Project Description

Students of the Mississippi-Vermont Community Comection class at Twinfield Union School in Marshfield, Vermont have been learning from a “Rights in Action” curriculum. It is a model that enables students to reflect, create and fulfill action plans while building a voice that empowers and is shaped by community. Imagine a new generation of citizen activists bridging our nation’s North and South divide, raising their voices on important public issues, and enlisting community leaders and educators as partners in the civic and political life of their communities. A Vermont student, fully aware of the significance of race and history, reflected on our work and her connection with Mississippi youth, that religion and education separates us; not race. It was here at Twinfield where Vermont students first became aware of the discrimination, exclusion and injustices students from northern Mississippi experience in the process of acquiring an education. Twinfield students have been shocked by stories they heard from the southern students related to the inequitable practices preventing young people in Mississippi from acquiring a first-rate education. Two years ago, the Rural School and Community Trust brought youth-adult teams from the Mississippi Delta, Midwest, and Northeast together at the historic Penn Center in South Carolina. The students immediately experienced compassion for one another and made commitments to find ways to support each other. They learned about the effective organizing principles used in the 1960’s struggle for equality to apply relevant skills to new “civic action” projects in their communities. Since that time, Twinfield students have also become familiar with their southern partners involvement in Youth Innovation Movement Solutions (YIMS), a team of Mississippi youth and community leaders and their efforts to reverse the educational inequities. Vermont students from Twinfield High School are understanding and acting on important issues as part of their school curriculum—a civics in action course. This year, through generous donations from community partners, Twinfield Union School will be sending 26 members to Northern Mississippi to form relationships, visit schools, and participate in workshops and activities devoted to critical awareness of one another’s experiences. This May, students involved in (YIMS) will join us in Vermont. Their visit will be devoted to supporting the Twinfield community members they connected with in Mississippi by attending and participating in academic and community events. The visitors will also participate in training in the "Rights in Action" curriculum developed at Twinfield. We have so much to learn from one another and we are trying to give these students the opportunity to create real change. Please consider donating to help us reach our goal of $39,040, which includes traveling expenses for the Vermont community members to visit Mississippi as well as supporting the fundraising efforts of the Mississippi group to visit Vermont.

Project Description

The Back Porch Energy Initiative is a non profit founded in May of 2007 by six college graduates who wanted to take action on critical local issues in the American southeast. The American southeast has the highest per capita energy consumption values in the country, spending only one fifth the national averages on energy programming and resources. The founders of Back Porch call the southeast home, and we decided to do something about these discouraging figures. In November, we are headed on a ten month tour of the American Southeast on a bus fueled by waste vegetable oil. We seek to empower under-served communities to take action on local, regional, and national environmental issues.

In each community we aim to address the issue of excess energy consumption and environmental degradation in three major ways. Our main goal is to foster an increased awareness of energy conservation and green thinking through free educational programs offered to the community. We will achieve this through visiting three prominent community member's homes offering these households our greening services. In these homes we will install energy efficient light bulbs, provide better insulation, and offer numerous other house greening techniques. We will then use the visibility of these community members to offer our educational programming with their social group (for example if we green a home of a pastor we will do educational programming with their congregation). Lastly, Back Porch aims to give communities the tools to effectively address local environmental issues into the future. Our environmental science and policy degrees combined with our campaign training through other environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network have provided Back Porch with a strong background in these pressing issues. We will be conducting campaign training at middle and high schools, use our musical talents to communicate our message at local venues, and attend all community events in order to be a presence about town. Through our educational programming we will have instilled a long lasting dedication to environmental thinking in these communities.

While we are in Virginia, we will be visiting a particularly distressed community, Petersburg and we want to green more than just three prominent community member's homes. We want to reach out to a larger portion of the population and green homes of those in particular need. About 16.7% of families and 19.6% of the Petersburg population live below the poverty line, including 27.1% of those under age 18 and 15.8% of those age 65 or over. We want to offer our environmental services to this community to help families save money and go green at the same time!

