Sharing Witness

Micro coverage a big help for Mexico's poor

2007-07-12T20:23:00Z

Adela Amaya Chavez never considered life insurance. In fact she had no idea what it was. But on a recent day when inquiring about a loan at Banco Azteca to repair the leaky drains in her home in Mexico City, she was told that if she paid an additional $2 a week her family would receive $6,000 if she were to die. Her first thought: the death of her nephew in a car accident in 2003 and the devastation it caused his family. "It was so sudden," says Ms. Amaya Chavez, who cleans office buildings for a living. She signed up. Once just a safeguard for the middle and upper classes, insurance is finding its way to all sectors of Mexico. For the poorest, microinsurance policies – often simple plans worth tiny sums of money – are giving protection to those Mexicans who work in the informal economy, often don't have bank accounts, and never dreamed of the luxury of having a Plan B.

Read the article by Sara Miller Llana: The Christian Science Monitor

Sorry Case of Iraqi Refugees

2007-07-12T20:13:52Z

When Tamara Daghistani's cell phone rings in Amman, Jordan, the caller is usually another desperate Iraqi refugee. As we sat together last month, the call was from a woman who had fled Baghdad with her husband and three kids. Her husband was killed during a visit back to Baghdad to bury his mother. Now the woman has no way to support three young children. She sends her boys out to nightclubs at night to beg. Daghistani spends her time helping less fortunate countrymen. With around 2 million Iraqi refugees crowded into Jordan and Syria, and 30,000 arriving in Syria weekly, this exodus is the biggest Iraqi crisis almost no one discusses. Certainly not President Bush.

Read the article by Trudy Rubin: Philadelphia Inquirer

Private Equity: Scrooge No Longer

2007-07-11T20:13:36Z

Private equity firms have a reputation for being rich and ruthless - and for good reason...At the same time, they've been giving back - private equity partners, through their firms or via individual contributions, are known for being generous donors to charity. But often, those who have made their fortunes from the buyout boom shun the spotlight and give quietly and privately, as many wealthy individuals choose to do.

Read the article by Grace Wong: CNNMoney.com

Partisanship vs. the Children

2007-07-11T20:03:12Z

Extending health insurance to uninsured children is perhaps the least controversial public policy goal in Washington. So it sets up a test: If progress is not possible on this issue, progress in our divided, embittered political system is no longer possible at all.

Read the Op-Ed by Michael Gerson: The Washington Post

Senate Democrats Gear Up for Farm Bill Reauthorization

2007-07-11T19:18:50Z

This morning the leaders of many of the national anti-hunger organizations met at the Capitol with key Democratic Senators from the Senate Democratic Steering Committee that is trying to schedule action on the Farm Bill Reauthorization that includes so many federal food and nutrition programs. Attending were Majority Leader Harry Reid, assistant majority leader Dick Durbin, Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, and Senators Blanche Lincoln, Sherrod Brown, Debbie Stabenow, Bernard Sanders, Bob Casey, and Montana's John Testor, the only full-time organic farmer in the Senate.

]]> Majority Leader Reid began by saying, "The Farm Bill is in distress, like many other things we work on up here, because of Iraq where we are spending $12 billion a month."

Jim Weil from FRAC discussed desired changes to food stamp regulations, Vicki Escarra from America's Second Harvest said they were experiencing an 8% increase in the number of people seeking to be served by food banks, and physician Deborah Frank warned that "the choices the Senate makes will be written on the bodies and brains of the young children I see as a pediatrician. Food stamps are good medicine but they don't reach one in five children who need them, which would be considered a public health crisis if we were taking about an immunization."

Senator Harkin said that he hoped to have the Farm Bill finished in the Agriculture Committee by the end of the week and that it would come to the floor in September. He explained that the asset level of $2000, which food stamp applicants must fall below to qualify, was set in 1982 and never changed and that it should be $5900 today and indexed in the future to the cost-of-living, He hoped to at least double it to $4000 with the current legislation. "The package of nutritional measures we need will cost about $3 billion a year over five years and it is going to be hard to find that money, but we must."

Senator Sanders concluded the session by saying that "this is not an agricultural issue. It is a deeply moral issue. The unequal distribution of wealth in this country makes me angry. Poor Tom Harkin is looking for $12-15 billion and next week we'll be voting on a Defense Department bill that includes $500 billion! What we need to be fighting for is a change of national priorities."

Study: Troubled homes better than foster care

2007-07-09T14:11:41Z

Children whose families are investigated for abuse or neglect are likely to do better in life if they stay with their families than if they go into foster care, according to a pioneering study.
The findings intensify a vigorous debate in child welfare: whether children are better served with their families or away from them. Kids who stayed with their families were less likely to become juvenile delinquents or teen mothers and more likely to hold jobs as young adults, says the study by Joseph Doyle, an economics professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who studies social policy.

