WIA program focuses on deprived youth

This summer, the Workforce Investment Agency will be focusing its Summer Youth Employment and Training Program on disadvantaged youth as a way to provide these individuals the tools to succeed in life.

In a statement issued yesterday, WIA executive director Jesse P. Stein said the agency will be strengthening its collaborative effort with other youth providers to address the challenge of creating a viable workforce for the CNMI by training disadvantaged youth through the program.

As such, WIA will be prioritizing youth who are at-risk of dropping out of high school and youth who have tremendous barriers to being gainfully employed.

In line with this, WIA will use 70 percent of the summer program funding for out-of-school youth and 30 percent will be allotted for in-school youth for Saipan, Rota and Tinian.

“The high number of unemployed WIA youth applicants, ages 18 to 21, gives an indication that the CNMI will need to bear profound economic costs for failing to educate these young persons who are high school dropouts, pregnant/parenting teen, basic skills deficient, reading below 8th grade level, offenders and run-away youth,” the statement said.

Applications for Saipan residents will be available at the WIA office from 7:30am to 4:30pm on Capitol Hill, Bldg. No. 1215 on April 18, 2005. Applicants must be U.S. or FAS citizens and must meet certain federal guidelines to be deemed eligible. For more information, call the WIA Office at 664-1700 to 1705.

The executive summary from President Bush’s White House Task Force for Disadvantaged Youth on Dec. 23, 2002 is directed to develop a comprehensive federal response to the problems of youth failure, under existing authorities and programs, with a focus on enhanced agency accountability and effectiveness.

“Out-of-school youth [and those most at-risk of dropping out] are an important part of the new workforce ‘supply pipeline’ needed by businesses to fill job vacancies in the knowledge economy. WIA-funded youth programs will provide leadership by serving as a catalyst to connect these youth with quality secondary and postsecondary educational opportunities and high-growth and other employment opportunities,” the task force said.

This is the new Youth Vision to address and give priority to the “neediest” youth.

“While the federal government is spending billions of dollars to address the problems of youth, the problem is often that too many of these dollars are spread out among too many youth. Although these actions may appear to be preventive, in fact it typically leads to under-serving or never even engaging the youth who most need help—and who become society’s most serious problems. Thus, we often see evaluations of youth programs that say the programs do not show much impact. One reason for this might be that the youth that needed to change were either not engaged, or not engaged sufficiently. At an aggregate level, the result is that the public and policymakers never see the kinds of significant improvement they want to see in the things that concern them: juvenile crime, school performance, drug use, and so forth,” the task force adds.

The task force recommends to all WIA-funded youth providers that the first designated special target population be youth who are already in public institutions, and who create public expense. These are foster care youth (particularly those aging out of foster care) and juvenile justice youth. For both these groups, the federal government and governments at other levels are serving in loco parentis—in place of the parents. (PR)