Job Program Targets At-Risk Youths

Crews of at-risk youths are repairing Long Beach sidewalks this summer while learning office skills under a new city-sponsored job training program.

Organizers estimate that the crews have ripped up and poured new concrete over more than 5,000 square feet of sidewalk across the city since mid-June.

When the workers, who are between 16 and 21, are not laboring beside a cement mixer, they are in class learning how to write a resume, take tests and use computers, said Judith Carey, coordinator of Long Beach’s Summer Youth Employment Training Program.

Co-sponsored by the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, the program, called the Curbside Project, pays the teenagers $5.15 an hour for 28 hours of work a week. When the program ends later this month, participants will be invited to join a masonry apprenticeship program or receive other help in finding a job.