About 200 area leaders will hold a summit on Friday to develop a plan to help residents ages 16 to 24, who may have a bleak future. A national survey found that 14.4 percent of Blair Countians 16 to 24 years old don’t go to school, don’t work, and aren’t involved with their community. That’s higher than the national and state average.
The Healthy Blair County Coalition is using a $10,000 federal grant to work on the problem.
And they’re asking for your help.
Coalition Executive Director Coleen Heim says, “These are our kids this is our community, this is our future, so it’s important that everybody look at it that way.”
“You’ve got our youth who have gone away to college, or gone to trade school, and then they leave Blair County and what you have left is 14 percent of our youth in that age group that aren’t in school, and aren’t working and don’t know what our future means, that affects the entire county,” she explains.
Heim says the aim of the project is to provide pathways of opportunity for all youth in Blair County and this is only the beginning.