Improving Kids' Lives with a School Supply Drive

Published August 21, 2011 on the earthbongo blog: http://blog.earthbongo.com/2011/08/improving-kids-lives-with-a-school-supply-drive/

It’s almost time to go back to school, and that means parents are scrambling to get the supplies their kids need for the new year. For many families who struggle to pay the bills and put food on the table, this can be an enormous challenge. That’s where Queen Anne Helpline comes in. The Seattle organization is filling backpacks with much-needed materials to make sure local kids are ready to learn.

Founded in 1982, Queen Anne Helpline provides an array of services to disadvantaged families, including residents of the approximately 800 low-income housing units on Queen Anne hill. With the economy still suffering, the Helpline has seen a skyrocketing demand, including people who had never before asked for help. According to board secretary and volunteer Donna Hegstrom, 11 new families have approached the organization this week alone. Some walk into the office bearing eviction notices. Many are among the over 2 million “99ers” whose unemployment benefits have run out after 99 weeks of joblessness. “Most never thought they’d find themselves in this position,” says Donna. “The need is growing by leaps and bounds.”

At the same time, parents are shouldering a higher burden to provide supplies public schools can no longer afford. Donna explains that deep budget cuts to Seattle’s public schools mean that parents are obligated to provide items not only for their own children, but for the classrooms. They receive long lists of requirements, including items like white board markers, scissors, pads of sticky notes, and hand sanitizer—all for communal use. The kids must also come to school with supplies for themselves, from notebooks to ear buds and USB drives for working on the computer. “If you’re a single or low-income parent with more than one child,” says Donna, “these costs can really add up.”

How much do they add up to? Running down the lists, I did some virtual back-to-school shopping at Kmart.com, looking for the most inexpensive brands I could find (except for the items where high-quality name brands were specifically listed). It turns out that one second grader’s list totaled $77.87. An eighth grader’s was $96.53. You don’t need to buy a calculator to see how these sums can multiply.

Luckily, there’s help. Donna led me to a room in the Helpline office filled with cardboard boxes overflowing with folders, crayons, glue sticks and other back-to-school needs. The majority of the supplies have been purchased by the Helpline and its volunteers, often out of their own pockets. In one corner sits a box of backpacks waiting to be picked up August 26-29.

Will you help Donna and the other Helpline volunteers fill them? The packs are almost ready, but two of the required items are still needed to make each one complete. Join volunteer Nancy’s projects, USB Thumb Drives for the Kids and Headphones for the Kids, to help the children walk into the classroom prepared!

Trade Your Job

Published in Fall 2009 issue of YES! Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.com/issues/learn-as-you-go/trade-your-job

The old apprenticeship model of learning by doing gets new life as people who’ve been left out of the job market train to meet the growing demand for green-collar workers.

Youth participants in the ¡Youthworks! Green Collar Jobs Apprenticeship Program in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Photo courtesy of ¡YouthWorks!

In the last 30 years, wages have dropped for people without college degrees. But in Pierce County, Washington, high school students who aren’t headed for college are learning to retrofit houses; they stand to make up to $50 an hour once they’re experienced journeymen. In Lansing, Michigan, unemployed auto workers can get up to $10,000 to train for new careers in renewable energy. These people, and others nationwide, are part of a rapidly expanding market for green-collar workers.

Since green-collar job training is affordable—usually requiring an associate’s degree at most—and since these jobs typically offer good living wages, they represent a pathway out of poverty and into the middle class.

“If a job improves the environment but doesn’t provide a family-supporting wage or a career ladder to move low-income workers into higher-skilled occupations, it is not a green-collar job,” says Sam Haswell of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition formed in 2001 to push for a clean-energy revolution.

Photo courtesy of ¡YouthWorks!

According to a 2009 report by the American Solar Energy Society, there were 9 million green-collar jobs in the United States in 2007, and 37 million could be created by 2030 if policymakers support renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives at the state and federal level.

