Scholarship recipients

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC 40 East lst Bee

OPPORTUNITY no

FOR RELEASE
SUNDAY, MARCH 6

QHD REGIONAL OFFICE NOMINATES FIVE FOR SHRIVER SCHOLARSHIPS

Five young people "who have shown remarkable courage and
tenacity in battling the odds stacked against their lives" have
been nominated from the Northeast for Sargent Shriver Scholarships,
Robert J. Mangum said yesterday.

"They have shown the persefverance and will to help not
only thenselves but others start to break out of the poverty
cycle," Mangum said. He is Northeast Regional Director for
the Office or Eeonoale Opportunity.

The nominees are Marion Coates of Babylon, N.Y., Corena Perry
of Newark, N.J., Lubbie Harper Jr. of New Haven, Conn., Alfredo Ribot
» of Bridgeport, Conn., and Robert Ware of Hartford, Conn,

One of the five nominees will be chosen by a joint selection
board, representing the OEO and the Experiment in International
Living, to go to a Latin American, African or Asian country for
two months this summer, live with a family there and join in the
work of Peace Corps volunteers.

The selection committee will likewise choose one nominee from
each of the other six OEO regions. The Experiment in International '
Living, a private, non-profit organization which promotes mutual
respect, anong peoples of the world through mutual understanding, is
fully financing the scholarships.

Mangun said that his office received approximately 75
from

the Northeast representing every raepect of the War on Poverty.
A selection committee from the regional office interviewed 15
personally,

NORTHEAST REGIONAL OFFICE

‘he region's five nominees have been variously active in

the Neighborhood. Youth Corps, the College Work-Study Program and
poverty under the Community Action

Program, All were recommended by the comunity action agencies in

their respective communities. All have expressed, strong

inclinations toward teaching or group social work as a career.

The community action agencies are: Action for Bridgeport
Community Development, Inc. (256 Golden Hill Street, Bridgeport,
Conn., 203-333- 5536) 3 Community Renewal Team of Greater Hartford
(18 Asylum Street, Hartford, Conn., 203-525-8236) ; United Community |
Corporation ay. Branford Place, Newark, New Jersey

__ 201-623-7313); Community Progress Inc. (270 Orange Street, New Haven,

Conn., 203-787-6572); Suffolk County Bureau of Economic Opportunity
(1 Indian Head Road, Commack, New York, 516-543-6666) .

Because "I would like to help people as people have helped
me," Marion Coates looks forward to a teaching ci

Mias Contes, 20, will apply for entrance to a four-year college or
university in New York City, with a major in anthropology in

mind, after she graduates this June from the Suffolk County
Community College in Selden, N.Y.

Dr. Albert M. Ammerman, president of the community college,
says that Miss Coates "with both parents deceased, found the
strength to contine her education, to help not only herself but
others with low income and in difficult straits. She has proved
herself academically and socially."

A beneficiary of the College Work-Study Program, Miss Coates
successfully tutored seven low-income nursing students between
20 arid 40 years old through their biology course.

s Coates is a graduate of Babylon High School, where she
was active on the yearbook, the school paper and the dramatic
club. From her early high school days, she has volunteered her

time to community causes. For several years she was a "candy-striper,"
e

or nurses! aide, at the Southside Hospital in Babylon, Now shi
spends much of her spare time working in the clinic run by tl
Planned Parenthood Association of South Suffolk.

Corena Perry, 18, lives in a small walk-up apartuent in one
of the most severely run-down neighborhoods of Newark,

"middle child" in a family of eleven, she is the ward of en older
sister, who works in a Montclair laundry.

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Miss Perry, whose Neighborhood Youth Corps job in neighborhood
research and tabulation of records is helping her set her
sights on college, ranks first in Central High School's senior
class of 351 students and is a National Achievement Scholarship
alist,

Also outstanding extracurricularly, Miss Perry is secretary of
the student council, president of the English honor society,
president of the Future Teachers of America and president of
the National Honor Society.

She hopes to teach in the Newark high school system
"because I know something about the problems some of the kids
have, and I think I can help,"

"I am recommending Lubbie Harper because in many ways he
epitomizes what the poverty program is all about. Not only is
he going to 'make it' personally in spite of his environmental
handicaps but he is one of those rare people who after 'making it!
will stay and continue the fight against poverty and injustice
in our cities," says Thomas N. Flood, neighborhood coordinator
for New Haven's Hill Area,

Flood's prediction is already coming true.

