By Jeff Lipton
The program, Labor and Industry for Education, or LIFE, operates out of Yeshiva Toras Chaim of South Shore, 1170 William St., assisting about 100 Five Towns children in at-risk behavior prevention and early-intervention programs and providing after-school and weekend initiatives as well as mentoring and family strengthening programs.
The $450,000 in federal funding was secured with the help of Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and will be available as soon as Congress finalizes the budget for fiscal year 2003 and it is signed into law by President Bush.
The funding was approved by Congress on Thursday, Feb. 13, despite Congress's concentration in tight budgetary times on homeland security and a possible U.S. war with Iraq.
As New York and New Yorkers continue to feel the pinch from the economic slump and the aftershocks of the terrorist attacks, vital services like schools and after-school programs are increasingly at risk, Schumer said.
LIFE also helps place newly arrived Russian immigrants in jobs, and has helped thousands of adults obtain job skills. It was launched about 20 years ago by Rabbi Benjamin Kamenetzky of Yeshiva of South Shore to assist mostly Jewish but also non-Jewish students who were in jeopardy of dropping out or performing poorly in school.
The program works closely with private industry and labor organizations in the New York metropolitan area to help families stay together by offering educational programs for children, parents and grandparents, said McCarthy. LIFE plans to construct a new center next to the yeshiva that will be used to expand and integrate its programs. LIFE runs a Headstart program for young children, operating out of a building in Starrett City in Brooklyn, and the program also provides vocational training for adults and weekend vocational training for developmentally disabled children and adults.
I look at it from a gun-violence stance, said McCarthy, a well-known proponent of toughening gun laws. This will keep at-risk kids off the streets and help them become even better students and better citizens in the future.
Rabbi Simcha Lefkowitz, LIFE's executive director since the start of the program, said he requested about $1.5 million in federal funding for the program about a year ago, which would have helped build the new center next to the yeshiva. But he said he was happy to receive the $450,000, which will go a long way to help expand services for children in need of them.
We want a center for kids for after-school activities, a place they can congregate and do sports activities or just as a place for them to hang out, Lefkowitz said. We will not give up hope for that.
We'll still do fundraising to build a building for the center. But we'll put this money to good use, Lefkowitz said of the federal funding. We want to help more children in the program [with] more mentoring, more resources for them.
The rabbi thanked McCarthy and Schumer for championing the cause of education for young children, which is very important.
He said that at-risk youth are put in special classes at the Hewlett yeshiva and taught by teachers trained to work with them. To get money from the government like this is a big shot in the arm, Lefkowitz said. We definitely have been growing, and our services need to expand. We work with the entire family unit.
The funding provision was included in the 2003 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which passed the U.S. Senate last week.
McCarthy said the planned LIFE center would be ideal in this age of terrorism. We have seen, certainly in all of our schools, heightened tension with young people, she said. Young people are feeling the tension of terrorism, and they need a place to go to express the feelings they may have.
She said the $450,000 should become available to LIFE in the spring.
