IYCC Set Up Just In Time...
This just released today from the House Ways and Means Committee back in DC that outlines the stimulus provisions that fall under the jurisdiction of the committee:
HELP WORKERS HURT BY THE ECONOMY
High unemployment and rising costs have outpaced Americans’ paychecks. We will help workers train and find jobs, and help struggling families make ends meet.
Helping Workers Find Jobs
• Training and Employment Services: $4 billion for job training including formula grants for adult, dislocated worker, and youth services (including $1.2 billion to create up to one million summer jobs for youth). The needs of workers also will be met through dislocated worker national emergency grants, new competitive grants for worker training in high growth and emerging industry sectors (with priority consideration to “green” jobs and healthcare), and increased funds for the YouthBuild program. Green jobs training will include preparing workers for activities supported by other economic recovery funds, such as retrofitting of buildings, green construction, and the production of renewable electric power.
Let's get our kids outside this summer!
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2 comments:
All invovled need a primer on what a job is and why it exists. I'd venture that most folks haven't given the subject a thought and that is sad.
A job exists to add value to the organization or person prividing that job. It doesn't belong to the worker, and is there as long as it provides the proper amount of value to the provider.
I have some concerns that some of these make work projects simply interfere with the market's natural tendency to add value, which then adds jobs.
Politicians have a universal belief that they need to do something to help, and almost always delay economic recovery.
You are so right. Printing money to spread out for "busy work" only sets us up for wanting more and more. It becomes a drug that we all get hooked on. I appreciate the Gov's approach of not taking any stimulus that doesn't add value to Idaho.
IYCC was set up as an organization to get Idaho kids on the radar screen for jobs that are already contracted out by state and federal agencies that have to do with conservation work. Because MT, OR, UT, AK, WA and other western states already have existing programs, when an Idaho agency had work that needed to be done, they turned to those organizations that provided a turnkey solution to putting a crew on a job. Because Idaho didn't have an organization to bid for those jobs, our kids have remained sitting in front of the TV playing x-box while kids from MT and other states do conservation work in Idaho.
The pilot program we did in 2008 was very successful. We took some kids that would not have worked last year and got them outside (and kept them out of trouble). Every job that was completed had a training element that explained to the kids why each job was important to the state and how it supported conservation efforts undertaken by BLM, the Forest Service, weed control programs and trail maintenance for safe public access. The kids were also requied to journal daily about what they did and what they learned and that was reviewed by the crew leader where confusion about the tasks were immediately corrected.
It appears that the new administration wants to throw more printed money at the states. I hope that if that money does land in Idaho, that we use it to the best advantage of the state for conservation projects that will also put our kids to work while providing them with an opportunity to understand that their future world is more than a box of "cheeze-its" and an X-box.
Cheers,
Marv
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