City Obtains $148,000 Federal Grant For Its Neighborhood Youth Corps

The Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee received a federal grant of $148,000 yesterday that will give jobs and counseling to 150 Cambridge teenagers as part of the Neighborhood Youth Corps.

The program will be administered through the office of Teen-Age Employment Skills Training (TEST), headed by John B. Dunne '67. TEST organized the local Youth Corps and directed a program last summer which found employment for 221 youths under a federal grant of $82,000.

Fifty of the youths will be high school students with part time jobs. The other hundred will be out-of-school Cambridge teenagers working 32 hours a week. All of the enrollees in the Youth Corps will earn $1.25 per hour.

Youth Corps Gets Jobs

Federal regulations stipulate that the Youth Corps applicants work in public, non profit enterprises. A large number of the teenagers this winter will work in Cambridge hospitals. Others will be employed in Cambridge School and Recreation Departments, settlement houses, administrative offices, and astrophysical laboratory. A few will work in the CEOC office itself.

The TEST program also provides counseling services for the youths, many of whom are high school drop-outs or juveniles on parole. Dunne explained that Cambridge counselors accompany youths to court, provide legal aid, work with City probation officers, and find places to live for those not living with their families.

This fall tutoring services will also be available for those who wish to continue their education. The tutors will come from Harvard's Phillips Brooks House, and also from M.I.T. and two church programs.

"Originally we ask nothing of the teenager," explained Dunne. "He comes to us strictly for a job." "But once he is involved, we can provide the other resources which he might not have wished to accept because of his pride" before he had a job.