WORLD WIDE AFRICA THE VOICE OF THE PAN AFRICAN MOVEMENT

"The SAFE Program also aims to unite Black and poor communities by actively recruiting and hiring a number of our youth to help implement these much-needed services. Both drivers and escorts will be recruited from among the young and unemployed in our community, a strategythat at the same time will cut down the number of youth who would consider snatching a pocket­ book just to get a little change. In addition, drivers and escorts will be given extensive training in their respective fields, with both groups receiving inten­sive safety and FIRST-aid instruction.

State, federal, and local funding of the SAFE Program will also mean addi­tional transportation-at least five vans with a seating capacity of twelve per­ sons each, plus the hiring ofa full-time program director and assistants. All totaled, the proposed annual budget for the SAFE Program comes to slightly less than two hundred thousand dollars ($195,530).

E orts to acquire funds for the SAFE Program have not yet been success­ful. A formal proposal has been presented before Oakland Model Cities, a fed­erally funded poverty program, but that agency has made no commitment. A portion of Oakland's $4.5 million in revenue-sharing funds has been suggested for the SAFE Program, but the city administrators have been typically mum. Complete and adequate funding for the SAFE Program was, in fact, an integral part ofthe Seale-Brown Fourteen-Point Program to Rebuild Oakland in the 1973 campaign and, far from being abandoned, it will be included in initiatives and referendums.

The SAFE funding proposal, like the program itself, is an argument for our protection instead of our abuse by public service agencies, which theoreti­ cally function on our behalf. SAFE is a simple but basic program designed to help and secure the lives of a very important yet often forgotten segment of our communities: the older people." HUEY P. NEWTON