when we have seen them come home at Christmas after a few months away. I think the reason we took new hope when we heard four new centers had opened was because we believe that girls need to have some feeling of accomplishment and some sense of achievement on their own and they can only do this when they can be lifted out of their environment and given a fresh start so that we have great hope that not only will this figure of 10,000 be a realistic one but that there will be the appropriation and the support for this program which we think has brought something new into the whole American life and for us it has brought something new because women of many backgrounds are working at it and seeing just what happens to people. It is against this that we hope it can be tested.

Senator JAVITs. Thank you very much.

Now, Miss French, would you like to add anything to this?
Miss FRENCH. No, I think not.

Senator JAVITS. Miss Mealey, what about you?

Miss MEALY. No, Mr. Chairman; I think our counterparts have presented the testimony very effectively, speaking for all of us. Senator JAVITS. Perhaps you two ladies would answer a couple of questions as long as your colleagues have borne the battle so far.

We are much interested, many of us here, in your Women in Community Service program. Is that an organization in which you all participate?

Miss MEALEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman; it is.

Senator JAVITS. This organization really represents the mission which has been described here by Mrs. Willen and Miss Height.

Are we to understand correctly that women mean that Women in Community Service applies to Americans of all faiths and races. establishes a relationship with the family of the girl in question, and that this becomes an important aspect of the redemption process which has been described?

Miss MEALEY. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Senator JAVITS. Would any of the other panelists like to comment on that?

Miss FRENCH. Just let me say that this is a very important aspect and that it is a completely mutual process. Something has happened to the thousands of women who belong to our organization because of this mutual relationship between middle-class women and women in poverty and their daughters. The effect of the caring of women from the membership of WICS for the girls who for the first time have a sense that "someone cares for me," "someone is interested in me" which we think has been one of the most significant parts of the whole educational process.

Senator JAVITS. Now, in running the program, Miss Mealey-perhaps you can answer this because I think it has the most emphasis in your faith-is there any effort to have just the Catholic ladies

approach Catholic girls and Catholic families or do you run this service across the board?

Miss MEALEY. We run this service across the board. Certainly the talent and the resources of the four organizations working in the community have given us a leverage and a strength we never had singly. We appreciate this and we use this great resource for all that it is worth. But actually, all of the volunteers from the three fields work as WICS, Women in Community Service. This involves Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish women which make up interreligious as well as interracial groups. All of the women together serve the total cause to which we are devoted at this time for recruiting and screening of girls in poverty and relating their mothers particularly and their families to this program.

Senator JAVITS. Mrs. Willen, is this action funded under the antipoverty program?

Mrs. WILLEN. Mr. Chairman, it is funded under the Anti-Poverty Act but each of our organizations has made very extensive contributions in personnel, not only volunteers but professional staff time and other out-of-pocket expenses to keep this program going. Moreover it has stimulated our local affiliates in the communities themselves to develop new types of projects working with these girls which are completely funded by themselves in many cases. In some cases, however, the WICS programs in the communities have applied for and received CAP funds in order to do special projects with these girls because we are above all aware of the fact that only a small part of the girls who need help can go to the centers. They are picked under special criteria. But those girls who can be rehabilitated at home need a special type

program.

It seems to me that one of the greatest contributions this program has made, Mr. Chairman, is in working with the mothers and sisters of these girls. We talk a lot about the maximum involvement of the poor. But we do not quite know how to go about it in our society. Here is a project in which there is a natural method for the poor, if we want to call them that, for the women who are involved, who are part of the families of these girls, to come into the picture as persons who are working in their own behalf for their daughters, for their sisters, working with the middle-class women, as you described them before, cooperatively and without regard to the fact that they are from one class or another class but for the objectives which are mutual to both of them. I think that is extremely important.

Senator JAVITS. Now, does this circular I hold in my hand, "Women in Community Service, Inc., Washington, D.C., Executive Director Mary A. Hallaren," describe the project?

Mrs. WILLEN. Yes.

Senator JAVITS. Without objection it will be made a part of your testimony.

(The material referred to follows:)

Women volunteers of many backgrounds work together to help girls break out of the cycle of poverty

Women in Community Service was incorporated in
December 1964 by members of the National Council of
Catholic Women, National Council of Jewish Women,
National Council of Negro Women and United Church
Women. Its function: to frame and carry out effective
volunteer service programs against poverty throughout
the nation.

This broadly representative coalition of women
volunteers was brought together by a common concern
Over the mounting problems of America's youth-the
school dropouts, the jobless, the delinquents, the
impoverished young people who face the future with
no goals and no hope. Focus of WICS concern: all
those young women likely to remain at the bottom of
America's economic and social ladder- unless special
efforts are made on their behalf.

WICS volunteers are currently engaged in a crash
program to help the government recruit and screen
applicants for the Women's Job Corps, set up under the
Economic Opportunities Act of 1964,

HOW DID WICS BEGIN?

WICS grew out of an informal partnership among
representatives of five national women's agencies-
the four present WICS groups plus the Young Women's
Christian Association, National Board. They were first
drawn together in January 1964 by a shared concern for
the protection of women and girls against inhumane
prison conditions and other evidences of degrading
treatment. These early efforts led to the formation of a
Women's Interorganizational Committee (nicknamed
WIC), enabling members of the five agencies to speak

out and act in concert, in their own communities.
Wherever women volunteers banded together and
organized for action, they wanted to go on working
hand in hand for broad economic and social gains.
They learned quickly that together in WICS they could
accomplish far more than each could hope to do alone
WICS original procedures for joint action had been
forged at a timely moment in history: a time when each
of the agencies was developing, on its own, a full
program of community-service activities to help deal
with the nation's newly visible and urgent problem
of poverty in the midst of plenty.

