ment and encourage local effort and diligently avoid weakening existing programs. We recognize that this poses a significant problem in terms of the bill's implications for cooperation of local, State, and Federal Governments and the coordination of private and public agencies. The magnitude of the human problems toward which the proposed National Service Corps is addressed demands an intelligent, heroic, and comprehensive public effort in compassionate service, as well as legislative structures which provide the widest possible opportunity for the exercise of maximum freedom and justice for all persons, especially those less fortunate in communities all across the land. Therefore, Mr. Chairman and honored members of this committee and of the Congress, on behalf of the Brethren Service Commission, I urge you to act favorably on this bill to create a National Service Corps. JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF ESSEX COUNTY, Hon. HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, Newark, N.J., May 28, 1963. MY DEAR MR. WILLIAMS: The Jewish Community Center has 9,000 members in its Newark YM-YWHA and suburban YM-YWHA. We serve a wide range of age groups, especially teenagers, young adults, and adults. We are thoroughly familiar with the urgent need for vocational education and training to improve skills consistent with employment opportunities and for special public service programs and the establishment of a Youth Conservation Corps. We are very pleased that the Senate has approved the youth employment -opportunities bill which we earnestly hope you will support enthusiastically. The urgency of the situation must be well known to you, as it is to us in our daily experience in working with so many young people. May we also solicit your support for the President's proposal for the establishment of a national service program which provides for a "small, carefully selected corps of men and women of all ages working under local direction with professional persons and part-time local volunteers, to help provide urgently needed services in mental health centers and hospitals, on Indian reservations, to the families of migrant workers and in the educational and social institutions of hard-hit slum or rural poverty areas." We, like many other social agencies, could be helped significantly to expand our services to the community through this valuable corps. With much appreciation for your favorable consideration of this legislation. Sincerely yours, JACOB GOODSTEIN, President. AMERICAN RECREATION SOCIETY, INC., Hon. HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, Jr., DEAR SENATOR WILLIAMS: The American Recreation Society strongly urges your committee's favorable actions to create a National Service Corps as outlined in S. 1321 and other bills. Our society is a professional membership organization of recreation workers who serve in various recreation services throughout the United States and with our military and Red Cross groups over seas. We can see in this legislation some very significant help in relation to the ever-broadening leisure time needs which at present our limited resources in personnel, structures, and natural assets cannot meet. We believe that a National Service Corps can do much to help combat and prevent those things which lead to social illnesses within our society. We need volunteer assistance, but such assistance should be stimulated and guided by those who have received some training in working with volunteers. We feel that the National Service Corps program will stimulate, among other community programs, the answers to many of the needs and problems related to community recreation and, in that respect alone, would accomplish a great deal. However, we feel that there would be many other benefits as they relate to delinquency program, programs for the aging, programs in promoting good mental health, and the encouragement of family unity. Respectfully submitted. RAY R. BUTLER, Executive Director. STATEMENT BY THE DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN ACTION AND COMMUNITY SERVICE, THE UNITED CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY The oversea Peace Corps is almost 2 years old and soon the first of some 4,500 volunteers will be coming home. Few American Government sponsored programs today enjoy the almost universal acclaim that is accorded the Peace Corps. Both at home and abroad skeptics have been converted to supporters as the volunteers demonstrated that idealistic men and women with proper skills could perform useful service for the world's needy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Demonstrating, as the Peace Corps did, that there is a vast reservoir of idealism and talent that can be called to humanitarian service, it was not surprising that President Kennedy should seek to recruit volunteers to attack the many pressing social problems here in the United States. His message to Congress calling for the establishment of a National Service Corps is not only a natural extension of the Peace Corps idea but also supports the already existing volunteer efforts of the churches and other voluntary agencies. The churches have long supported work with migrants, Indians, the mentally ill and retarded, the chronically sick, the maladjusted, the aged-the entire needy portion of our population. More than most citizens, churchmen involved in these projects recognize the vast unmet needs of these people. We have supported our work in these areas of need through the voluntary giving of our members and as citizens have backed Community Chest and governmental efforts to meet our full responsibilities toward those in need. A The National Service Corps would supplement the efforts of the churches and other voluntary agencies in important areas of human welfare. It would recruit men and women with skills and idealism who would work for 1 year on locally initiated projects. The primary purpose would be to assist local communities and voluntary agencies attack major problems of human welfare. significant element of the National Service Corps approach would be to encourage additional volunteers to work with them on a full- or part-time basis. As with the overseas Peace Corps, the domestic program undoubtedly would stimulate local volunteer activity as well as provide a training ground for young men and women who would discover future vocational opportunities. The Department of Christian Action and Community Service, the United Christian Missionary Society, believes this worthy program deserves the support of churchmen. We urge our churches to study the President's proposal and then express their views on it to