Tue, 7 Apr 2015Around 76 organisations providing education and employment services to disadvantaged youth in the US are set to benefit from $76m (£51m) of additional funding.

The US government has provided the additional funding to support community-based alternative education programme YouthBuild.

The programme offers young adults aged between 16 and 24 classroom-based training in construction skills.

The US Department of Labor announced yesterday (6 April) grants awarded in this latest round of funding range from $700k to $1.1m each to the roughly 76 organisations.

The YouthBuild programme, launched in 1994, has five components: construction, education, counselling, leadership and graduate opportunity. Students spend every other week on a job site, learning the construction trade by building homes for their own communities. The programme aims to provide housing for low-income people, while giving students marketable job skills.

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