How the Youth Corps Act Affects You

Having been in Washington long enough, I know that most people look at the thousands of bills introduced in Congress as just words on a page, something that won’t have much day to day effect on their lives. Sometimes I think the same thing. “Do we really need another bill commending the Boy Scouts of America? Can’t we just assume that?” I’ll think to myself. Every so often though, a bill comes along that can actually have a positive effect not just on a few lives, but many, and the organizations and people that serve them as well. The “Youth Corps Act of 2010,” recently introduced in the House by Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ), is one of those bills.

H.R. 5376, as it’s known, (and its companion bill in the Senate, S. 3178) will establish a grant program within the Department of Labor for youth Service and Conservation Corps, essentially creating a home for Corps within the federal government. Now, that sounds a lot like bureaucrat-speak, and on a certain level it is. But when you put it in terms of what it will do for an individual Corps, it becomes much clearer. Having visited a few Corps, I know the one recurring theme among them all: the struggle for funding. Every Corps director and program manager has done the same exercise: “If I take that money from AmeriCorps, and put it together with that grant from the county, then add in the contract with the Forest Service…”. Corps spend so much time cobbling together disparate funding sources in order to maintain their programs that some have little to no time to grow and continuously improve their programs.

Now, the Youth Corps Act won’t solve every funding problem for every Corps. But what it will do is give Corps the opportunity to establish their programs with funding that is designed to go only to Corps. Other programs can compete for the funding, but they have to follow the Corps model. In plain English, this means that Corps will only be competing with other Corps. With more funding opportunities and greater access to funds, Corps will be able to spend less time grasping at straws for funding, and more time better serving their communities and the young people in their communities.

But, while all of this is good news, just getting the bill introduced is not enough. We need to get the bill passed, and to do that, we need to show support in both the House and the Senate. Both bills have co-sponsors, but the more co-sponsors, the more support you can show to members of Congress who might be tempted to not get involved. So, right now, it’s important that every Corps director, every program manager, every person with a phone, or an email account, or a book of stamps, contact their Congressperson or Senator and urge them to become a co-sponsor. Tell them what you’re doing now, and what you could be doing if you had additional funding.