their Representatives and Senators. STATEMENT BY THE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I would like to join those who are supporting the legislation which would create a National Service Corps. Dedicated service by young people as well as by those who have retired can help people in need find ways to help themselves. Rural people in need can benefit fully as much from this type of dedicated assistance as those in urban areas. The problems of sickness and despair and poverty are less likely to be openly exhibited by those who have spent their lives in the semisolitude of the farm and the small community than by people in urban areas. By becoming a part of a community, by identifying themselves with the people and their problems. the corpsmen through their full-time effort can help find solutions to economic problems among rural people and can demonstrate how other citizens can serve the community in an equally effective manner. We believe that National Service corpsmen can help a great deal in our rural areas development program. Rural areas development is a program wherein leaders of a community examine the problems of their area, appraise their resources, determine those things that need to be done in order to overcome these problems, and initiate specific actions for getting more payroll jobs, more income from tourists, or more income from recreation enterprises. At the same time they move toward more efficient family size farms in place of farms that supply inadequate incomes and do not fully employ those who live on them. In the rural areas development program, the local leadership committee is supported and helped with information, technical assistance, and services, by Department of Agriculture agencies, representatives of other Federal agencies, and by State officials, but the desire for economic improvement, the basic planning and the initial forward steps should be taken by the local leaders. We know of the success of Peace Corps men in identifying themselves with people in foreign countries and of the guidance and assistance that has been given in taking the first steps toward economic development. We have every reason to believe the corpsmen carefully selected and carefully trained can become identified with local communities in this country to the point where they will be warmly received. When the corpsmen can become a part of a community, they can help turn ineffective discussion about the need for a new water system, a new sewage system, a new factory, a new hospital, and a new school into a sustained drive toward at least one of these things that the community needs. Also, they can offset the feeling of pessimism so often present in an impoverished community with a feeling of optimism. Apathy and frustration can be offset by pride in accomplishment. The Food and Agriculture Act of 1962 gave us new tools to use in revitalizing the economy of the rural areas. We can make loans to assist rural people in reshaping their areas in the same way as urban areas are reshaped by urban renewal. As has been demonstrated in the urban renewal, a basic change in the economy produces innumerable facets and factors which must be handled expeditiously. Local leaders may visualize the new economy they seek, but someone needs to carry this vision forward and relate the small pieces of progress being made to the overall program underway. Meanwhile, errands must be run, people must be contacted, contracts and proposals must be reevaluated. All of this is the type of work that in the end must be done by the local community leaders. In the formative state, however, the stimulus of carefully selected and trained corpsmen may well represent the margin between abandonment of the project and its successful completion. The 1962 Food and Agriculture Act also provided for pilot resource conservation and development programs. These can result in the more efficient use of land and water resources for recreation, for supplying the needs of small communities, and for agricultural production. Corpsmen by being on hand to make contracts between rural people, to help with educational meetings, and to keep before the people the goal of the conservation and development plan, can greatly accelerate the completion of these programs and their contribution to the economic development of the communities. Poor housing, lack of sanitary facilities, difficulties in obtaining basic education, and in finding proper vocational training, all are problems of the rural people. Alert corpsmen becoming identified with these people can point the way toward making the housing, training, and community facilities programs most effective in reaching those people most in need of the services. Over half of the poverty in the United States is in rural areas. Farm and rural nonfarm families living on substandard incomes total 4.1 million. This compares with 3.9 million urban families with similar substandard incomes. In the rural areas, there are 22 million people under 20 years of age. Over 4 million of these are in poverty-stricken families. There are almost 1 million migratory families with low incomes, inadequate homes, and little opportunity for proper education of their children. About 800 counties in the Nation have predominantly low income. More than 25,000 small towns are involved. Younger adults have migrated to the city from many of these areas. Leadership is hard to find, and there is apathy, frustration, and fear. In our rural-area development program in the Department of Agriculture, we are setting about revitalizing these communities so that they are again strong, viable, economic areas. We want to support the proposed legislation for National Service Corps men in order that we may have the young people and the older individuals to assist us in this effort. THE WELFARE FEDERATION, Hon. HARRISON WILLIAMS, Chairman, Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, DEAR SENATOR WILLIAMS: The Advisory Committee of the Central Volunteer Bureau of the Welfare Federation of Cleveland has given careful consideration to H.R. 5625, to create a National Service Corps. We are strongly of the opinion that in order to accomplish the worthy aims of this legislation, it is imperative the following provisions be included: High quality supervision should be a requirement for approval of projects. The effectiveness of performance, and the value of the experience of corpsmen, will be dependent upon the quality of supervision which they receive in the operating agencies to which they are assigned. By and large, local agencies would require financial supplementation to secure sufficient staff to assure such