Michael Bloomberg Gives $30M of Own Money Toward Program For Minority Youth
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is contributing millions of his own dollars to support an initiative aimed at helping the city's African-American and Latino men share in the "promise of American freedom" by allow them better access to jobs, health, and education resources.
The program, called the Young Men's Initiative, is a three-year program that will cost NYC about $127 million. Bloomberg's own philanthropic foundation will contribute $30 million, while fellow billionaire George Soros will match the mayor's contribution. The remaining $67.5 million will be covered by the city.
The initiative, aimed at about 315,000 males between 16 and 24 years old, is the nation's "boldest and most comprehensive effort to tackle the broad disparities slowing the advancement of black and Latino young men," Bloomberg said in a statement Thursday.
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The Young Men's Initiative puts great emphasis on the practical needs of the city’s poorest African-American and Latino males.
"When we look at poverty rates, graduation rates, crime rates, and employment rates, one thing stands out: blacks and Latinos are not fully sharing in the promise of American freedom and far too many are trapped in circumstances that are difficult to escape," Bloomberg said. "Even though skin color in America no longer determines a child’s fate – sadly, it tells us more about a child’s future than it should."
Much of the initiative's programs rolling out this fall will include job placement centers in public-housing complexes, establishing fatherhood classes, and reviews from schools on the academic progress of the Latino and African-American students.
Additional components of the program include revamping the Department of Probation, which is responsible for supervising about 30,000 of the city's residents. About 84% of that number are African-American and Latino males, according to the mayor's office.
"We are confronting these facts head-on, not to lament them, but to change them, and to ensure that ‘equal opportunity’ is not an abstract notion but an everyday reality, for all New Yorkers," Bloomberg said.
Soros, founder and chairman of the Campaign for Black Male Achievement of the Open Society Foundations, called the obstacles faced by NYC's youth of color "appalling and inconsistent."
“I know from practical experience that it is possible to make meaningful improvements and transform the lives of our most vulnerable," he said.
This is not the first time Bloomberg, currently serving his third term in office, has taken it upon himself to rally funds to help his city get ahead. The mayor recently raised $1.5 million from anonymous donors to continue statewide testing affecting thousands high school students heading to college.
