Then they become a problem and acquire for themselves and for the region the reputation of incompetence and unpromising material which is unfounded-it is founded in their actual condition at the moment, but not in their potentials.

This is the only reason that the council that I represent exists.

The reason I am in this dual capacity is because I was a full-time member of the Berea College staff doing fieldwork as well as teaching when the council needed an executive secretary. Berea College is an institutional member of the council. I was a personal member. These things worked together so I am released part-time by Berea to serve as this executive secretary in the council.

As such, I am involved in the public school dropout workshop, leadership training workshop, conferences, and social welfare throughout the area.

Senator BURDICK. Now to get down to some specifics. I believe you testified that there are only two public health nurses in one area. Do you think these corpsmen would be able to take over that work?

Mr. AYER. No, sir; they would supplement and aid them.

Let me illustrate: I would hate to put this on the public record, but we have a tuberculosis problem in Kentucky at the moment. We have an estimated 5,000 cases of active tuberculosis in the State which cannot be found or documented. They are submerged in the mass. This is because both by tradition and by education we do not readily subject ourselves to regimentation or to official programs.

Due to our lack of formal education, we are unaware both of the seriousness of this situation and of means to overcome it. In the tuberculosis program in Kentucky we are taking steps to communicate person-to-person-to-person to eradicate these active tuberculosis cases, but this takes the personal touch.

What I hope from this kind of legislation and what I believe this kind of legislation could accomplish would be to initiate a new approach in a personal way and beyond the official health office, public school, and superintendent approach.

We are a people who respond to the personal touch and I believe that this is the magic, or one element of magic of this particular bit of legislation. People who volunteer prove that they care; they can relate themselves to individuals on a person-to-person basis, and can then multiply their efforts by inspiring these people to assist others.

In this approved mountain project, including Fentress County and Overton County, Tenn., the magic will be, a couple of corpsmen, who will be home visitors; they will be friends of the folks; they will not be applying public regulations; they will not be herding folks into taking required innoculations of this, that or the other.

They will be people who in a sense will be communicating the relationship of individuals to the society at large, their responsibility, and their opportunity.

Now this is a pretty difficult thing to illustrate and describe in its true merit. But the hope I see is in this matter of continuing educaion, involving dropouts, and adults in continuing education. Take a county of 35,000 where the adults have not gotten beyond the 6.5 grades of school; you cannot hope to involve these people in night classes and public school programs.

I do believe we can arouse them to some guided personal involvement, family by family, in upgrading their educational competence. By the involvement of the people themselves in their own behalf we can multiply the efforts of the corpsmen. Really, it is a catalytic agent, it is inserting dedicated, inspired service leadership on a person-to-person friendly basis into a situation where people respond to this kind of approach.

Senator BURDICK. Your testimony has been very illuminating, and very interesting. I wish to thank you.

The next witness will be Sanford Solender, Jewish Welfare Board.

STATEMENT OF SANFORD SOLENDER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL JEWISH WELFARE BOARD

Mr. SOLENDER. Mr. Chairman, my name is Sanford Solender, executive vice president of the National Jewish Welfare Board which is the national service organization for close to 500 YM and YWHA, Jewish community centers and related organizations throughout the United States.

In addition, our organization is the recognized group that cooperates with the Department of Defense in providing spiritual, recreational, and welfare services to the men and women of Jewish faith in the Armed Forces. We are one of the constituent organizations that make up the United Service Organization, the USO.

In view of the nature of our organization we have a very extensive experience with communities, with their social needs, with the problems of inadequacy of services to meet the needs of people today, and with the whole experience of organizing volunteer service to meet community needs.

I would like to say that in relation to my own experience that there are other activities in which I am presently engaged which give me an opportunity to add to today's testimony.

I am the recent past president of the National Conference on Social Welfare which is representative of the major public and private social welfare bodies in the country, and 2 years ago I chaired a committee appointed by Secretary Ribicoff which reappraised the public welfare system and made recommendations that ultimately were incorporated into legislation which has since been passed.

I would like to say that my organization strongly supports S. 1321, the National Service Corps, and urges its adoption. We do so because we feel that this bill can accomplish a number of purposes which we deem to be in the national interest.

In the first place, we are keenly aware from our broad experience that there are major social problems in the country today that are as yet unsolved; that we have substantial poverty and deprivation in the country; that the condition of ill health, both physical and mental, is a very serious one; that we have problems of minority rights that we are seeking to resolve; that we have inadequacies in our educational system, and we are faced with vexatious slums, and delinquency situations as well as problems of special groups within our rural population.

It is our conviction that the National Service Corps program can make a tangible contribution to the solution of these problems. We

believe that the problem of juvenile delinquency will be somewhat abated by that provision within the National Service Corps which will make corpsmen available in local communities to work as adjuncts to existing juvenile delinquency programs. These corpsmen will provide leadership to youth groups, and work along with professionals in those types of youth projects aimed at giving special Vocational training and experience.

We feel that in mental hospitals where there is a desperate need for personnel that the corpsmen can serve constructively as aids in the hospitals, carrying on morale work and other supporting staff services. We believe corpsmen can be valuable aids in rehabilitative and therapy programs. We think the program will help discharged mental patients to find their place in the community. The Corps men program will encourage them by periodic home contacts, by participating in halfway house activities and by their leadership in other programs which are designed to help people who are recovering from mental illnes to find their place in the community. By their cooperation in mental health programs the corpsmen will be filling important roles as adjuncts assisting the professionals currently doing these jobs.

We think that the corpsmen can play an important part in meeting the very critical need that we have for upgrading the literacy of segments of the American population where the educational standards are low by providing tutoring service, and by providing other kinds of aids to teachers in the school system.

