Depression-era work scheme may be copied using jobless young Scots
A WORK scheme based on an initiative by US president Franklin D Roosevelt to keep young people occupied during the Great Depression could be introduced in Scotland. Unemployed youths would be put to work building paths, planting trees and making central Scotland a greener, more appealing place to live.
The idea is based on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief programme dreamed up by Roosevelt for unemployed men aged 18 to 24 in the United States during the 1930s.
They were paid a small salary for manual labour helping to create parks and forests in order to improve the natural environment in rural parts of the United States.
Now Keith Geddes, head of a group tasked with making central Scotland greener, hopes to bring in a scheme based on Roosevelt's idea.
The Central Scotland Green Network (CSGN) chairman, has highlighted that 26,000 young people in the region stretching from Ayrshire and Inverclyde in the west, to Fife and the Lothians in the east are not in employment, education or training.
The former Labour leader of Edinburgh City Council has commissioned market research to explore how the scheme could be introduced, and will meet environment minister Roseanna Cunningham in September to discuss the idea.
Mr Geddes said: "This would involve young people doing gardening, horticulture, woodland management, path building and that sort of thing.
"We are in difficult times and we have got to think radically here. There has to be a step change in how we do things."
The details of the scheme are yet to be thrashed out, including whether the young people would be paid or whether the work would be carried out on a voluntary basis.
Mr Geddes thinks it could work best if local colleges became involved, so that students could gain some qualifications while they carried out the manual labour.
He added: "We want to work up a model that would give kids the opportunity for vocational education in colleges coupled with practical experience. By the end of the year we hope to have some concrete ideas to work with."
CSGN, the largest project of its kind in Europe, aims to dramatically increase the amount of green space in central Scotland, much of which still bears the legacy of the industrial revolution.
It is one of the Scottish Government's 14 priorities included in the National Planning Framework and has so far attracted £500,000 in government cash.
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