New Orleans receives $150k to create youth employment plans

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The city of New Orleans will receive a $150,000 grant to create an employment plan for disadvantaged youth.

The New Orleans Advocate reports Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration will create a strategy to increase economic mobility with the funding in the coming months.

The funds are a part of a $12 million partnership among the Ballmer Group, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The paper says the city will develop and test a youth employment program over the next 18 months.

The foundations say the initiative stems from a study by Harvard which found that only half of American children today will grow up to earn higher salaries than their parents. That’s down from the 90% of children born in the 1940s whose wages outpaced their parents.

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Information from: The New Orleans Advocate, http://www.neworleansadvocate.com