HOW DID WICS ENTER THE
WAR ON POVERTY?

A task force developing plans for the Women's Job
Corps consulted with national WICS leaders to devise
ways of utilizing their tremendous volunteer woman-
power in this program. After many hours of consultation,
it was agreed that WICS would take on the job of
recruiting and screening applicants for the women's
residential training centers.

The task seemed well in line with each WICS member
organization's longstanding concern and experience
in the field of youth opportunities-and fitted in smoothly
with their ongoing programs on poverty.

Thus in January 1965, WICS, now formally incorporated
as Women in Community Service, signed a government
contract to provide the Job Corps Training Centers with
their first women enrollees (The YWCA has chosen
to make its contribution to this program through the
operation of selected Training Centers, and through
cooperation with local WICS groups)

999

WHAT IS THE WOMEN'S JOB CORPS?

The federal government's Women's Job Corps
program provides residential centers across the country
in which 16- through 21-year-old girls from economically
and culturally deprived families will have the
opportunity to learn how to move themselves up from
poverty. Out of school and out of work, these girls
will receive occupational training, basic remedial
education and training in family responsibilities and
citizenship at the centers. Emphasis will be on prepara-
tion for service jobs that cannot be easily automated.

WHERE DOES WICS FIT IN?

WICS contracted only to screen girls for the Job
Corps. But it undertook, on its own, a much broader
commitment: to do a total job of continuing community
service for every girl its members urge and help to
leave home and join the Job Corps.

This means nationwide planning and community-by-
community implementation. In down-to-earth detail,
here's how it works:

In Washington, WICS national headquarters oversees
a nationwide program to meet the deadline for the
first contingent of Women's Job Corps enrollees. A small
staff of professionals helps local groups to: set up
screening centers, maintain contact with organizations
serving underprivileged youth, distribute information
about Training Centers, and provide training for
women volunteers.

In many cities, towns and rural areas, community
WICS have already been set up to rush this program
into operation. Trained volunteers from active chapters
or sections of the four women's groups are devoting
hundreds of thousands of hours to the urgent threefold
task before them:

1. RECRUITMENT

Working in teams, WICS volunteers seek out the girls
who might best profit from this opportunity to leave
home and prepare for a more promising future.
Volunteers explain the Job Corps residential centers
to the girls and their families on home visits.
and they interpret the program to the community.
2. SCREENING

Volunteers conduct initial interviews and, in
cooperation with professional social-welfare, health
and educational agencies, arrange for full screening
of candidates. During this procedure, each com-
munity WICS may engage professional help for such
essentials as health examinations. A grant from the
Office of Economic Opportunity covers these and
other out-of-pocket expenses. The bulk of the work,
however, is voluntary. WICS establishes whether
or not the girls are eligible under standards set by
Washington, guides and helps them as they go

Senator JAVITS. One last question, Miss Height.

I gather that your group is very strongly opposed to the sharp change in the relationship between the anti-poverty components which is contained in the bill as reported in the House, that is, heavy weighting now on the Neighborhood Youth Corps, and a relatively lighter weighting on community action programs. Would that be correct? Miss HEIGHT. I would say, Senator, that we have focused our attention quite deliberately today on the Job Corps because we think everything should be done to keep it in as strong a position as possible but we feel that there has to be recognition just from our own experience that many services we could render with community action funds are desperately needed. It is a tragedy to start something and then for us to fall back just at the point that we are getting it going.

Senator JAVITS. Would one of you ladies answer the question, Why are you not funded in this activity by antipoverty funds, at least in part, just carrying out either your own normal activities or the activities of settlement workers? When I was a child, I went to the University Settlement just like any of the kids you are working for now. Why is it different, why is it better? Why is it worth the money of the Government of the United States?

Miss HEIGHT. I will take one try at that. The funds of the Job Corps and the Job Corps is something new in American life. It is an opportunity for people who have not been able to make it through other channels of education to get a fresh start. Our women have had thousands and thousands of hours of volunteer experience but we responded as women of different races from all over the country because we felt that we are in touch with the whole nation and that we could move into the community and reach girls. We did this because we thought we had the forces behind us to help do a job. That is the focus of our entire effort. I feel that when we talk about the Job Corps and just see it as one more poverty activity we dare not overlook that it is a new educational experience and it was felt that because we had worked together on other projects we could bring that experience to this.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much.

Mrs. WILLEN. We felt too, I think, that the settlement house programs and all the center programs need all the expansion too and we hope they will get all the help they can in reaching more and more people. But this is an added dimension for in addition to the special job we were asked originally to do which was to screen these girls and to keep in touch with their families, we were also using this program as a takeoff for those girls who were not able to get into the Job Corps. We have a natural contact with them. We do refer them whenever we can to existing facilities. But we formed a community group because we do represent the women in the community and all the racial and religious groups.

We represent a community force that is able to help the city fathers to see what are the holes in our communities. We not only maintain individual contact with the girls and refer them to the existing facilities, but we get to work to find ways to fulfill the needs that these girls have that are not being met by the community and for which