told us of their living, learning and job training experiences. Even at this early date, we could see measurable effects of the Job Corps program. When the girls have completed their training, we plan to help them secure jobs. We realize some will resettle in other cities, and since WICS units are located in 150 communities, we hope to keep the girls in touch with WICS wherever they are. Actually the girls themselves maintain this contact. They write their WICS regularly from the training centers. Some girls who have not adjusted to Job Corps training and have returned home head again for the WICS office, seeking further assistance and guidance.

We are concerned too for the thousands of girls who for one reason or other are ineligible for Job Corps. WICS makes every attempt to find for them opportunities in their home communities which will begin to meet the girls needs. We have been able in many cases to find jobs, scholarships, a few local training programs for them. But so few programs are available to girls from the poverty population in this age group. Through our expanded program in cooperation with community action agencies in fifty cities, we hope to demonstrate this need and propose programs for disadvantaged girls at home.

These efforts coupled with the national Job Corps program could begin to bring thousands of girls hope for and help to better life for themselves and future generations.

We have been sadly disappointed with the size of the Women's Job Corps program because we have seen the immensity of the problem. We feel strongly that the Women's Job Corps should be expanded. When the moratorium on screening was imposed in August 1965, WICS shared with the girls awaiting assignment their discouragement. We attempted at once to lift their morale and maintain their interest in the Job Corps through Job Corps clubs and other short range efforts. We realize the complexities in establishing training centers. Nevertheless, we need more centers.

We call upon Congress to support all measures to alleviate poverty. It is important that community action programs are designed to continue to help young people, the elderly, the poverty stricken family. It is important that Job Corps training be continued, and that there be special focus on training of young women. NCCW supports the Economic Opportunity Act and the Economic Opportunity Amendments of 1966.

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MISS ELEANOR FRENCH, DIRECTOR OF CHRISTIAN SOCIALRELATIONS, UNITED CHURCH WOMEN

My name is Miss Eleanor French. I am the Director of Christian Social Relations, United Church Women.

This testimony is presented by United Church Women, a Department of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. United Church Women, made up of 2350 local and state councils in every state, and the nationl women's denomination organizations of the Prostestant and Orthodox communions within the National Council of Churches, has a constituency of fourteen million women. Obviously we cannot speak for each of these member groups nor for their members individually. The testimony we are presenting is in line however with the policies of the National Council of Churches as adopted by its General Board, and further endorsed by the responsible Committees of the Department of United Church Women.

United Church Women is deeply committed to the task of helping eliminatee poverty. Before the government program began, church women had embarked upon a three year major action-study program. PEOPLE, POVERTY, PLENTY. The first year thousands of women studies the nature and extent of poverty in the United States, using the pamphlet commissioned for this purpose, One-Fifth of the Nation, by Elma Greenwood. They attempted also to discover first hand the extent of poverty in their own community. This year they are focusing on action-through a wide variety of channels including: WICS, Head Start, Community Action Committees, Literacy Program, Tutoring, Household Employment, Migrant Ministry and Legislation.

In regard to legislation many church women throughout the country worked for the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act, as an essential means toward eliminating poverty. They are convinced that since this nation for the first time

in history has the means to wipe out poverty the continuance of this blight 18 ethically intolerable.

Of the many channels for action none has proved of more significance to United Church Women than WICS. We have welcomed the opportunity to join with women from three other national women's organizations, the National Council of Catholic Women, the National Council of Jewish Women and the National Council of Negro Women, to recruit and screen young women for the Training Centers of the Job Corps through the autonomous organization, Womer in Community Service, Inc. (WICS). Together women from these groups are able to do what none could have attempted alone. We believe further that we have been enriched and strengthened through the experience. The partnership of voluntary organizations and government too, is essential in the assaul ou poverty. Our deployment of several thousands of volunteers is evidence of this conviction.

With the other organizations we welcome the larger opportunity afforded by participation in the extended program, known as the Six Point Program. This extended program which is being funded by the Community Action Program includes services to girls awaiting Job Corps assignment, Job Corps graduates, applicants ineligible for Job Corps, mothers of applicants, other women in poverty and a community education program. This enables us to call upon the talents and experience of many more citizen volunteers.

