Critics had condemned him all week for proposing to turn empty prisons into dormitory space for welfare recipients, where, he said, they would learn job skills, parenting and hygiene.
The campers come for one of two three-week sessions each summer; there is a third session in mid-August for young adult campers, up to age 22, at which they learn job and social skills.
For that reason, he has also taken an unusually active role in the community, lobbying city officials and business leaders to build an activity center where young people can learn job skills, play basketball or indoor soccer and find a safe place away from the street corners.
Besides spending part of a day with executives and other employees at companies -- from the Postal Service to Fortune 500 corporations -- children in the year-round program learn job and life skills through time spent at a career awareness camp in Dutchess County, Camp Mariah.
They learn job skills and good work practices to prepare them, if they are able, to get mainstream jobs with benefits and growth opportunities.
Enticing teenagers to stick around for a nearly $2-an-hour 2-an-hour 2-an-hourd not only save companies the expense of constantly training new workers, it would help fulfill the actual purpose of youth employment, which is for teenagers to learn jobirthday and the basics of raiseng a business.
