Los Angeles  - US president Barack Obama is set to visit the southern California town of Pomona Thursday, with his official itinerary calling for him to tour a research centre for electric cars.

But the visit to the city of 160,000 about 50 kilometers east of downtown Los Angeles also gives him a powerful opportunity to show the American people that he is a different kind of president - one who follows up on the splashy media manoeuvres that are too often forgotten as soon as the cameras stop rolling.

The city of Pomona is a lower-middle-class enclave built into the hardscrabble hills of southern California in a region that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, with one in 67 houses facing repossession by the banks, according to property-tracking firm Realtytrac.

Over half the local adults never completed high school and official unemployment is 12 per cent, with the real number of people out of work probably much higher. That's because the area is home to thousands of unpermitted workers from Mexico who have lived there for years but are not entitled to unemployment benefits.

These are deeply troubling times in a region just outside bustling Los Angeles, with its high-profile media industry, which is still considered one of the most prosperous parts of the country.

But a group of Pomona high school students gave their media neighbours a lesson in effective campaigning recently when a video they made about the economic plight facing their families and the community gained national attention and caught Obama's eye.

The nine-minute video was called Is Anyone Listening?, and showed 17 high-scoring students at Pomona's Village Academy detailing the human impact of the recession.

The school, whose student body had unusually high poverty rates, is housed in a former department store at an abandoned shopping mall. Despite these hardships, it ranks among the top 500 high schools in the United States.

The recession had made the students wonder if their struggles to succeed will be in vain. The video starts with students naming their career goals: plastic surgeon, environmental scientist, actress, technologist. Then a girl says, "We are all college-bound students, right, but the way things are going we're not going to be able to make it."

One girl tells how her parents had been persuaded to buy a home, without knowing that their interest payments would balloon. They lost everything, and now the 12-member family lives in a one-bedroom apartment.

Another student weeps for fear that his younger brothers will become homeless, because their family is four months behind in rent.

The students' teacher explained that the video came about after the class read the classic novel The Great Gatsby about a shattered American dream. When he asked the pupils if the current recession had affected them, 31 hands shot up.

The production quality is poor: blurry images filmed against a blue backdrop interspersed with shots of the local scenery - foreclosed houses, shuttered stores and advertising for going-out-of- business sales.

But amid an economic crisis in which the top news stories count billion-dollar losses and trillion-dollar bail-outs, the students' human stories struck a chord in the Oval Office, after a staffer spotted it on YouTube.

In his first major speech on education since taking office, President Obama last week described the video and addressed the Pomona students.

"I am listening. We are listening. America is listening," the president said. "And we are not going to rest until your parents can keep their jobs, your families can keep their homes, and you can focus on what you should be focusing on: your own education."

Both the White House and the high school have declined to say whether Obama will meet the student stars of the video. But Obama will use his visit to southern California to stress his plan for the economy.

"The president's decision to go West and do two town-hall meetings - obviously, part of that is to discuss with the American people and give the American people the opportunity to discuss with him their concerns about the economic challenges that we face," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

"Given where we're going in California, I'd be surprised if the housing crisis and home foreclosures aren't part of that; obviously, financial stability; and I'm sure the outrageousness of executive compensation and bonuses will come up." (dpa)