When 10 teenagers from Urban Youth Action and the Pittsburgh Project arrive this week for a two-week stay in Beijing, China, they'll fulfill a proposition that some program administrators once believed might be too big to accomplish.

The teens -- all African-Americans from urban neighborhoods around Allegheny County -- are the first to travel overseas with Urban Youth Action's international studies program. The program aims to prepare teens to enter and succeed in an increasingly global work force by exposing them to job opportunities around the world.

Ben Walker, Urban Youth Action's education coordinator, said he was spurred to create its International Education Project because of his own experiences traveling abroad as an undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh.

"I thought he was crazy. I said, 'You want to send 10 black kids to China?'" UYA Executive Director Karris Jackson said of her reaction in 2007 when Mr. Walker broached his plan.

"But when I thought about it, I realized how much the idea falls in line with our mission to be work-ready, life-prepared and community-minded, and I was all for it."

During the China trip, the students, accompanied by Ms. Jackson, Mr. Walker and Patrice Singleton and Donnie Friel, both of the Pittsburgh Project, will focus on work force development and community service projects.

Urban Youth Action, a job training, mentoring and tutoring organization founded in 1966, offers an after-school program in its Downtown office that teaches young people how to search and land jobs, arranges job placements and internships at companies that compliment their career goals, and offers SAT preparatory sessions and college tours. It also teaches work force development through outreach programs in Pittsburgh Public Schools, Wilkinsburg High School, the Crossroads Foundation and at the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.

The organization is open to students of all incomes and backgrounds, but most of the 300 young people who attend its after-school program are black.

Mr. Walker, who holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, said his own trips to China in 2001 and 2002 showed him the availability of jobs in his field overseas. It also inspired him to counter negative stereotypes about Americans, particularly African-Americans, by doing volunteer work.

"When I was there, I noticed they didn't truly know about black Americans," he said. "So my thing was to serve the communities that needed it. I know in the inner city there aren't that many opportunities, but there are places like our inner cities all over the world."

After Mr. Walker sold the idea to Ms. Jackson, she pitched a grant proposal to several organizations.

An anonymous foundation came through, donating $150,000 to fund the program for the next two years, but suggested that UYA extend the opportunity beyond its own students.

Ms. Jackson invited students enrolled in a high school youth development program with the Pittsburgh Project, a North Side Christian community organization that also prepares teens for the work force, to participate as well. UYA also collaborated with Alcoa, PPG Industries and Westinghouse to arrange opportunities for students to observe how the corporations operate locally and internationally.

"A lot of these students haven't traveled far, some haven't left the city of Pittsburgh," said Mr. Friel. "So access to cultures that are not just inside the United States but across the world is huge."

Through a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh Center for Global Studies, the program obtained a liaison to arrange the trip and a Mandarin language teacher for the students.

To be selected for the trip, students were required to write essays about their desire to visit China, how the global economy impacts the American economy and the importance of providing community service at home and abroad. Five students from each organization were chosen to make the trip.

The group will stay on the campus of Peking University in Beijing during the two-week visit. Students will visit Tsinghua University, an academic partner in Alcoa Foundation's Conservation and Sustainability Fellowship program, to learn how it aims to solve problems related to sustainable development in rural China.

During tours of PPG's training center and Westinghouse's office in Beijing, they will compare those operations to the companies' Pittsburgh offices, which they toured earlier this year. They also will create clay art with the Star and Rain Education Institute for Autism and will contribute to an environmental protection project with teenagers at YMCA Beijing for community service projects.

Some students said they were excited to visit the Great Wall or shop in a foreign country. But most said they remain focused on how their experiences during the journey will influence their futures.

Brian Lawson, a 16-year old UYA student from Rankin, said he was interested in learning more about Westinghouse's nuclear operations. He envisions one day working for the corporation as an engineer.

Tresa Murphy-Green, a 14-year-old UYA student from the Hill District, said she also wants to dispel negative stereotypes the Chinese people may have acquired about black Americans through media images.

"African-Americans are probably looked at as the most violent or rudest [people] in America when that is not true," she wrote in her admissions essay.

Velma Monteiro-Tribble, CEO of the Alcoa Foundation, said she was impressed by the program and hopes to see it duplicated. Depending on how the trip turns out, the Alcoa Foundation may consider providing funds for future endeavors, she said.

"I don't think there's any program like this, particularly one that's taking African-American children out of the country to learn about the global economy, in the United States," she said.

As the program took off, it received other offers of financial assistance, including a grant for 10 video cameras that students will use to record journals of their trip.

Now that the dream of China has become reality for the first group of students, Mr. Walker said the possibilities for the next group can only grow.

"It's encouraging, it's refreshing, its almost like confirmation as well," he said.

"The kids are interested, the companies are interested. We proved there was a market for this and we proved that we are that market."