“We must build a 21st century workforce in America to compete in the new clean energy economy,” says Apollo Alliance Chair Phil Angelides. “This means training a new generation of workers to fill a wide range of skilled jobs in the rapidly growing green sector.”

The need for green workforce development has produced unprecedented collaboration among labor and environmental organizations, government agencies, schools, and businesses. There’s a return to the apprenticeship model of learning by doing and a growing acknowledgement that valuable education happens outside the classroom.

In Bellingham, Washington, which NPR’s Marketplace recently declared “the epicenter of a new economic model,” the Opportunity Council’s Building Performance Center is teaming up with Bellingham Technical College to provide green workforce development. “We feel like this training has to take place on the job and in the field,” says the Center’s director, John Davies. “The training has to include hands-on learning along with the learning that takes place in the classroom.”

The Center is one of 26 agencies participating in a state-run project that sends trainers to teach home audits and energy retrofits in communities across Washington, including those not served by established training programs. Led by experienced peer technicians, these sessions are customized to meet the specific needs of Washington agencies that provide low-income weatherization services.

Photo courtesy of ¡YouthWorks!

Sound Alliance, in Pierce County, Washington, matches women, people of color, youth, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged groups with openings in green-collar apprenticeship programs. Like other Industrial Areas Foundation organizations, the Sound Alliance empowers people to create change and become grassroots leaders. One leader, Steve Gelb, emphasizes the need to train workers in deep retrofitting, which involves not only simple weatherization, but replacing furnaces and water heaters. Doing so saves more energy and also creates higher-skilled jobs, Gelb says.

When youth and people from disadvantaged communities step into such high-demand, high-salary jobs, it not only gives them an avenue toward a brighter future; it also helps to change community perceptions of them. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, for instance, the group ¡Youthworks! joined with city officials and local businesses to create the Green Collar Jobs Apprenticeship Program in 2008. The program provides valuable training, academic skill building, and job counseling to youth in a city where the dropout rate hovers around 50 percent.

“There’s a lot of racism and discrimination and bad perceptions of young people in Santa Fe,” says Tobe Bott-Lyons, educational coordinator at ¡Youthworks! “Now you see these tattooed kids that people are generally used to being scared of restoring the river and building a house, and they’re retrofitting homes and installing solar panels.”

Lauren Herrera’s life turned upside down when her 6-year-old son passed away last year. She started getting into trouble, which culminated in drug-related felony charges that caused her to lose her job as a dental assistant. Scarce jobs and a criminal record made it hard to find work, until ¡Youthworks! gave her an opportunity to play a positive role in her community. Now she weatherizes homes for low-income families with the newly launched Energy RX crew. “They’re ecstatic when they find out the weatherization is free,” she says. “It’s very rewarding.”

Young people aren’t the only ones looking for green-collar jobs. Throughout the country, community college programs in alternative energy have been flooded with recently unemployed workers and those simply seeking valuable new skills. In Michigan, which suffers the nation’s highest unemployment rate, the transition to a green economy promises to revive communities that have been devastated by job losses in the auto industry. Michigan’s Green Jobs Initiative is one of the programs made possible by the $500 million in federal stimulus funds allocated for green workforce development. The money helps workers enroll in new community college programs in green sector fields like alternative energy.

The alternative energy degree program at Lansing Community College, one of the first of its kind, has grown from 42 students in 2005 to 252 in 2008. Starting this fall, the college will offer new certificates in solar, geothermal, wind turbines, and energy efficiency. The college also has partnered with the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium to develop an alternative energy curriculum for colleges and universities nationwide.

Gelb says that green workforce development has turned on its head the historical divide between labor and environmental concerns. “We call it the ‘triple bottom line,’” he says. “We’re reducing carbon, creating jobs, and saving money for people in the homes we’re retrofitting.”

Teens learn leadership skills through performing arts

Tucson Green Magazine, February 2008

A group of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, teens star in the musical performance they wrote and produced through a City at Peace program in their community. Using the performing arts as a vehicle, City at Peace is a national organization developing the next generation of engaged community leaders and believes in a society where teenagers are valued, respected, and play a leading role in creating vibrant communities.

