OLIVE HILL — A program that provides summer jobs for economically disadvantaged youths received a major boost this year from the federal government’s economic stimulus package.

Thanks to stimulus dollars, the Workforce Investment Act Youth Program, which is overseen by the Northeast Kentucky Community Action Agency, was able to employ 343 young people, ages 16 to 24, in Carter, Lawrence and Elliott counties.

Northeast officials said that’s most likely a record number.

“I’ve been here for 31 years and this is the first time I can ever remember us having this many,” said Debbie Jones, WIA director for Northeast. “It’s usually around 100.”

The original target number of youths to enroll in the program was 305, a goal Northeast obviously wound up exceeding. Finding enough young people to fill the slots was never a problem, said Brenda Shumate, the agency’s WIA coordinator.

“As quickly as someone would drop out, we would call people off our waiting list and enroll them,” she said.

The first phase of the program began on May 4; the second on June 8. Each phase lasted six weeks. The second one will wrap up this week.

One of the mandates of the program was one-third of those served had to be not attending school, either because they had dropped out or had graduated high school and had not enrolled in college, Shumate said.

The first group of participants was composed entirely of out-of-school youths, Shumate said. She also said this was the first year that young people not enrolled in school were eligible for the program.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to serve them,” she said.

Participants in the program worked 7 1/2-hour days and were paid $7.25 an hour, Shumate said. The youths also received $100 stipends when they began work to help pay for meals and transportation, she said.

According to Shumate, the youths were employed at a number of work sites, public and private, throughout the three-county area. Carter Caves State Resort Park had a number of workers, as did the cities of Olive Hill and Grayson. King’s Daughters Medical Center and St. Claire Regional Medical Centers both employed summer workers at their outreach clinics, she said.

Some students worked on mural-painting projects at former elementary school buildings in Olive Hill and Hitchins. On Friday, Whittney Williams of Hitchins and Tiffany Nunley of Rush were busy adding brush strokes to a mural on a wall inside a building at Hitchins that’s being converted into an arts center. The two were working under the supervision of Charles McDaniel, who teaches art at East Carter High School.

Williams, who’s in her fourth semester at Morehead State University, and Nunley, an incoming student at Ashland Community and Technical College, both said they had enjoyed the experiences in the program and appreciated the opportunity to be able to earn some cash during the summer.

“I just love art,” said Williams.

The passenger depot mural was Williams’ and Nunley’s second at Hitchins. They earlier completed one depicting a train known as “the Blue Goose” that used to run through the Hitchins area.

Shumate said youths were asked where they wanted to work when they enrolled in the program, and Northeast officials did the best they could to find them jobs in their areas of interest.

She said employers had been extremely gracious about taking on the youths as temporary workers and were “understanding about the fact that most of these kids had never worked before.”

While Northeast was happy to be able to provide so many young people with income-earning opportunities, Shumate said her hope was that participants would gain more from their experiences than just paychecks.

“My philosophy is if they don’t learn anything other than the feeling of accomplishment that comes from being able to step back from a job and say ‘I did that,’ it will have been a worthwhile experience for them,” she said.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.