PBH Group to Arouse Interest in Poverty War

The Phillips Brooks House Association has established a committee to recruit Cambridge residents to participate to neighborhood planning for federal anti-poverty programs.

The committee, Community Organization is Cambridge, will be responsible for organizing grass-roots support and interest for Cambridge projects financed under the Economic Opportunity Act.

Few Involved

Very few of the potential beneficiaries are now involved in formulating and administering these projects. Barbara Sard '68, chairman of COIC, said yesterday. All Office of Economic Opportunity funds are granted with the provision that the affected citizens as well as professional planners will be able to initiate programs.

The Cambridge Economic Opportunity committee, a citizens' group which coordinator the city's applications for OEO funds, has three "professional organizers" to raise grass-roots support.

These organizers, however, have almost no staff and very little money, Miss Bard said, and they are therefore unable to make contact with all the Cambridge residents who may be affected by the OEO programs.

PBH has never before been involved with "community organization," but has limited itself to programs providing specific services--recreation, tutoring, academic enrichment, and the like. Miss Bard and eight Harvard students, however, have informally assisted the CEOC staff this year.

COIC will recruit "about 80" volunteers from Harvard and Radcliffe at Fall registration, Miss Bard said. The CEOC's professional organizers will direct the student's work in Cambridge's six 'opportunity areas," as the neighborhoods where the OEO programs operate have been designated.

"It is difficult to describe community organization techniques," Miss Sard said. She envisions doorbell-ringing campaigns, flyers, and meetings within the six neighborhoods to interest residents in anti-poverty programs.

Each of the six neighborhoods has a planning commission which coordinates all ideas for uses of federal money, but participation by local residents on these commissions has been sparse.

Two Levels

Neighborhood residents are involved in anti-poverty planning at two levels of the CEOC organization. Some recipients of aid serve on local planning commissions and on task forces organized by those commissions to consider specific problems. Local residents are also urged to attend public hearings conducted by these commissions.

"The people who come to meetings are those who also join groups like the PTA," Miss Sard said. "CEOC and PBH want to find out what the non-joiners think."