Imagine a society where teenagers are valued and respected and play a leading role in creating vibrant communities. A national non-profit organization, City at Peace, is making that dream a reality through programs in selected cities around the world.

City at Peace has developed a program for teens, based on the philosophy that the performing arts provide an excellent means for teenagers to create social change while finding their voices as leaders. The project has manifested the idea in a variety of ways, from Israeli and Palestinian youth in Tel Aviv finding common ground through drama, music, and dance, to Washington, D.C. teenagers turning a discussion about stereotypes into an original musical. Inspired by the project's successes, Rev. Gerry Straatemeier of the Culture of Peace Alliance is spearheading an effort to bring City at Peace to Tucson.

City at Peace has chapters in six U.S. cities--Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, New York City, and Baton Rouge--in addition to chapters in Israel and South Africa. The program brings together city youth of diverse backgrounds, teaching them principles of nonviolence through performance art.

The teens go through an intense year-long creative process through which they write an original musical based on stories from their own lives, and on their ideas for a better world. They also create community change projects where they take those ideas and act on them in their own city.

Each year-long program begins with the selection of a Production Team to serve as the program's leaders, recruitment of a diverse pool of teens, and intensive team-building and performance training. Throughout the following months, members learn conflict resolution skills and hold in-depth discussions about issues like stereotypes, bullying, and gang violence, which become the inspiration for the teens' original creative work.

The project reports a number of positive results. Since 2002, 91 percent of City at Peace participants have gone on to college, compared with a national average of 68 percent; 99.3 percent (compared with 71 percent) stay in school; and 92 percent say they now resolve conflicts differently as a result of their City at Peace training. Participants also describe "intangible" results, such as personal empowerment and strengthened relationships.

City at Peace originated in 1994 in Washington, D.C., when teenagers, parents, and community leaders came together out of a shared concern about racial tensions and violence plaguing the city. Founder Paul Griffin, a longtime youth advocate, has been honored at the White House as a Tomorrow's Leader Today and has received the Changemaker Award from Public Allies and the National Hamilton Fish Institute Award for Service for his efforts. He continues to work with City at Peace, currently serving as its president. The project has been featured in a 1995 episode of "Nightline" with Ted Koppel and was the subject of a 1999 HBO documentary entitled "City of Peace." It has recently opened a national office in New York City.

Like the youth in other cities, many young Tucson residents face the reality of violence at home, at school, and on the streets. The 2006 Arizona Youth Survey of Pima County, provided by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission, reveals that among tenth graders surveyed, 25 percent have had gang involvement, 15 percent have been involved in a physical fight in school, and 45 percent report family conflict.

Straatemeier hopes that creating a Tucson chapter of City at Peace will help address these problems in our community. The project is currently in the planning stages, concentrating on fundraising and community-building. She said fundraising efforts will comprise two phases. During the planning phase, the goal is to raise $10,000-15,000. Once the project has established itself within the community, she said it will require a budget of about $50,000 to begin core activities. So far, about $7,000 has been raised. Ongoing fundraising activities include a partnership with the Invisible Theatre Company, which allocated a portion of its ticket sales to the project from a January 14 showing of Baghdad Burning, based on the blog of a young woman in war-torn Iraq.

A retired clinical social worker and an independent New Thought minister, Straatemeier is a founding member of the Tucson-based Culture of Peace Alliance and has co-chaired the Gandhi/King Season for Nonviolence in Southern Arizona since 2000.

Straatemeier intends to establish the program with auditions for the 2008 school year. She is looking for funding and for youth aged 13-19 who show a strong commitment to social change, regardless of their skill or experience in the performing arts. Finding participants from a wide variety of ethnic, economic, and gender backgrounds will be another key issue. "A diverse group helps confront the many 'isms' that are a part of our culture," she said.

She hopes the program will inspire teens to become leaders who have found their voices. "We envision a new generation of young leaders in Tucson who can change the culture to one of nonviolence."