THE GOVERNMENT'S "Welfare to Work" drive to get youngsters off the dole comes to East Lancashire with a "green" initiative that offers hope to 250 young people - by giving them not just a temporary make-work job, but a chance of gaining valuable skills wanted by employers.

For Groundwork Blackburn is setting up a group that aims to provide "real training to achieve real jobs."

Rather than having youngsters merely planting trees, it will give them training in horticulture, environmental and waste management, urban forestry and water conservation.

That's what job training should be about - giving young people talents that are useful and sought-after in the jobs market.

Too often, in the past, training schemes smacked of exploitation and methods of massaging the unemployment figures - with the unemployed being put to unskilled, labouring tasks that kept them temporarily occupied, but gave them little reward in both skills or money terms.

Well done Groundwork Blackburn for coming up with something different.

If this new initiative knocks that sort of thing on the head and gives youngsters real hope of a real job, Gordon Brown's windfall-tax funding raid on the "fat cat" privatised utilities will prove a high-dividend investment.

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