While completing his Master's at the University of Connecticut
School of Social Work (where he is helped by a College Work-: Study
scholarship), Harper, 23, still finds time to counsel one group of
adolescent girls and one of boys for the Dixwell Commmity House.

The Dixwell area, where Harper grew up, is one of New Haven's
most deeply scarred neighborhoods.

"The heart of the problem is the negative image these kids
have of themselves," says Harper.

"All of society -- teachers ani ministers included, the lot --
have combined to tell them in one way or another that they're
no good, that they have no future.

"What gives me hope, though, is that now they are beginning
to question the image, They are beginning to look forward to
something."

Married and the father of two, Harper graduated from Wilbur
Cross High School and from New Haven College, where he was
president of his class and an outstanding athlete,

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He has worked with Community Progress, Inc., since its
beginning, interviewing for research studies, conducting recreation
programs and coordinating group work at the Prince Street
elementary school.

Like many others who have "made it" from the slums, Harper
is consistently generous in his time to
organizations,

Although he is only 20 years old, Alfredo Ribot was recently
elected chairman of the East Side Neighborhood Council and hence
is a member of the steering committee of Action for Bridgeport
Community Development.

Ribot says he is surprised to have been elected, A
recounting of his neighborhood activities and leadership lessens
the surprise for others: work at St, Vincent's Hospital, teaching
Spanish at St. Mary's Church, re of
into the Boy and Girl Scouts, running a playground in the summer
for the Hall Neighborhood House. Part of his work has been done
under the Neighborhood Youth Corps; most is volunteer.

Ribot is also secretary of the Tenants! association of
Father Panik Village, a 23-year-old housing development.
he was four years cld hie family, now munbering ten, camo to
New York from Puerto Rico and shortly thereafter to Bridgeport when
his father could find no employment in New York, An older
brother is currently in the Army in Korea,

A graduate of Warren Harding High School where he was senior
class president, Ribot has had part-time jobs since he was 13.
Four years ago he began at the Main Line Diner as a dishwasher.
He has advanced to become a short-order cook.

Now a sophomore at Sacred Heart University where he is
president of the choir, Ribot is planning to major

psychology with a view towards teaching elementary or junior

high school, possibly in Bridgeport, possibly in Puerto Rico.

"The greatest thing you can be is a teacher," he says, adding

that he wants to combine teaching with social work. He is thinking
of applying to become a Peace Corps Volunteer first.

Last Christmas as part of his Neighborhood Youth Corps work for
the Youth-in-Action Center in Hartford's North End, Robert
Ware, 18, organized three Christmas parties for a total of 300
children, Ho got i for the an
P y campaign.

of ad
y at the erties he played Santa Claus.

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Ware profited in these tasks from thorough experience in
neighborhood organization, In October, 1964, he formed with five
other teenagers the Hartford Flames ("What? A Club. Who? A Friends")
to stay out of trouble and do something constructive.

The Flames! membership now numbers more than 60 boys and
girls 8 through 20, and President Ware lists their present
activities: tutoring, camera club, field trips, movies, camping,
arts and crafts, bowling, group singing, discussions and
"junior Flames."

Activities "in the making" include typing and shorthand,
sewing and cooking classes, marching corps, sports league,
tutoring children in hospitals, pen pals with convalescent homes,

d a big brother club.

In addition, the Flames have formed a "rescue service" for
young people in trouble, sponsored hootenannies and talent shows
at convalescent homes and at the Mansfield State Training School,
and campaigned for the Cerebral Palsy Fund and the March Against
Leukemia, Tumors and Muscular Disorders,

The State Child Welfare’ Department has begun to refer
problem cases to the Flames.

Ware says he got the idea for the Flames "because I didn't
want kids to grow up like me." Deserted as a baby by his parents,
he grew up as a state ward ("that's a bad word -- he's on the
state") and knows about being "in trouble",("From about 12
I hung around with the wrong crowd, I went with anybody who
would accept me and be my friend."),

Brushes with the law involved running away several times from
the home in which he had been placad, being with a group caught
stealing, pulling false alarms and the like.

Ware credits a young high school science teacher with
reversing his direction by taking a permnal interest in him.
He dropped out of Weaver High School, but now wants to go back,
and on to college if possible, perhaps after a stint in the Air
Force.

A board member of the Community Service Council, Ware is interested

in a career of neighborhood social work.
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