Promoting Vocational Skills and Workplace Education
After WWII, the National Child Labor Committee significantly broadened its scope of involvement by placing a new emphasis on the importance of educating children about the working world as well as advocating programs designed to advance the education and health of migrant farmworkers throughout the America. Today the NCLC's four main goals include:
- Educating children about the world of work
- Preventing the exploitation of children and youth in the labor market
- Improving the health and education opportunities for the children of the migrant farmworkers
- Increasing public awareness of the work done day-in and day-out on behalf of the nation's children
During the 1950s and 60s the NCLC advocated and contributed to the various bills including the Manpower Development and Training Act, the Economic Opportunity Act and the Vocational Education Act.
In 1979 NCLC collaborated with the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America to found the National Youth Employment Coalition(NYEC). The NYEC was formed in order to provide support to organizations that help youth become productive private citizens. The NCLC provided the original housing for the NYEC and shared an Executive Director from 1983-1987.
In 1985 the NCLC introduced the Lewis Hine Awards for Service to Children and Youth, which honor unheralded Americans for their work with young people, and give special awards to better-known leaders for their extraordinary efforts. Over the past two decades the awards have developed into an annual event of national notoriety with awards given out to a diverse range of professionals and volunteers. Some past recipients include Gene Bowen of Warwick, New York in 2008 who co-founded Road Recovery, a clinically acclaimed skills program designed for teens recovering from drug addiction and Stacy Maciuk of Brentwood, Tennessee in 2007 who organized a suitcase collection drive to provide foster children with a place to pack their clothes and possessions other than a garbage bag.
From 1991 to today, the National Child Labor Committee created and expanded the Kids and the Power of Work (KAPOW) program. KAPOW exists as a network of private business and elementary school partnerships which introduces students to the world of work though lessons taught by private sector volunteers. Today, KAPOW servers as a model for similar programs, runs operations in over thirty communities from Florida to California, and serves over 50,000 students.
Read more about this topic: National Child Labor Committee
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—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
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“Many people will say to working mothers, in effect, “I don’t think you can have it all.” The phrase for “have it all” is code for “have your cake and eat it too.” What these people really mean is that achievement in the workplace has always come at a price—usually a significant personal price; conversely, women who stayed home with their children were seen as having sacrificed a great deal of their own ambition for their families.”
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)