WORK FOR BOYS.

Evening Star, Issue 21138, 25 June 1932, Page 12

WORK FOR BOYS.

Manv parents, anxious because of the continued unemployment of their boys and girls, will welcome Mr Coates’s statement of this week as quite the best news they have heard for some time. Mr Coates all along has urged the necessity that requirements of the adult must come first. Whilst not receding from this attitude, the Unemployment Board is evidently now ready to consider what might be done to assist the army of young people for whom there has seemed to bo no place in the present sorry scheme of things. In choosing Mr Ansoll to investigate these matters in the South Island a wise choice has been made. Mr Ansell is possessed of considerable organising abilities. He will earn the gratitude of his constituents if he can use these abilities to help solve the problems of unemployed youths. Some of the proposals in Mr Coates’s announcement will require careful consideration—e.g., the provision of camps for unemployed boys and the engagement without pay of young people as probationers in offices and business houses. Many families are too poor to provide the money required for the small incidentals of going to work —tram fares, shoes, etc.; and yet these poor folk are the very ones most needing assistance. True, much is already being done by the various social bodies, churches, Y.W.C.A., and the like, and we understand the Y.M.C.A. and the Vocational Guidance Committee are busy organising activities for unemployed boys. The latter committee holds its annual meeting on Tuesday evening next, when proposals for the next year’s work will be brought forward. Perhaps ' the Vocational Guidance Committee could use its organisation to co-ordinate the work being done by the various bodies assisting in these problems of juvenile unemployment. We commend this suggestion to the committee and to Mr Ansoll.