We think that the corpsmen, through the National Service Corps project, would be able to participate in community development programs, in rural areas, and Indian reservations and in other special situations aiding to help people to organize themselves in developing needed services.

These and many other benefits are outlined in the written testimony that I have submitted to this subcommittee.

We feel that the National Service Corps will play an important part in the development of our country by elevating the ideal and the importance of volunteer service to one's fellowman and to the community. We think that this is a very basic part of our democratic life that in some ways has fallen into disuse, and that the National Service Corps program can help once again to spotlight the importance of volunteer service in helping to meet community needs. We believe the National Service Corps program will carry over and generally stimulate volunteer service.

We think that the National Service Corps program can enrich and strengthen the regular long-term programs of existing agencies by helping to stimulate these agencies to initiate new programs and by assuring a continuation of programs established through the Corps.

We think that one of the very great benefits the National Service Corps can have, especially in regard to the younger corpsmen, is that it will give them contact with the various helping professions which are so desperately short of people in the country today.

There is an urgent need to attract people in careers in social work, in teaching, in nursing, in the field of medicine, and in the field of therapy.

It is our feeling that the younger people attracted into the National Service Corps will be stimulated by their contact with these

professions to understand and appreciate them better and choose them as careers, and that this will greatly help meet the need for such personnel in America today.

We think that the actual experience for young people who participate in the Service Corps, the experience of meeting new groups of people with whom they have not previously associated in their lives, working in new communities, can be an enriching and broadening experience.

Finally, we think that as it can involve older people, the National Service Corps program can help to give this group, which is a growing segment of our population, a feeling of being recognized, and of having status. The program will also help many retired professional people who are not now using their skills constructively to once again put them to work.

I should like to say that there are several aspects of the functioning of the National Service Corps which seems to us to be most important and which are for the most part incorporated in the bill, but I would take a moment to restate them.

First, it is our feeling that the success of the National Service Corps will depend upon their being well defined criteria for the selection of the projects locally. We feel that this is possible within the framework of the bill, and this is one of the reasons why we think that this whole concept is a sound one.

It will be necessary, to be sure that the projects are real projects, that there is a chance to do a significant piece of work. It will be necessary to be sure that the jobs carved out are jobs that volunteers who are not trained can do and that they will be distinguished from those jobs that professionally trained people are trained to do. It will be necessary to be sure there is real local interest and desire for these projects, that there is no discrimination against any group in the conduct of the projects, that they have the possibilities of continuity and that there is a clear definition of what is expected of the cooperative local organizations.

Well-defined criteria for the selection of projects we think is provided for in the bill. We wish to emphasize its importance.

Second, we think another provision in the bill which is to be applauded is the provision for adequate consultation with local groups in the selection, the development and conduct of projects. We think the strength of this program can lie in its being thoroughly tied into and integrated in the existing programs of local community institutions. This can help to strengthen our basic local structure of service. We applaud the intention to consult with local organizations and the local social planning councils and other bodies in the selection of the projects and the basing of the program in the local communities is deemed by us to be a part of its real strength and value.

Third, we think that the success of these corpsmen in carrying on the projects assigned to them will depend upon how adequately they are oriented and trained for the jobs to be done.

We therefore applaud the inclusion in the bill of the provision for adequate orientation and training for the corpsmen as an essential to their success.

Fourth, we believe, and this we have had considerable experience in because of our extensive work with volunteers, that the success of

the corpsmen in local communities will depend upon how well they are supervised on the job. This we think can be the crux of the whole program. It will be necessary to be sure that in the whole structure of the National Service Corps there is enough administrative personnel in the corps to keep in touch with what is happening locally, but more important that the local organizations that take on the responsibility for National Service Corps projects will be able to provide on-the-job day in and day out supervision to these people by competent, trained persons.

It is our hope that in the structure of the program there would be Federal funds provided to aid those organizations which are now lacking in supervisory staff to secure this additional staff.

Fifth, we think that the national organizations in the health, education and welfare field can be most helpful to the National Service Corps and we are pleased therefore that the bill proposes to include their representatives on the Advisory Council.

From my own organization I pledge our fullest cooperation in helping to accomplish the purposes.

Sixth, and finally, we hope that there will be adequate stress placed, as we think the bill does, on the follow-up possibilities of the Corps, the possibilities for recruiting people for the professions, the possibility of assuring the continuity of these projects so that new works started will become a permanent part of the local community program.

In short, sir, I wish to say that my organization is pleased to give its wholehearted endorsement to this bill. We feel it will be an important step forward in pursuing our national interests and hope very much that it will be adopted.

Senator BURDICK. Thank you very much, sir, for your very forceful statement.

Mr. SOLENDER. Thank you, sir.

Senator BURDICK. Various witnesses that have come before the subcommittee have characterized this legislation as a catalyst, as a primer, as a stimulant to help people help themselves.

Would you characterize it in that manner, too?

Mr. SOLENDER. I most definitely would. It seems to me these corpsmen as they are assigned to work in local communities ought to be functioning in that way on an Indian reservation or in a rural

area.

I see them helping people to organize the kinds of services and programs they need to organize for themselves in working with juvenile delinquents. I see it helping these young people to become more independent.

What is essential is not to do things for them but to be more effective in helping them do things for themselves.

Senator BURDICK. Perhaps the effectiveness of the program will, as you say, result from the fact that the people are helping themselves. Mr. SOLENDER. Indeed. I believe that is basic. This is one of the great aspects of this program. I think there is something uniquely democratic about the whole idea of the National Service Corps.

It could only happen in a free democratic society where we place such importance on people acting under the impulsion of their sensitive responsibility to their communities and to their fellow men.