i am family mosque attorney general of the state of california there is no one cause for juvenile delinquency a and therefore there is no one cure for juvenile delinquen elements that go to make up a fine young person in our society are generally threefold first loving parents second late intelligence teachers and thirdly a whole but all too many of our young people today lack one two or even all three of these elements and therefore we have what we call juvenile delinquents the community then has an obligation to provide those missing element when i speak of the community i mean society generally especially and also private organizations which work in this field any private organization that gives to youngsters the opportunity to do something useful and constructive gives them a chance of a man of the long participate of winning the approval and that for patients of their elders and of their contempt for any such organization in our society today is when carl may started useful service he realised he could work through the leaders of the jacket clubs at first i went out looked up these boys on the street this is john bird president of the warlocks a very important club in san francisco put it up to them what they help i told them we needed them and it worked because it the truth morning this is a useful service work project these boys are working for nothing doing something for somebody else who needs help doing the answer is that these boys are no different than the rest of us they need to be needed they may have had less chance than most of us to relate constructively to the community they need the opportunity to work for status and recognition  service we take them as they come we do not judge them for anything they may have done or failed to do in the past we do not excommunicate them if they fail to live up to our standards of work or cond what we do is accept them as individuals and put them to work we ask them for help and who can resist th another project build a new parking area for a community center for services not a training program for future employment but it does give the opportunity to learn something of new skill work projects are referred from many sources chiefly from social agencies the departments of public health and public welfare the visiting nurses association the family services side and others the entire youth the service program has been made possible through generous help from the church groups businessmen school and civic authorities and private as well as public agenc s the boys of youth the service of help many elderly and handicapped people with home jaws and repairs they cannot manage themselves when this project started i figured that if what i believe is true then people who have known bitterness and despair and frustration will have every bit as much human understanding as the most enlightened people supposedly around many spanish speaking people live here and now these over near san jose they use a service project help finish a classroom in the church to be used for english class sure the boys messed up on a lot of things when they're on their own but they get something done and what they do is their achievement they can learn from it and be proud of the adult control or adult guidance really means the imposition of authority and that would kill the whole idea of boys know that this is their program and that it's in their hands not ours they respond to that you know you can ask a person to do something and you'll see a difference in the work because if you ask me to do it i'll do a better job i'll do anything if somebody asked me but if you say do they do that if you don't do well you better do it well i just won't do it and i want to see what somebody is going to do if i don't do  a service give of their strength and time and skill and the community gives to and both get back more than they give a sense of sharing and the boys get something they greatly need tangible evidence of community confidence in them expressed in terms of good materials in the fish and in valuable equipment a good lunch on the job is a pretty well understood form of morals a part also the word is recognition the boys of youth for service work hard without pay most of them have very little themselves yet they volunteer repeatedly to help other people in need recognition and community support become very important to maintain morale a little publicity for work well done is small payment by the community for services generously given a party was organized to celebrate the first hundred work projects completed in spite o ground a council of youth clubs from all parts of the city developed directly from the contacts made on work project the boys themselves decided they wanted a common meeting ground where they could make just differences between the clans before they blow up in the rumble they also wanted to promote social affairs and special projects on a city wide basis both prestige and security were involved in belonging to the organisation one of the first council projects developed in support of the national youth march for integrated schools held in washington d c in april nineteenth fifty nine the boys and youth for service know that integration is not just the struggle of american negroes for equality but it's linked with the fight against discrimination of all newly arrived minority groups one hundred years ago the irish made up less than one third of the population of new york but they were charged with over two thirds of the arrests that were newcomers then today the broader ricans the mexicans of pacific and oriental peoples the the service council raise the money to send a delegate to washington the only one sent by a san francisco youth organization and he carried petitions gathered by many other groups as well with over six thousand signature largest used to service projects with the building of a bridge across the river bid on this reservation to give the indians access to a large section of their land previous they cut off during the rainy season  a lot of people get confused about this you for service thing they tend to lump people into categories or groups there are people who think of youth for service as a youth serving agency purely in terms of juvenile delinquency prevention well if it works that way that's fine but that's not our primary focus that's not what we're here for accepting individuals that's what makes the whole thing meaningful when it comes right down to it we have no political axe to grind no religious axe to grind no social acts or anything except that we are trying to reconcile differences useful we have a choice in dealing with these boys of continuing the old community policy of suspicion surveillance rejection and with the usual results all we can take a new look at the man our own attitudes and start to assume mean something it'll be what the boys make it meet with our