Project Description

The Back Porch Energy Initiative is a non profit founded in May of 2007 by six college graduates who wanted to take action on critical local issues in the American southeast. The American southeast has the highest per capita energy consumption values in the country, spending only one fifth the national averages on energy programming and resources. The founders of Back Porch call the southeast home, and we decided to do something about these discouraging figures. In November, we are headed on a ten month tour of the American Southeast on a bus fueled by waste vegetable oil. We seek to empower under-served communities to take action on local, regional, and national environmental issues.

In each community we aim to address the issue of excess energy consumption and environmental degradation in three major ways. Our main goal is to foster an increased awareness of energy conservation and green thinking through free educational programs offered to the community. We will achieve this through visiting three prominent community member's homes offering these households our greening services. In these homes we will install energy efficient light bulbs, provide better insulation, and offer numerous other house greening techniques. We will then use the visibility of these community members to offer our educational programming with their social group (for example if we green a home of a pastor we will do educational programming with their congregation). Lastly, Back Porch aims to give communities the tools to effectively address local environmental issues into the future. Our environmental science and policy degrees combined with our campaign training through other environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network have provided Back Porch with a strong background in these pressing issues. We will be conducting campaign training at middle and high schools, use our musical talents to communicate our message at local venues, and attend all community events in order to be a presence about town. Through our educational programming we will have instilled a long lasting dedication to environmental thinking in these communities.

While we are in Virginia, we will be visiting a particularly distressed community, Petersburg and we want to green more than just three prominent community member's homes. We want to reach out to a larger portion of the population and green homes of those in particular need. About 16.7% of families and 19.6% of the Petersburg population live below the poverty line, including 27.1% of those under age 18 and 15.8% of those age 65 or over. We want to offer our environmental services to this community to help families save money and go green at the same time!

Project Description

The Sustainability Workshop Series is an effort led by the ad-hoc community group, Global Awareness Local Action (G.A.L.A.), to provide experiential learning of basic homesteading techniques like composting, sourdough baking, canning, utilizing renewable energy, biofuel production, wool spinning, wine making, native foraging, and bioregion education. The goal of the Sustainability Workshop Series is to empower individuals to become more locally self-reliant in a fun, practical, and meaningful way.

How is the G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series fun? The Sustainability Workshop Series remains fun, as well as educational, by allowing participants to be engaged in a creative and unique manner. For instance, a Wool-Spinning Workshop would not require everyone to use the same three colors of wool. Instead, participants would be allowed to pick and choose from a variety of vegetable or root dyed wools to make each spool of yarn unique. Likewise, a follow-up Knitting Workshop would not demand everyone to make a hat, but would offer diverse knitting techniques that accommodate the final product desire of everyone!

The Sustainability Workshop Series is also fun because it remains informal, learning-focused rather than accomplishment-focused, and held at a rotating venue. While the Sustainability Workshop Series serves as a chance to learn a new homesteading technique, it is also an opportunity for community members to socialize with people they may not otherwise spend time with. All workshops also place more emphasis on the learning process rather than the accomplishment aspect of the final product. Emphasis on process over product helps keep the atmosphere lighthearted, and avoids disappointment if a product does not turn out exactly how the person expected. And finally, the Sustainability Workshop Series is fun because it takes place at a rotating venue to remain fresh and new!

How is the G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series practical? The Sustainability Workshop Series is practical because it uses only locally available resources and helps meet some type of basic human need. For instance, there would not be a Sustainability Workshop that teaches participants how to maneuver aero-freestyle tricks with remote control airplanes. First, chances are that the parts used to make the remote control airplane are not produced locally. And second, other than sharpening mere hand to eye coordination and simply enjoying the outdoors, this activity does not serve a practical human need. This is not to discredit those who enjoy leisurely time spent flying remote airplanes. To be more specific, G.A.L.A. will aim to have all “ingredients” for each workshop available within a one hundred mile radius. In addition, each workshop will develop skills to help meet a basic human need like food, shelter, warmth, health, and a sense of belonging.

How is the G.A.L.A. Sustainability Workshop Series meaningful? The Sustainability Workshop Series is made meaningful by deliberately connecting the skill being learned, with how that skill helps achieve sustainability. It is G.A.L.A.’s promise that each workshop will develop skills that if utilized, will help increase the chances of a sustainable future.

