The problems of the urban poor, including unemployment, neighborhood deterioration, crime, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, inadequate schools, and poor health, are the concerns of the Foundation's Urban Poverty program. Representing about one-fifth of the Foundation's grants budget, the program has two major objectives: to build strong institutions in urban communities through which the urban poor can work to solve their problems; and to develop and test new approaches that these institutions can use to promote the social and economic health of urban communities.

Among the urban institutions receiving Foundation support are community development corporations, human service agencies, and secondary schools. They are testing new ways to put the youthful poor to work, to prevent school dropout, to revitalize depressed communities, to prevent welfare dependency and teen pregnancy, and to improve the health and intellectual development of children.

Although the bulk of this work is carried on in the United States, the Foundation also supports initiatives to improve the lives of the urban poor in Third World countries.

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING

Of the more than nine million new jobs created in the United States since the economic recovery began in November 1982, less than 3 percent have gone to teenagers aged sixteen through nineteen. By comparison, in the late 1970s, this group commanded 13 percent of all new jobs created. Inner-city minority youth have been especially hard hit: 40 to 50 percent of blacks and nearly one-quarter of Hispanics remain unemployed. Many are high school dropouts, without the basic skills to compete in today's job market.

To help these young people, the Foundation supports initiatives that offer them opportunities to work, learn, and serve. Grants are aimed at preventing school dropout and easing the transition to work, at developing more effective remedial education and training programs, at improving the quality and expanding the network of youth service corps programs, and at adding to knowledge about the causes of unemployment and effective remedies.

In the area of dropout prevention, for example, the Foundation has cooperated with local public agencies in funding an experimental program that is providing fourteen- and fifteen-year-old youth who are a year or more behind in school with work experience and instruction in reading and mathematics during the summer months. The aim is to prevent the loss of learning that normally occurs during the out-of-school months, which often leads to further school failure and dropout. Some 500 youths have participated in the experiment over two summers. Early results are encouraging. Learning decay was halted and many participants gained up to one-half grade in reading and mathematics compared to a group of peers. This year the Foundation granted an additional $1.1 million to Public/Private Ventures of Philadelphia, which has been coordinating the experiment. A portion of the grant will be used to analyze data on the school and work experiences of Hispanic youth.

Additional funding also went to expand a remedial education program for dropout youth that has been developed by the Remediation and Training Institute of Alexandria, Va. Headed by Robert Taggart, a training specialist formerly with the U.S. Department of Labor, rti has developed a competency-based curriculum that integrates computer-assisted and other instructional systems to improve the skills of underachieving youths. Called the Comprehensive Competencies Program (ccp), the curriculum provides instruction in reading, mathematics, language arts, science, and life skills. It includes a computer-managed information system that prescribes lessons, scores tests, and records progress. Students who complete 100 hours of ccp instruction on average achieve reading gains of 2.4 grades, compared with gains of one grade for conventional remedial education programs. Acceptance of the system has grown rapidly; 125 learning centers throughout the country serving more than 30,000 students annually are now using ccp, and the numbers are expected to double within a year.

This year the Foundation granted $748,400 to six nonprofit organizations to establish some thirty ccp learning centers. rti received a further $875,000 to assist the groups in integrating the program with their other activities,