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scene one. Take one, senator. Smell it. I'm very honored to have is my guest today, Sergeant Shriver, who is the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity at our hearings or the Aging committee today he was our star witness. He pointed out to him that of the some 18 millions of people who fall in the elderly classification, a third of them are over five million, far also in the poverty section.

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And he was telling us of the programs which they have calculated and designed to help these older people. And I would like for him to tell you some of the things which he has told us. Thank you very much, Senator Smathers, for giving me this opportunity to talk about what we're trying to do in the war against poverty, for the benefit of older people.

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I'd like, however, to start off if I could, by expressing my gratification to you and the members of the Committee for the leadership that you're giving and focusing attention on the problems of the poor. The practical fact is that not enough is being done for the poor, and we're not doing enough for the poor or for the elderly poor in the war against poverty, principally because it's extremely difficult to do things that are constructed for the aged poor.

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And we do have a few things and I'll itemize them. First of all, we have something called community action programs. They're now in existence in about 1000 counties and cities. Every one of those programs should have a special part of it for the elderly poor. Most of them don't so the first thing I would like to encourage people to do elderly, poor and administrators and cities.

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I'd like to have them get out and create programs at the local level in ST Petersburg and Tallahassee and Miami programs specifically designed to help the aged poor. We will underwrite those programs. We will finance them if they come in with them to Washington. The second thing that we're doing is this.

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We're announcing soon a new program called Foster Grandparents. The fact is that there are about 20,000 infants, for example, and state institutions and pediatric wards that don't get any attention of the kindly deserved to get. We'd like to enlist lots of grandparents to go to these wards and state institutions pediatric wards and take care or help to take care of these Children.

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It would be a tremendous thing for the babies if Foster grandparents would undertake that kind of work. We will announce that program very soon. Over in Baltimore, we started a new program whereby the aged there are encouraged to go out and visit other old people who are sometimes, uh, in complete loneliness.

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Nobody comes to visit them. They don't know anything about their rights. They don't even know about Medicare. They don't know what their privileges are. Opportunities are under the new Medicare legislation, while some older people could be enlisted and paid by us to go visit other older people and bring them into society a little bit more than they are now, we have another program that started out in Arkansas, under which we're taking 100 older people who are who are now on public welfare and giving them special training as nurses, aides as a library, AIDS and other types of skills that that community needs.

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We train them and then they can get a job after it had this training. Those are three or four of the things we're doing now, but I'd like to repeat. We don't think we're doing enough. And we're grateful to your committee for highlighting this problem to us and to the nation.

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Sergeant, may I ask you this one question? We classify older people as those who are 65 years old and older. And, of course, you and I know that one of the very difficult areas are those people who say who are under 65 that run down to about 50 now in the program which you have.

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Do you envision letting those people go into retraining programs and things of that character? How can we help those people? Well, I think you've, uh, put your finger right on the way we intend to do it. Namely retraining. They can get retraining under the Manpower Retraining Act, and we again here in Washington under community action programs, can finance any locally developed retraining programs so that if the people again to repeat, if the people of Tallahassee or any other city in Florida, ST Pete's or anyplace else can come up with a specific program that they think will work in retraining older people, for example, in ST piece, we can finance it personally.

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I would like to see these ideas generate at the local level rather than to have everything comes from Washington. All right, well, thank you very much, Sergeant Shriver, for these comments. And thank you very much, Ladies and gentlemen, for looking and listening. And I hope you're looking and listening again at the same time next week.

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A. Sargent Shriver, as the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Do you have plans to increase the number of senior citizens in the domestic Peace Corps, or Vista in order to take advantage of their many skills? The answer I think Senator Smathers is. Yes. We would like to have as many highly qualified elderly people volunteered to serve in Vista as we can get.

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We already have some. There's a lady you may have read about her. 82 years of age. She was in the Vista program Already. She was head of the National Association for Retarded Children Program in North Carolina. She had been a visiting nurse in that state. She's 82 now.

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She volunteered when she was 81. She's already at work in Vista. We'd like to have as many old people like her as we could get. Would you care to comment on how successful you think your adult education programs have been in helping the elderly? Well, we're just getting started with our adult education programs, and I would not say that they have been very successful in reaching the elderly as yet.

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We have a relatively small amount of money when you consider the nation as a whole in that program, and we would like to have it larger, and we would like to get it to the elderly. The principal job, however, is to get the news to the older people that adult education is available to them and then get them to the actual location where the program is given.

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You will recall that at the hearings there was, and probably this was stated while you were absent. But in any event, there was some criticism of the fact that in 1961 the White House, when you're late, lamented brother in law was present. They create. They sponsored a movement which set up a committee for the aging in every state and most 49 states.

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I think it is now have those committees now in your job as the director of this economic opportunity, there have was some complaint that the state committees are not being consulted in providing older people with some kind of help, do you? What kind of comment do you have to make on that?

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Well, first of all, I'd say that the chairman of that state committee from the state of California is on the National advisory Board of the War Against Poverty. She is one of the leading people in this field in the nation. So if we're overlooking anything, I would seriously doubt it, to tell you the truth, because Mrs Russell, that's her name has been working with us from the very beginning.

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Second, I'd like to say that we would welcome the assistance of these statewide committees on the aging in our community action program. The Community Action Program is a program whereby we in Washington pay the cost 90% of the cost of local programs created in cities and counties all over America.

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Most of those programs have come to us, about 1000 of them already, without any components for the agent. Nothing. Now, those programs are not created by us. They're created right in Florida or in Georgia and Louisiana. And I would urge that committees on aging in the States to get into those programs at the local level and make sure that each one of those programs that comes to Washington has a part of it devoted to the needs of the agent.

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I think possibly one of the weaknesses of the original law, which we pass was that we didn't frankly become quite specific enough, and we actually didn't mention the elderly and reading the basic act. There's no specific mention of elderly. The emphasis obviously was on providing opportunity for untrained youth, and people of that character would would, would you would be agreeable to some basic amendment of the law, which would say that a certain amount of the program or certain emphasis should be given to taking care of the elderly.

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I'd be very happy to have such an emphasis provided we got the money to carry it out in addition to what we already are planning to do with the money we've asked for. Ah, fundamentally, I think that the elderly should be considered just as a part of the population in any city.

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And then, if there's a program comes to us for preschool Children, for example, there's just as much right for there to be a program for the agent in that community. Action. Let me ask you one totally unrelated question. I don't want to catch you by surprise, but we've got just 20 seconds left.

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I'm How do you feel about this Senator Javits, having raised the problems to whether or not you should be the head of both the Peace Corps and this Office of Economic Opportunity? As I said to Senator Javits, that's a decision for the president to make. The president has my resignation from either job or both jobs available at all times.

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He can pick them up any time he wants. I'm not seeking either job. I'm very happy to try to do what I can tell. You're doing a good job and both of my thinking. Thank you very much, Sergeant Shriver. And thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, for listening.

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And I hope you're listening again at the same time next week. Yeah,