But what is sustainability? A literal definition of sustainability is simple: capable of being sustained; the ability to withstand or uphold some type of weight (or pressure). Language around sustainability has evolved, however, as scientific advancements allow for a greater understanding of the earth’s carrying capacity, or in other words, the ability of the earth to withstand pressure of human impact. Models used to illustrate the relationship between human impact and the earth’s carrying capacity are grounded in a fundamental law of nature: natural systems have a limited capacity to assimilate waste and recover from the depletion of resources.

G.A.L.A.’s goal behind the Sustainability Workshop Series is to help people develop skills that lower their impact on the earth, also commonly referred to as “ecological footprint,” in a fun and practical manner. G.A.L.A. will make this experience meaningful by connecting each skill with information about the unsustainable trend it seeks to mitigate. For instance, the rate of soil erosion and loss of productive cropland is unsustainable. As Lester Brown highlights in his rigorously researched book, Eco-Economy, “the loss of topsoil from wind and water erosion now exceeds the natural formation of new soil, gradually draining the land of its fertility." These are the facts that would be brought to a Sustainability Workshop on Household Composting Methods to show that composting not only keeps organic matter out of landfills, but can also help restore nutrient-rich topsoil. Helping participants understand that their new skill is not simply a novelty or isolated action, but part of a larger movement to ensure an environmentally restorative existence, will make the workshop experience that much more meaningful.

Inevitably, G.A.L.A.’s Sustainability Workshop Series will help strengthen the social fabric of community as well as restore the ecological integrity of the given bioregion. Although G.A.L.A.’s Sustainability Workshops Series will take place in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, all course descriptions will be made available in a user-friendly template for community groups to adopt everywhere!

Project Description

My passion is to help people realize that each one of us is capable of making a positive difference in this world. My specialty is working with people one on one to help each person create their perfect volunteer job. The way I see it, if you are going to be doing volunteer work you might as well be doing exactly what you want to be doing, when you want to be doing it. EmpowerLA gives people an opportunity to do this.

The main program that you want to look at is EmpowerLA http://www.aunitedworld.org/EmpowerLA.asp. My partner is the Executive Director of the Volunteer Center of Los Angeles (VCLA) - There are 340 Volunteer Centers in the Country and the VCLA is the largest not only in the country, but probably the world. We will soon be putting together a manual for other cities.

EmpowerLA plans to empower 250,000 parents and grandparents during Volunteer Recognition Week 2008 - April 27th thru May 3rd. Then, starting September 11th, 2008 we will be starting the Pay It Forward Student Mentoring Program where students mentor other students. This will be a fundraising program for nonprofit organizations http://aunitedworld.org/PayItForwardMovement.asp.

Additionally, Vacation4Charity http://aunitedworld.org/Vacation4Charity.asp will be a fundraiser for all of the schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District . All of our Fundraising For A Better World Programs cost the school or nonprofit nothing to get involved, all they can do is make money.

We are going to start empowering the parents and grandparents first as we can't ask our youth to be paying it forward if the parents and grandparents aren't setting precedence. The concept of EmpowerLA is that everyone has something - Our slogan is "What are you doing to help make Los Angeles a better place" - If we all judged one another for what we are doing to help make Los Angeles a better place, rather than what we do for a living - We all start out equal.

We will find something for everyone! Everyone has a gift! 90% of America has always wanted to be the boss, well we are giving everyone the opportunity to be the boss of their own "Make the world a better place" program. Yes it is a volunteer program, but once a person starts seeing the results of their efforts, they will be addicted to goodness!

Once we have the mentoring down to a science in the United States (Give us a couple years) - Our kids in America will be mentoring our youth in third world countries on their $100 laptops. My passion is really working with retired people. For me, it's the retired people that have the time and it's the retired people that need purpose and passion in their lives. We start by working with people one and one to help them find their purpose/passion http://www.aunitedworld.org/Findyourpurpose.asp.

