PBH's Deficit Down $12000 After Grants

Phillips Brooks House cut its $24,000 deficit in half with an $8000 grant from the Educational Branch of Ford Foundation and $4000 from an anonymous Boston Trust, Peter B. Rosenbaum '67, president of PBH said yesterday.

The Ford grant has been earmarked for the Book Exposure Program, and the money will be used solely for purchasing books for elementary school children. The anonymous grant will go to PBH's Roosevelt Towers Programs which concentrates on community action in East Cambridge.

The Book Exposure Program is presently the only outside project operating in classrooms in the Boston School System. One hour each week, Harvard-Radcliffe volunteers take over a classroom and work with groups of seven to nine children. Each volunteer chooses the books he wants to work with and gives them to his students to encourage extra curricular reading.

The program is designed to initiate a close relationship between teacher and student; students are encouraged to associate the good times with the volunteer with the pleasure of reading. In addition to classroom work, volunteers have been taking their tutees on expeditions and visiting their homes to establish a more intimate contact.

Program Expansion

Last year, 25 volunteers worked with the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in Roxbury schools: this year the program expanded to 55 volunteers in the same project and in an additional experiment with the first grade in Cambridge school. Volunteers are working in Dearborn, Bacon, Asa Gray, and Harrington Schools.

Next year 90 volunteers will work in 22 classrooms. Emphasis will still be on their work in Roxbury, but the Program will keep its commitment in Cambridge, co-chairmen Hayden A. Duggan '68 and David B. Palley '68 reported last night.

The Roosevelt Towers Program, which received the anonymous grant, is presently PBH's biggest single community project. The program is divided into three areas: organizing bus trips and social gatherings for old people: providing recreation and tutoring for children; and starting tenants' associations to encourage parents to work on community activities. Last year the Program also sponsored a day camp at Harvard for underpriviledged children.

The budget for the program has grown from $3-4000 in '64-'65 to a projected $12,000 fro next year. The $4000 grant has been supplemented with another $2000 from small donations, but $6000 still must be found for the Towers program alone.

"We still have about another $13,000 to find, and we don't know where it's going to come from. We don't want people to think we're out of trouble," Rosenbaum concluded.