Editorial: Philanthropy is just a start

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has opened his wallet to take on an important, but intractable problem: helping disadvantaged young black and Hispanic men enter the economic mainstream.

Bloomberg and fellow philanthropist George Soros have committed $30 million each to an ambitious, $130 million, three-year New York City initiative looking to break the pattern of exclusion and failure. The problem is critical and the two deserve plaudits for putting up their own money.

By almost any measure -- poverty, graduation rates, unemployment and crime -- minority males age 16 to 24 are not doing very well. And a permanent underclass in an otherwise affluent nation is an inherently explosive situation. The ongoing rioting in London was sparked by protests over a police shooting, but the tinder was too many idle men with few prospects for a better life.

With government at every level cutting back, it would be admirable if more individuals with deep pockets, on Long Island and throughout the region, emulated the efforts of Bloomberg and Soros. But applause for what these two men are doing comes with some caveats.

The problems of poverty are notoriously stubborn and often frustrate good intentions. To have a chance of defying the odds, those implementing the Young Men's Initiative should listen to the people they want to serve. If the program doesn't somehow help them grapple with their immediate needs, it will lose their trust and cooperation and ultimately fail.

Flexibility is critical. The initiative includes a number of promising elements and has an important focus on making bureaucratic systems adapt to meet real needs -- putting probation offices and job recruitment centers in public housing projects, for instance, and focusing their efforts on keeping the men out of jail. Grading public schools on the academic progress of black and Hispanic male students, and offering fatherhood training and remedial math and literacy classes linked to paid internships will help meet immediate needs. And the commitment to follow young men from middle school into a successful career shows the desire to see this tough job through. But a program wed to any approach, however promising conceptually, risks failure.

Once the initiative is operational, each element should be continuously evaluated. Those that work should be expanded and strengthened, those that don't, dumped. Program administrators must always be willing to try something new. And with all that, any significant impact will require funding that lasts beyond this three year commitment. Breaking the grip of poverty won't be easy or quick. Any gains will be lost if the effort flags.

Sustaining a costly, intensive effort is a lot to ask of philanthropists. But if this Bloomberg initiative proves effective in the next three years, it should be easier to pry loose public money to continue the work. Whether paid for out of private pockets or government coffers, helping impoverished young men forge a productive future is a challenge the region, and the nation, has to meet. hN