In the work of the volunteers the person to person approach which has been developed has proved effective beyond our anticipation. The effect upon the motivation and effort which a girl makes when someone cares has been remarkable. The transformation of her self image takes place almost visibly at times a transformation which we understand normally takes weeks and months to effect through professional counseling. This concern and interest of the women follows the girls to the Job Corps Training Center and helps them find jobs and make home and living adjustments following graduation. For those who do not go away the person to person contacts with volunteers often helps offset the fragmentation of community and agency fragmentation-a fragmentation by the way which often lies at the root of the difficulties and hopelessness and which a person in poverty faces.

We know that the Training Centers of the Job Corps have come under attack in local communities and nationally. Church women have been at the center of groups formed to help support and interpret locally the value of the Training Centers, as for example in St. Petersburg, Florida. In some instances women have championed the invitation for a Center to be placed in their community in the face of strong adverse public sentiment. These experiences have only served to deepen women's convictions regarding the importance of the Training Centers.

We know that the Centers have been criticized as too expensive. As citizens and taxpayers we would favor, of course, review of the situation on the basis of the experience to date. We would favor whatever reductions could be made provided they do not affect the quality of the educational process. We would point out, however, two values which are of primary importance in any assessment of cost.

The first is the fact that the Training Centers are experimental. They are laboratories in which are being tested educational philosophy and method for disadvantaged youth. The results can have significant, even revolutionary learnings, for our American educational system.

The second, applying only to the Women's Training Centers, is the importance of finding effective means for strengthening and stabilizing families.

In any attempt to eliminate poverty, major attention must be given to the strengthening and stabilizing of families. It is for this reason that assistance given to the young women 16-21 years of age through the Job Corps is of particular significance. These young women are the young mothers of America of the next decade. While it is true that both parents are necessary to children. it in fact that in one out of every three poor families all responsibilities are carried by the mother alone. The training of young children, the "climate" of The home, the relationships which strengthen members of the family-these are primary responsibilities of the mother in every family. The fact is that the most pervasive single influence in the lives of the next generation is that of the mother

For this reason if for no other, no serious attempt to eliminate poverty can fail to give major attention to the needs of all young women in more than job training alone. If this is costly and expensive, what are the costs to America and to those of us who live here if this is not done now?

In reckoning the costs of Jobs Corps Centers full account must be taken of the cost per person in welfare and relief over the years in dollars and cents to say nothing of human dignity, of not providing this opportunity to break out of the poverty cycle.

We now face as a nation the question of legislation in regard to the immediate future of the anti-poverty program. United Church Women wishes to support the continuing of the program, as we did its origin. Our widening experience in working to eliminate poverty through several channels and our involvement through WICS in both the Job Corps and Community Action Programs have not only confirmed but strengthened our conviction regarding the absolute necessity of the Office of Economic Opportunity.

We know there have been mistakes made in these first months. This is inevitable. We have had cause to be critical of aspects of the programs to which we have been related. Our major criticism has been the inequity in making available opportunities represented by the Job Corps as between men and women. We are glad to say this situation is improving. We believe in our responsibility as citizens and as an organization to exercise constructive criticism whenever it seems to be in order.

Yet taken as a whole, and seen in the light of the urgent need to remove the dark stain and blot of poverty from one-fifth of our nation, we believe the government's poverty program to be a major national priority. In its short history it has made clear to the nation this tragic blight; it has aroused expectations among all citizens and especially those in poverty. To curtail the program in any way, not to go forward with increased energy, determination and resources would be tragic, and would bring inevitably serious consequences.

We would especially commend the anti-poverty program for establishing the principle of the maximum participation of the poor. We believe this to be basic to any successful effort to eliminate poverty. We urge that every effort be made to realize fully in practice the principle so clearly enunciated, whatever allocation of resources is necessary.

Our greatest concern is that the appropriations being proposed are so inadequate in comparison with the need. We urge the fullest appropriations possible, and deplore any attempts to weaken or cut back the proposed program. We recognize that at their maximum the present proposals represent but a beginning skirmish in the war we have undertaken.

If poverty can be eliminated in ten years, as authorities believe, then this must be our time table. If metropolitan-rural development for equal opportunity in terms of job training and general education, housing, including the elimination of slums, and health services would cost an estimated $41.81 billion a year for the next five years, as has been estimated by the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., then this must be our yardstick.

STATEMENT OF MRS. JOSEPH WILLEN, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF JEWISH WOMEN; MISS MARGARET MEALEY, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC WOMEN; MISS ELEANOR FRENCH, UNITED CHURCH WOMEN; MISS DOROTHY HEIGHT, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF NEGRO WOMEN, COMPOSING A PANEL

Senator JAVITS. Now, do any of you ladies desire to make any statement orally?