Read the article by Wendy Koch: USA TODAY

A Battle Over Expansion of Children’s Insurance

2007-07-09T14:06:29Z

The fight over a popular health insurance program for children is intensifying, with President Bush now leading efforts to block a major expansion of the program, which is a top priority for Congressional Democrats. President Bush has opposed the Congressional Democrats’ proposals to increase spending on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The seemingly uncontroversial goal of insuring more children has become the focus of an ideological battle between the White House and Congress. The fight epitomizes fundamental disagreements over the future of the nation’s health care system and the role of government.

Read the article by Robert Pear: The New York Times

New Schools for New Orleans

2007-07-05T16:27:27Z

New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) was created in 2006 to provide public schools, with an emphasis on charter schools, with the support they need in order to succeed in the new world of New Orleans public education.

]]> As NSNO celebrated its first anniversary on June 11, one year after we officially attained 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, we are excited to share the following highlights from the past two months. A major focus has been providing new 2007-2008 school leaders and board members with critical training and development activities to prepare for the upcoming school year:

-- School Leader Training: Leaders from 8 public charter schools participated in a three-day training this June with Nancy Euske, well-renowned Haas School of Business (Berkeley) professor and designer of the KIPP leadership training program. This intense training program focused on the development of school culture, leadership, and authority, and allowed NSNO to demonstrate our core values and expectations to new school leaders for the 2007-2008 school year.

-- Business Manager Training: Business managers from 6 public charter schools participated in a thorough training at the beginning of June with Raj Thakkar, President and CEO of Charter School Business Management. This training provided business managers with a detailed step-by-step guide to preparing their charter schools for opening and enabled these leaders to network and share best practices and concerns with each other in preparation for the upcoming school year.

-- NYC Site Visits: NSNO led 3 incoming school leaders on a site visit to high-performing schools in New York City at the end of May, where New Orleans school leaders toured top public charter schools including KIPP schools, Community Roots, and a school for autistic and learning disabled children. Focused on data-driven instruction, school culture, and teacher coaching, this visit exposed the school leaders to some of our nation’s highest performing public charter schools.

-- Board Training: Marci Cornell-Feist, principal of the board consulting group Meetinghouse Solutions, conducted one-on-one trainings with five start-up schools this past May. Focusing on board duties in charter schools’ pre-opening phases, these trainings have helped to prepare 2007-2008 charter school boards for the start of the upcoming school year.

Incubation of New Schools
We are thrilled to announce that NSNO has accepted its first school founders to incubate for the upcoming school year. Kristen Moody and Channa Cook, two outstanding teachers from Los Angeles, California, are relocating to New Orleans this summer to develop an open-enrollment charter high school which will begin serving New Orleans students in the fall of 2008. Given the overwhelming shortage of high-performing public high schools in New Orleans, we are particularly excited that the first school leaders to be accepted into NSNO’s incubation program will be serving this need.

NSNO is continuing to accept incubation applications from aspiring school leaders, and we are in the midst of conducting numerous interviews. To strengthen the efficacy of incubation program, NSNO is cultivating innovative partnerships with New Leaders for New Schools, Building Excellent Schools, and Teach For America to further develop the new school pipeline in New Orleans.

TeachNOLA
TeachNOLA has already matriculated 215 teachers into its school referral pool for the 2007-2008 school year, selected from an initial pool of over 2,000 applicants. These teachers have passed teachNOLA’s rigorous selection process, chosen to enroll in the program, and are currently being placed in teaching positions for the fall. New Schools for New Orleans and the Recovery School District are both working with teachNOLA to match these 215 new teachers with open positions in public charter schools and RSD public schools. TeachNOLA is accepting applications from certified teachers and is continuing to screen potential candidates.

New Leaders for New Schools
In just six weeks, the partnership between New Schools for New Orleans and New Leaders for New Schools is already making an impact on the future of New Orleans public schools. New Leaders for New Schools received over 170 applicants for its New Orleans program and has selected a total of 8 New Orleans New Leaders for the upcoming school year. During their first year, the New Orleans New Leaders will complete an intense training program in residency at local schools, while they prepare to lead their own schools in the following academic year.

NSNO in the News
New Schools for New Orleans has enjoyed a flurry of recent press. Highlights include:

-- Big Easy, Bigger Test, Wall Street Journal (June 9, 2007) by Tom Bethell. Exploring the impact of charter schools on the future performance of New Orleans students, the article references NSNO’s support of high standards.

A proven superintendent and a hotshot group of educators are inspiring others to bring their skills to New Orleans, Times-Picayune (May 25, 2007) by Steve Ritea and Darran Simon. The article showcases NSNO’s efforts to take advantage of this “unprecedented opportunity to turn around one of the worst public school systems in the nation.”

