By STEPHEN ORAVECZ Tribune Chronicle

YOUNGSTOWN — Once the poster child for the Rust Belt, Youngstown Tuesday offered a beacon of hope on presidential candidate John Edwards’ three-day campaign tour highlighting poverty in America.

Edwards, a Democrat from North Carolina, said the Mahoning Valley was a ‘‘very different stop.’’ While the tour is designed to put ‘‘a face on the seriousness and the breadth and the depth of poverty in this country,’’ Edwards said he also wants ‘‘America to see that good things can be done — just like what we’ve seen here in Youngstown.’’

Visits to Beatitude House, designed to help homeless women get the education and skills they need, and the Youngstown Business Incubator, which is the home of a growing number of companies and jobs in the computer software industry provided ‘‘examples of what’s possible.’’

Mayor Jay Williams picked up on Edwards’ comments about Youngstown, saying he believed the city made an impression on Edwards with the incubator and the Youngstown 2010 plan for revitalization.

This was Edwards’ second trip this year to the Mahoning Valley. In March, he held a private fundraiser in Howland.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who held a fundraiser last month in Boardman, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., are the other two leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama was in Cincinnati Tuesday for a fundraiser. Clinton has not yet visited the Valley this campaign.

At Beatitude House, Edwards sat at a picnic table with four women who told him how they overcame drug abuse, domestic violence or debt to turn around their lives. They now have jobs and are going to school for degrees in fields that include nursing and social work.

Edwards said he has met women like them across the country. ‘‘I never stop being inspired. You have not buckled under,’’ he said, telling they they should be proud of what they have accomplished.

He asked them how they felt when they had nowhere else to go. Janice Stenson of Warren said she felt ‘‘hopeless’’ and ‘‘shameful.’’ She was homeless and faced possible jail time.

‘‘I did not feel I could dig out of the hole I had dug for myself,’’ she said.

Now she has been drug-free for almost two years and is attending Youngstown State University to earn a degree in social work. She also is taking care of her 14-year-old daughter.

Nicole Hoschar was a victim of domestic violence with three children and only a 10th-grade education when she came to Beatitude House. She told Edwards: ‘‘You have to have determination, as long as there’s a place like Beatitude House to help you along the way.’’

Sister Patricia McNicholas, executive director, said the women accepted into the program need a little seed of desire to break out of their situation ‘‘and we can build on it.’’

Later Edwards met with about two dozen government and development officials, business owners and educators who told him how the Youngstown Business Incubator and 2010 plan are helping turn around Youngstown. The incubator is home of several companies that develop business-to-business software and have customers across the globe.

‘‘There’s not a better site to see the transformation this community has gone through,’’ Williams said of the incubator.

Reid Dulberger, executive vice president of the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber said the incubator is helping to ‘‘re-invent the Valley.’’ He said if Edwards had a way to make that easier, ‘‘it would be much appreciated.

Edwards said several things about the incubator and 2010 plan impressed him, calling them a model of what can be done nationally. He noted how the city built on its past as it becomes part of the 21st century economy, especially the collaborative effort to retrain workers that ‘‘shows loyalty’’ to the people who built the industrial economy.

Edwards said, ‘‘Some of the things I heard in here sound familiar because they’re consistent with some things I’ve been proposing.’’ As an example, he said the transition from an oil-based economy to one based on renewable energy can create a million jobs. That will require collaboration to train 150,000 workers a year.

Edwards, who started his day in Cleveland and wound up in Pittsburgh, announced a new plan to promote economically diverse schools that he said have been shown to raise the achievement of low-income students. One national model exists is in Wake County, N.C., where two of Edwards’ children attended school.

Reporter Bill Rodgers contributed to this article.

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