Stimulus Package Provides Jobs For Mississippi Youth

President Obama’s Economic stimulus package is sending millions of dollars to the state this summer to help Mississippi’s youths get summer jobs. MPB’s Phoebe Judge has more.

Just over $4.5 million dollars of the economic stimulus package will be spent throughout the state this summer giving Mississippi’s youths between the ages of 16-24 jobs in agriculture, schools districts and headstart programs. Rev. Charles Branch is running the summer youth program in five counties in southern Mississippi. He has already placed over 350 youths in jobs and says he still has 300 on the waiting list,

“So the applications are just running rampant, my biggest concern and issue has been getting enough local partners with us so that we can place these youth.”

The workforce summer program gives job priority to those youth in the lower income bracket. Tremain Lewis, who is spending the summer as an office assistant at the Gulf Coast Community Action Agency says he applied to five different jobs with no luck before finding out about the program,

“I feel like the teenagers now in this day and age are the future, if we aren’t able to step up to the plate and do certain things, the economy really will drop.”

Rick Fayard is public information officer for the American Medical Response company in Gulfport, his company will be hiring 6 youths for the summer. Fayard says the program is a win-win for all,

“The stimulus package allows us to hire these students throughout the summer in positions we normally wouldn’t be able to fill, and it’s a great introduction to medical services as a whole, hopefully from this they can learn EMS from the inside out and hopefully make it a career for them one day.”

The youths employed through the summer work program will work no more than 32 hours a week, and be paid minimum wage. The program ends September 30th.