Helping people is more than a full-time occupation for Janet White.

When she isn't running the Cawood High School Youth Services Center, the Harlan native is volunteering her time to fight cancer, clean up the community and repair homes.

As a Y-Club member, she works on Community Action Agency's annual Repair Affair, PRIDE cleanups, visits nursing home residents and serves as luminary chairperson for the local American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

But those activities are just sidelights to White, whose first love is helping children.

She gets plenty of opportunities as director of Cawood's youth services center, the hub of one of several local programs geared toward assisting Harlan County's youth to overcome non-academic barriers that might affect their academic performance.

"We try to do anything we can to keep the student in school and help the families in any way, whether it's tutoring or conflict resolution," said White. " ... If you don't have a high school diploma, you can't get a job. That's what we stress to parents. The children need to stay in school. They need to learn."

The program combats everything from poverty to drug addiction. It can be as simple as needing school supplies or as complicated as physical and psychological abuse, youth service centers around the county provide students with what they need.

Each year the program funds a summer job shadowing program for 15 students, nurses stations in the county school system, student drug counseling services and college testing and financial aid initiatives.

"The program is not only for the disadvantaged," said White. "It's for everybody."

White, who lives in Baxter, is a former homemaker who raised two children, Dana, 22, and Bryan, 25. By the time the two were ready to go to college, so was White.

She earned her associate degree from Southeast Community College while holding down a full-time job as assistant coordinator of the Cawood High School Youth Service Center. She has also worked as a teachers' aide.