. He folded his arms around her and said with a smile, “We’ve known each other a week. We’re sister and brother.”

Wanting a drink of Kennedy’s water, Cruz discovered it was gone, so, in her newly acquired Irish brogue, said, “Why, you’ve drunk every little drop of it, Andy.”