In New Orleans schools, it’s like starting over, USA Today (June 7, 2007) by Greg Toppo. TeachNOLA, the teacher recruitment partner of New Schools for New Orleans, was featured in this piece.

Paving a New Path with a Social Franchise Strategy

2007-06-27T20:49:07Z

As an article by Colleen DeBaise in this week's Wall Street Journal explores, some nonprofits, including Share Our Strength, are beginning to look at national franchises as a way to earn income:

]]> ""Social franchising is part of a larger and increasing phenomenon of earned income by nonprofits," says James E. Austin, emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in Boston..."It has the attraction, from the nonprofits' standpoint, of providing infrastructure, product, administrative systems, and a proven marketplace…""

Leadership takes on many forms, but one of the most essential applications is in paving a new path, especially when it comes to the financial health of the nonprofit sector. Most need not apply, and they are better off waiting for the social pioneers to cut a clear path before venturing too far off the existing approaches to generating unrestricted income. Developing a Social Franchise Strategy is indeed a new, unproven approach that will take a pioneering effort to firm up, yet it holds great promise for the sector in reducing risk, providing funding diversity and generating new exposure, volunteers and donors for nonprofit organizations.

The concept of leveraging key nonprofit assets into a franchise to create a competitive advantage is novel and less than 100 organizations have taken the leap -- with widely diverse results. It takes a disciplined, systematic approach to forge a meaningful relationship between a nonprofit and a franchise company to ensure that there are mutual benefits without undue risk to the nonprofit's mission. For Share Our Strength, which is preparing to launch its first WineStyles shop in Washington, DC, this disciplined approach has been key:

"Executives at WineStyles, which has 110 stores nationwide, were at first skeptical about allowing a nonprofit agency to buy and operate one of their stores. "This is not a gratis type of thing," says Robert Spuck, chief executive of WineStyles, who went forward with the deal after making sure Share Our Strength could handle the $25,000 franchise fee and other costs associated with opening a store...

"Just like any other franchisee, if they don't have the proper training and if they don't implement the system the way it was designed, they won't be successful," he says. "If you want to be one, you have to act like one.""

As Social Franchise Ventures takes a few brave nonprofit leaders down the path, we are learning as much as we are delivering, yet a few key thoughts have emerged:

-- Nonprofits have rarely, if ever, looked at their full compliment of assets from the prospective of the franchise community and in virtually ever case there are multiple opportunities to create a clear competitive advantage

--Considering launching a franchise is much more exciting than actually opening and operating the business, especially when it gets down to investing the limited capital available

--Building organizational consensus is a formidable challenge facing many would be social pioneers

Only the carefully documented results from the Share Our Strength/WineStyles relationship and others like it can provide the backdrop for nonprofit leadership in general, as well as the franchise community at large, to consider this innovative approach.

Ex-aides break with Bush on 'No Child'

2007-06-26T11:25:36Z

President Bush urged lawmakers yesterday to renew No Child Left Behind, his landmark education initiative, but one of his biggest political liabilities in achieving that goal comes from an unlikely source: his former aides. Five years after they helped craft and implement the initiative, senior administration officials from Bush's first term are speaking out against the law with increasing boldness. The shift, combined with mounting criticism from both the political right and left in Congress, is causing supporters of the law to worry that it might not win renewal this year.

Read the article by Amit R. Paley: The Washington Post

Learning from Some of Zambia's Best and Brightest Students

2007-06-25T20:22:35Z

As part of the LearnServe program, today I was privileged to visit the David Kaunda National Technical High School (named for the father of modern Zambia) in Lusaka, Zambia.

]]> Our group of American students and teachers met with students and teachers at Zambia's premiere high school, where the brightest students from around the country shared their high school experience with us. When compared to boarding schools in the United States, this school would be considered under-resourced; but for Zambia, the school is second to none.

The first thing that struck me upon my arrival was the level of maturity of the students; they understood just how fortunate they were to be attending such a prestigious institution. One of my guides, a young man named John, carried himself with a dignity and self-respect rarely found in American high school students. Fortunately, the LearnServe students carry themselves in a similar manner; they appreciate this amazing opportunity and are enthusiastic about interacting with their counterparts. To see firsthand how much the Zambian students appreciated the education they were receiving was truly inspirational.

After the initial "meet and greet" we were led on a tour of the school's facilities and given some insight into the lives of the students and teachers. From classrooms to dormitories to dining halls, our guides (Zambian students and teachers) shared with us their daily experiences, while also sharing their personal stories. And the sharing went both ways; they were as eager to hear our stories as we were to hear theirs. They wanted to know how the education system in the United States worked; they wanted to know how we came to be in Zambia; they wanted to know what kinds of foods we ate regularly. This back-and-forth, this mutual desire to share and learn about another culture, truly exemplifies the power of the LearnServe program. And this was only our first day...