supervision. In view of the fact that most corpsmen probably will be working in conjunction with existing operating agencies, it is important thaat the local agency have the prerogative of final selection of corpsmen referred and of supervisory personnel. In promotion of this program from the national level, it is important that Federal agency contacts with the local community be through an existing central coordinating agency in order that we avoid inadvertent overlapping and conflicting planning. The concept of full-time employment for corpsmen during their term of duty is essential. This work should be distinctly unique when compared with the ordinary concept of voluntary service which, in most communities, is very extensive, and must not be confused or undermined. It is preferable that assignments of corpsmen be made in a community -other than the individual's home community. The potential of this program, both in terms of its productiveness and its values in development of community leaders, will be found in the quality of the personnel selected. We would hope this program would be most attractive to college graduates as an extension of their experience and education. They would be able to make the best contribution toward work to be done. We would not see this program as a solution to the youth employment problem. The legislation suggests partial local financing of projects. While this seems reasonable in principle, we believe that extension of this principle of direct Federal-local relationships in the financing of community services should be given thorough study. There are some indications that inducements to take advantage of Federal funds complicate local financial plan`ning. It may be that the State should be the channel for Federal programs which contemplate local financial participation in operating costs. We believe the greatest value which may emerge from a National Service Corps program will be development of a corps of civic leaders who, in the future, from this experience could carry on most effectively in their own communities when the federally sponsored program is terminated. Sincerely yours, Mrs. MARTIN R. KING, Chairman, Advisory Committee, Central Volunteer Bureau. NATIONAL NEWMAN CLUB FEDERATION The following resolution was passed by the National Executive Committee of the National Newman Club Federation at its spring meeting, April 6-7, 1963, in Cincinnati, Ohio: Title: The National Service Corps. Fact: At the December 1962 meeting of the United States Young Adult Council, the National Newman Club Federation issued statements in support of the National Service Corps. The National Service Corps is a program using the techniques and skills of young adults to recover the loss to our Nation from unemployment, underdevelopment, and natural and manmade conditions requiring economic, social, technical, and cultural rehabilitation. This program would utilize volunteer workers in a manner similar to the Peace Corps. Principle: The inherent dignity of man demands that we as responsible Christians cooperate with organizations using morally correct means to promotethe common good and the cause of God. Statement: The National Executive Committee of the National Newman Club Federation endorses the efforts of the U.S. Congress to create a National Service Corps and strongly recommends the participation of Catholic students in such a National Service Corps. Implementation: President Kennedy, majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate, chairmen of permanent House and Senate committees. chairman of the United States Young Adult Council, all federation officers and member clubs. AMERICAN PUBLIC WELFARE ASSOCIATION, Chicago, Ill., June 11, 1963. Hon. HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, Jr., DEAR SENATOR WILLIAMS: On behalf of the American Public Welfare Association I should like to express our support for the principles and general objectives embodied in the proposal to establish a National Service Corps (S. 1321). The American Public Welfare Association is the national voluntary organization representing the field of public welfare. Our membership includes public welfare agencies at all levels of government and individuals who work in these programs, as well as others having an interest in this field. The members of our association are well aware of the services needed among migrant workers, Indians living on reservations, the mentally ill in institutions, and individuals and families living in the blighted areas of large cities. In almost all situations of these kinds public welfare agencies are already carrrying heavy responsibilities for providing assistance and services. But we doubt that there are any of these instances in which much more help is not needed. We believe there are many situations in which National Service Corps projects could provide services that are urgently needed and which could not otherwise be made available. It also appears to us that the mechanisms for sponsorship and organization which are proposed would open new opportunities for volunteer service. Such opportunities, we believe, would not be in competition with the existing volunteer services, but would rather augment the total contribution of volunteers by recruiting new workers. In our view one of the essential features of the proposal is that projects would be set up and corpsmen assigned only on the invitation of a responsible local sponsoring authority. We believe that a provision of this kind is a necessary safeguard and that it will also result in increased public support for the undertaking. We are confident that if this program is enacted public welfare agencies throughout the country will be prominent among the sponsors of projects. Sincerely yours, HAROLD HAGEN, Washington Representative. PROVIDENCE, R.I., June 1, 1963. FREDERICK B. BLACKWELL, Counsel, Senate Subcommittee on Labor, DEAR MR. BLACKWELL: I wish to file the following statement in support of legislation which proposes to establish a national service program: Through my responsibilities and activities I am in continuous touch with older adults and have felt a growing need for the development of desirable opportunities for volunteer service. The establishment of the National Service Corps through passage of H.R. 5625-S. 1321 will serve significantly to answer the need not only for constructive and meaningful activity for retired folks. but also for combating our country's problems of poverty, ignorance, and disease. We therefore urge prompt passage of H.R. 5625-S. 1321, and offer our professional resources to the National Service Corps to assist in the implementation of its objectives. |