Five teenagers from New Orleans, part of a group named Rethink that is working to help rebuild and improve that city’s schools after Hurricane Katrina, will participate in an all-day middle school youth conference at First Parish Church on Saturday, May 10.

The conference is aimed at encouraging leadership and participation skills in young people. The New Orleans youths will talk about their efforts to help students become part of the process of rebuilding and improving New Orleans schools. Rethink is a citywide youth organization with three adult staff members. The young people have participated in six-week summer sessions for the past two years, working to identify and help fix problems in public schools. One of their projects has been the designing of “green” restrooms for the schools.

With the help of the adult staff, the “Rethinkers” publish their own newspaper, maintain their own YouTube Web site and have held press conferences to describe problems with their schools. They have produced a report evaluating New Orleans schools from a student perspective and have compared New Orleans schools with those they attended in other states in the months following the Katrina disaster. Their activities have resulted in newspaper and television coverage both in New Orleans and nationally.

The public is invited free of charge to the opening session of the conference, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. in the sanctuary of First Parish Church, on Route 3A next to the Old Town Hall.

The conference will continue from 3 to 9 p.m. with sessions for middle school youth from Unitarian Universalist churches in southeastern Mass.. Members of Peace Games, a Boston group who went to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and works with Rethink, will also participate in the conference.

The New Orleans young people and two adult advisors are being brought to Duxbury through a grant from First Parish Church. For more information about the conference, contact Sunsue Fleming, director of religious education at First Parish Church, 781-934-6532 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it For information on Rethink, visit their Web site: www.therethinkers.com.