Mrs. WILLEN. Yes. Miss Height and I have some brief remarks that would like to make if we may.

we

Mr. Chairman, I am Mrs. Joseph Willen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women but I am speaking here for four organizations besides my own, National Council of Catholic Women, National Council of Negro Women, and the United Church Women. We are most appreciative that we have been granted this time to speak even briefly about our reasons for supporting the extension and expansion of the programs authorized by the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. We do have written statements which we are asking to have filed. In these statements we have noted that we have had this experience in working with many programs, with Headstart, with programs for the elderly, the Neighborhood Youth Corps and many kinds of local community action programs. I do not pretend that all of our encounters have been happy ones. When new ways of working are developed and new relations between Government and voluntary agencies are being built as they are under this program there is bound to be difficulty and even occasionally friction but we are convinced that many of the new approaches to dealing with the problems of poverty will prove to be effective and we urgently hope that both the programs and the funds to carry them out will be increased so that we may go on to solve this major problem of our society.

I want to speak just briefly about the Women's Job Corps because our four organizations have banded together to recruit and screen girls for the Job Corps. This has meant that all over the country in many many communities women of all faiths are working together, interracially, many of them working with each other for the first time to try to meet some of the problems of the 16- to 20-year-old girls in poverty. To date, we have screened over 7,500 eligible girls. To produce this number we have seen and interviewed well over 20,000 girls. We have learned to know these girls and their families. We know how far they have fallen behind in their ability to meet the demands of family and society.

We have now had enough experience to see how effective the Job Corps training has been in giving these girls new confidence in developing this ability, in building new skills and above all in helping them to become effective and productive members of our society, young women who will be able not only to have careers but to raise successful families. The young women who are returning to their communities after graduation from the Job Corps are already proving the effec tiveness of this kind of training. In a moment Miss Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women will tell you about a few of these girls.

We are aware of the many serious problems about which you have just heard in the previous panel, with which the Job Corps has to deal. We know that much more must be done to help communities understand the Job Corps so that they will be acceptable in their community and be able to function more effectively. We believe that our four organizations and other citizen groups like ourselves have much to do and will increase our ability to reach further into the community to help build this kind of support for the Job Corps centers and for the entire antipoverty program.

Before closing I want to add a plea, not only for the Job Corps but that the entire community action program be expanded, for here it is that we can learn to develop new programs, to use volunteers, to use the poor themselves for the solution of their problems and to find other means of helping those girls who are the majority and the boys who are also the majority who cannot be placed in the Job Corps centers but who need from their community services in vocational training, job placement, medical services, remedial education and all the rest of it which you know.

The community action program so far has reached a limited number of young people through its programs. Much more is needed. More outreach, more new programs and above all new approaches involving the total community in planning, development, and implementation. Certainly we feel that the commitment and the experience of our four citizens' organizations has shown that diverse groups can work together harmoniously and productively for the common good.

Thank you for the time you have given me and now may I introduce Miss Height.

Senator JAVITS. Miss Height, you may proceed.

Miss HEIGHT. Our women have a real conviction about the significance of the Job Corps and are giving thousands of hours of volunteer service to it because we see what is really happening to girls who are involved. I think, as Mrs. Willen has just said, we sense that there is a way which girls are responding, girls that we have been trying to get into activities before. We have been in the Job Corps centers. We have seen them as they have arrived. We have seen them come in shy, sensitive, afraid. We have seen them go out with a great sense of confidence. Perhaps for us as women there is a real concern about lifting this failure cycle that many lived under. When they have been in homes where their mothers are still among the working poor, it is doubly difficult for many of these girls to begin to use their time for themselves productively. But in centers we have seen them get a new sense of time and new sense of order.

I think we want to make a very strong plea for the Job Corps as a part of the antipoverty program because of the need that every girl has for some freedom of choice. We know that the half million girls in poverty will never be able to be served through the Job Corps. But the important thing is that these girls need to have the freedom of choice to study in their own community if they are able to make it there or to move out of that community into a residential experience. I could cite case after case of a girl who entered the Job Corps center who left not only well trained but ready to take a job in a nursing center. Right here in Washington now there is a magnificent exhibit showing their talents, in the Smithsonian Institute. I have a clipping of a story of a girl who has grown by this whole experience and her work is really tremendous.

I think that for many of us who have been a part of the community and who have witnessed the loss of self that is so characteristic of these girls, that we have gained a new sense of their ability to recover