newsminer.com

Beneath the federal investigation surrounding Jim and Chris Hayes is a program that aims to help young people from low-income families do better at school and in the job market. The charges against the Hayeses don't take issue with the work reportedly done by the tutors and other volunteers of LOVE Social Services inside the old church building that is the focal point of the government's allegations of wrongdoing.

So what is the aim of LOVE Social Services, which continues to do its work while federal investigators do theirs?

LOVE Social Services representatives declined opportunities to discuss their programs with the News-Miner, but the center's own reports to the federal government describe the center as an organization that "provides work experience and supportive services to low-income youth to enable them to continue or to resume their education. The program stresses raising the educational attainment of youth and increasing their employability through internships and job skills in the workplace."

Other forms submitted to the government by the program describe it as benefiting "African-American low-income youths" and wanting to assist the children of military families.

That aim is consistent with what U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, the person responsible for directing federal money to LOVE Social Services for five successive years, says he had been told.

"[A]s he left the mayor's job, the one thing he said he wanted to do was try to deal with the problems of the minority kids in this one area of Fairbanks, and he pointed out that a great portion of those kids were sons and daughters of military personnel living off base," Stevens said in an interview last week.

The organization describes its services as follows:

"Provides tutoring and mentoring for grade school, high school students and adults."

"Provides health, cultural and educational seminars, lectures and workshops to promote job and study skills training."

"Provides work and training experience for youth who have dropped out of school."

"Provides short-term emergency food provisions to students/clients in need of emergency assistance."

"Provides other agency referrals for students/clients."

Chris Hayes, in a letter as part of a mid-2001 report to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, wrote "Since the tutoring and mentoring program has begun, we have over 28 students register and attend classes regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

In a January 2002 report to HUD, she wrote: "The program has 50 students with approximately 12 tutors."

And in her letter as part of a July 2002 report to HUD: "… we have over 55 students register and attend classes regularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

There is no mention of number of students in a January 2003 report, and no subsequent reports appear to exist, according to HUD.

A report from LOVE Social Services to the Justice Department, which provided three of the five grants to the organization, for the first half of 2004 reports a low of 284 student visits for tutoring in February and 1,701 in June, though the latter includes an unspecified number in a summer education and sports camp. Monthly tutoring in the second half of 2004, excluding the summer months, ranged from 423 student visits in October to 790 in September, according to a subsequent filing with the department. Similar numbers were reported for the first half of 2005.

And some of the center's volunteers have received honors. Two of its volunteer tutors were honored in April 2005, at the Flint Hills Golden Heart Awards ceremony, in the "Education Volunteer" category for their work at the center.

One of those volunteers helped, as part of a LOVE Social Services effort, tutor students at Fairbanks Youth Facility. The nonprofit's tutors, usually one or two at a time with two or three students, made once-a-week visits to the youth facility in the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years, said Bernard Gatewood, superintendent of the youth facility, which houses juveniles ordered into detention by the justice system.

"They were doing basically some tutorial services," Gatewood said, "mostly in areas of mathematics, but there might have been a little bit of English."

Gatewood said he "certainly would have continued" the tutoring program had LOVE Social Services wanted to continue it. The tutoring was a supplement to the education provided by the youth facility's own school, he said.

"If there's an opportunity to get them some extra help, I'm not going to turn it down."