YouthEmployment


 * Youth Employment Funding is in Danger!**

Contact Sen. Specter Right Now!

Dear Senator Specter: Please stand up for our region's youth!

The economic recovery packages moving through the House and Senate include significant support for summer and year-round jobs - support we desperately need to secure the future of our regional economy. These new investments would reverse years of decreasing federal support for youth employment and provide support for up to 1 million summer jobs nationally over the next two years.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee have passed version of the recovery bill that include support for youth employment. However, Senator Coburn (R-OK) is expected to offer an amendment on the floor that would strip workforce funding, including support for summer and year-round employment, from the bill. This could happen at any time during this week’s debate.

Due to his leadership position on the Appropriations Committee and his ongoing support for youth-related programs and funding, Senator Specter’s vote is likely to be critically important in the success or failure of these amendments.

Please contact Senator Specter and urge his support for $1.2B for summer and year-round youth employment (which would yield approximately $7.5M for Philadelphia over two years).

What to say to Sen. Specter

His leadership is critical.

We greatly appreciate Senator Specter’s leadership in making funding available for at-risk students and disconnected young people in Philadelphia and across the country. (In fact, Specter’s efforts have resulted in Philadelphia’s receipt of more than $50M in targeted grants from the U.S. Department of Labor).

We can spend the money wisely.

The Philadelphia employer community and non-profit and public sectors have built an infrastructure which is ready to move this money into strategic youth workforce preparation activities. Waiting lists for summer and year-round opportunities are at least 3,000 youth annually. Therefore, we are confident that our community can and will use additional youth workforce funds to expand high-quality career-preparation strategies to thousands more young Philadelphians.

Philadelphia has been leading the charge on dropout prevention and re-engagement.

With Senator Specter’s help, Philadelphia has also become a national leader in dropout prevention and re-engagement, particularly for highly at-risk young people like youthful offenders (a high priority for the Senator). New youth employment funding can help to provide jobs for former dropouts returning to alternative education, and new education funding can help to fund high-quality specialized programs for youth who are over-age and far from graduation, for whom a return to regular classrooms is not an appropriate option.

PLEASE REACH OUT TO SEN. SPECTER NOW!

[|Click here to contact Sen. Specter]

By Phone

202-224-4254 (Washington) 215-597-7200 (Philadelphia)

[|National Youth Employment Coalition]

Click below for more information on the House and Senate bills [|nyecreport.pdf]

United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania http://www.uwsepa.org February 4, 2009