The Drama Club
Following our tour of the facilities, we were given a special gift: two different performances by the school's drama club. Normally, dramatic performances by high school students are displays of talent. And while these students were truly talented, their performance was for more than anything I have seen.

Both pieces were really a dialogue on the HIV/AIDS situation in Zambia, a devastating problem that is wreaking havoc on Zambian society. These students, none older than 18, were engaging in a discussion that many adults in the Western world have difficulty with. And while HIV/AIDS education is mandated by the Zambian government, the students took it upon themselves to use a creative, classical form of dialogue to address such a pertinent and complex situation. And once again, their maturity came to the forefront. In America, we see a similar use of the stage to promote dialogue on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as demonstrated by the popular Broadway play Rent. But to see a similar endeavor at a high school in Zambia, created by the students and for the students, is simply remarkable.

After the performances, the LearnServe participants engaged in a round-table discussion with our Zambian counterparts, with everyone desiring to share their opinions, reflections, or questions in an open-minded environment. I was taken aback by the entire experience... from dramatic performance to open discussion, this afternoon was truly an inspiration and an experience I will cherish until the end of my days.

***

Read more: LearnServe Zambia Blog

About LearnServe
The LearnServe program brings teams of students and teachers to developing regions of the world and involves them in service learning projects. The LearnServe teams participate in development and education programs that are making a difference in the lives of others, working to address issues of global importance such as literacy, health, poverty, and the environment. Each LearnServe program seeks to establish lasting partnerships and relationships in the communities we serve. The goal is to develop an appreciation of the people and country, to learn firsthand what leads to sustainable change, and to understand lessons that each school team can return to teach and share in their own school communities.

Profits on the side

2007-06-25T19:34:02Z

While charity and fast food may seem like an odd mix, more nonprofit groups are looking at national franchises as a way to boost their income and support their mission. Profits from their franchise outlets go to the coffers of their nonprofit organizations. The strategy -- part of an emerging sector dubbed "social franchising" -- has become increasingly palatable as competition heats up for government funding, foundation grants and philanthropic donations, experts say. "Social franchising is part of a larger and increasing phenomenon of earned income by nonprofits," says James E. Austin, emeritus professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in Boston, who has studied the blending of nonprofit and commercial enterprises. In the past, nonprofits have ventured out on their own to run bookstores, thrift shops, day-care facilities and even low-income housing projects. Now, nonprofits with limited business acumen are checking out the cookie-cutter franchise model as a way to earn extra cash.

Read the article by Colleen Debaise: The Wall Street Journal (subscription required)

Schools call roll at a border crossing

2007-06-25T14:27:26Z

Children who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants but live in Mexico cross every morning to get a better education for free in Arizona, breaking the law that requires them to live within the boundaries of the district. To many of their parents, who have ties in both countries, not living in the district is the educational equivalent of jaywalking. "I pay taxes. I work over here," said a 31-year-old corrections officer who would not give his name as he walked his son from Mexico to elementary school in San Luis. "What's the difference?" There are no hard statistics on the number of children who break the residency requirement, but some people opposed to U.S. immigration policy have seized on the issue as another example of how they say migrants exploit the U.S. They contend that most school districts do not enforce the law because they risk losing state funding, which is based on the number of enrolled students.

Read the article by Nicholas Riccardi: Los Angeles Times

Absence of major disaster in '06 affected giving

2007-06-25T13:36:13Z

Although 2006 was heralded as the dawn of a golden age of philanthropy after Warren Buffett pledged his multibillion-dollar fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, charitable giving was almost flat last year. Individuals and institutions gave away an estimated $295 billion last year, a 1 percent increase on an inflation-adjusted basis over the prior year. “Given the media and nonprofit sector buzz around what we’re calling the megagifts made last year, it is maybe a little surprising that giving did not increase more dramatically,” said Patrick M. Rooney, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. “I think what we’re seeing is philanthropy growing in a steadier, more linear way, when everyone has been hoping for a pattern more like the roaring 1990s.”

Read the article by Stephanie Strom: The New York Times

Louisiana overhauls defense for the poor

2007-06-25T11:44:20Z

Louisiana moved to overhaul its faltering system for defending indigent suspects on Sunday, passing a bill in the State Senate that centralizes control over the appointment of lawyers for the poor. Under the bill, officials in Baton Rouge, the state capital, will appoint public defenders throughout Louisiana, changing a system considered one of the country’s most negligent. Judges now oversee the appointment of lawyers for poor people accused of crimes. As a result, critics say, the emphasis in Louisiana courtrooms has been on rapid processing of cases, rather than the rights of the accused.

Read the article: The New York Times