The concept of EmpowerLA is completly different from what most people think that volunteering is. If you notice my ads on Volunteer Match you will see the difference. Take a look at http://aunitedworld.org/VolunteerContactUs.asp -We are asking people to write their own program and present it to their school, or favorite nonprofit.

If each volunteer can be a director of their own program we can immediatly raise their self esteem and I'm big on raising peoples self esteem as it is the first step to teaching people how to be happy all the time. Take a look at www.Empowerla.org/televisionshows.asp.

Take a look at this trailer for this movie www.TheShiftMovie.com and let me know what you think This trailer is going to be an important aspect of EmpowerLA as before it becomes a movie it will be a custom promotional piece for every LAUSD school to show during Volunteer Recognition Week (April 27th thru May 3rd, 2008) to help inspire and empower parents and grandparents to help their school and their community.

We are also going to promote this movie by doing the same thing for nonprofit organizations, religious organizations, corporations, etc. In other words - Everyone will be part of The Shift!

Project Description

Refocusing on our first love, so we're ready for our second... Vision Statement: We as a generation of young women are FIRST called to be the Bride of Christ. But more often than not we as young women commit our hearts to an earthly man when we haven’t even prepared our hearts for the Heavenly Man! The primary purpose of this group is to create an environment of discipleship and friendship that promotes and evokes a refocusing to our first love so we can be truly prepared for our second!

Target Audience: The primary focus is to reach young women on this campus who are not yet married but have hopes to one day be married!

Purpose: The purpose of this group is to create an environment that will allow for discipleship. Southeastern University prides itself in the reality that they are raising up the next generation of leaders. But in order to be equipped as women we need to understand three things before we leave or before we even consider the words “I DO”
1. Who am I?
2. What is my purpose?
3. Where am I going?

Room/Atmosphere: I want it to be a coffee-shop type feel! I want this to be a discussion group that allows for discipleship and promotes open directed discussion.

Team: I want the team to understand where the night is leading so the discussion can be guided there with the help and influence of the Holy Spirit.

Goals: (1) To understand who I am, who God is to me, and how all this will affect who and when I marry. (2) Help prevent senseless/God-less marriage just because he’s a good Christian guy or “oh look at how he worships he must love God” (3) To develop a community of girls who are strong and who aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves, each other, their morals, and God.

What is going to happen:
I want to have some kind of list for communication.
Make a point to send out reminders, cards, and emails of encouragement.
Opening game/activity (that will lead into the topic possibly)
1-2 worship songs to make an atmosphere
Introduction to the topic for the night
Guided discussion
Closing & catch phrase for the next week!
Another option is to have live worship music going as people come in and some coffee shop type items.
Then go right into one corporate worship song and then start with an opening topic and activity.

Project Description

In 2000, Tonya Allen won a BRICK Award for her work as Director of the Warren/Conner Development Coalition in Detroit, MI. Tonya helped provide more than $60,000 in grants to neighborhood organizations, organized 34 area churches to increase childhood immunization rates to 89%, and mobilized parents at five local schools to secure $3 million in school repairs in her Eastside Detroit neighborhood.

Project Description

Lucas Benitez won a BRICK Award in 1999 for his work as Co-Director of The Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee, FL. By educating and organizing fellow migrant workers, Lucas helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years, exposed and stopped two slavery rings and launched a labor action rights program that collected nearly $100,000 in back wages.

Project Description

1999 BRICK winner Oona Chatterjee co-founded Make the Road by Walking, an organization based in Brooklyn, NY. Emphasizing education and collective action, Oona has helped her community secure expanded welfare and legal services, create a food pantry capable of feeding 500 people, and mobilized community residents behind youth empowerment and a cleaner environment.

Project Description

Marqueece Harris-Dawson served as the Director of South Central Youth Empowerment Thru Action in Los Angeles, CA. Marqueece empowered students from South Central’s eight high schools to identify community problems and take action. Through his program, students photographed and exposed poor conditions at local schools and mobilized more than 6,000 peers to secure $153 million in funding to rebuild school infrastructure, fix lockers, and improve student bathrooms. Marqueece won a BRICK Award in 1999.