Putting Inner City Students on a Path to High-Paying Jobs, For Real

The regular school day may be over at the Global Technology Preparatory school in New York’s East Harlem, but the students are still hard at work.

In rooms all over the building, kids are learning how to make video games, create and market products, run for political office, and much more, all under the instruction of professionals who are volunteering their time to teach kids real-world skills.

It’s all part of a program called Citizen Schools, which aims to enrich the offerings of urban public schools by extending the school day and bringing in members of the private sector to share their knowledge and expertise.

Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance.

Eighth-graders in the video-game workshop, taught by employees of Intent Media, are riveted to the lines of code on their screens, creating games incorporating images they find online, and in some cases their own original artwork. In an entrepreneurship workshop run by staff from the asset management firm AllianceBernstein, sixth-graders are coming up with hypothetical snack foods and marketing plans. One team has decided to go with individually packaged red velvet cake, calling them Dynamite Cakes. "The slogan is, ''Taste the blast!'" says a boy named Eric.

The Citizen Schools program, founded in 1995 in Boston, brings people from corporations such as Google, Raytheon, Microsoft, Amgen, and many more into 31 middle schools in low-income neighborhoods around the country. There, the professionals teach 10-week apprenticeships that lead up to a final presentation called WOW!, where the students show off the work they have accomplished. In the case of the entrepreneurship group, they’ll be pitching their ideas to a panel of AllianceBernstein staff who will react as potential investors. The kids watched clips from the reality TV show "Shark Tank" to prepare.

The central idea of Citizen Schools is to extend and complement the work that teachers are doing with the kids during the regular school day. Many of the apprenticeships focus on STEM skills – science, technology, engineering, and math. Volunteers from Google have helped kids build computers. Texas Instruments and Apache Corp. have mentored students in building electric cars.

East Harlem’s Global Tech Prep is typical of the schools served by the program. Eighty percent of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and it is what Citizen Schools defines as a school with high academic need: only 34 percent of its students meet proficiency standards in English, and 49 percent in math. The extended school day keeps middle-schoolers engaged in productive and positive activities during the tough after-school hours, when many kids find themselves at loose ends.

Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.

Citizen Schools apprenticeships weave academic principles into the curriculum and invest them with real-world relevance. Students learn, for instance, that graphing skills can come in quite handy when you’re trying to work out the logistics of a video game. Maybe the Pythagorean theorem isn’t completely pointless, after all.

Apprenticeships meet twice a week. On the other days, students get academic support and guidance from Citizen Schools staff. The program also helps them make decisions about what high schools to attend. As part of the Citizen Schools "8th Grade Academy" program, students visit college campuses and learn about their options for attending and paying for college.

Citizen Schools now serves about 5,000 middle school students each year across eight participating states, and the program documents lasting effects for its participants. Kids who have gone through Citizen Schools in middle school are less likely to be absent from high school, and graduate from high school at a rate 20 percent higher than their peers.

Michael Andrew says he knows participating in the program had a positive effect on him. When he was a fourth- and fifth-grader in Boston, he was one of the earliest enrollees. Now, he’s a 24-year-old graduate of Syracuse University who works at AllianceBernstein in information technology. And he’s back with Citizen Schools, this time as a volunteer.

"I was a popular kid, one of those kids who thought he was cool," says Andrew, who says he sometimes played the class clown. "In the program, I didn’t have to be that person. I met a whole new group of friends. Nobody was trying to show off." He admits that he did try to win over a girl he liked by demonstrating his ability to sew in a quilting class. "I made sure my skills were tight so that I could impress," says Andrew. "The pillows I made are still in my parents’ house today." He also built an engine in another apprenticeship that impressed in a different way -- when he fired it up at the WOW! demonstration, it was louder than anybody else's.

Andrew says his time as a Citizen Schools student gave him skills that he has used in all the years since, in school and at work. The program improved his once-shaky public speaking, says Andrew, and built up his leadership potential. "The teachers I worked with were awesome," he remembers.

Now he wants to be one of the teachers that the sixth-graders he’s working with today remember when they grow up. "I want to help inspire young black men and men in general," says Andrew, who is black. "It only takes one teacher to inspire you for life. I want to be able to do that. If I can only do that for one student each semester, it’s well worth it."

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/putting-inner-city-students-path-high-paying-jobs-real/5526/

Living on right side of county line means more life, better health

-Gladwin County has the highest percentage of smoking adults (31 percent); the lowest rate of smokers is in Ottawa County (11 percent)

-Saginaw County has the highest rate of obesity (40 percent), but even in the skinniest counties (Ottawa and Washtenaw), a quarter of adults are considered obese.

-Lake County has the highest teen birth rate, at 64 births per 1,000 females ages 15-19; that’s more than four times the teen birth rate in Livingston and Washtenaw counties (13 per 1,000).

Despite being the home to five of the state’s top-10-ranked hospitals, Wayne County ranks last in health outcomes such as poor physical and mental health, low birth rate and premature death.

By contrast, Washtenaw, with the state’s top-ranked medical facility (University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers), is ranked fifth. (Leelanau County is tops in health outcomes.)

“This is about changing economic opportunity,” Udow-Phillips said. “Health is about poverty. And the best way to get people out of poverty is education.

“If we invest in early childhood education, health issues (will improve)” eventually, she said, because education is positively correlated with better jobs and better health.

“This is a long-term issue,” Udow-Phillips said. “It’s not going to be solved by hiring more doctors.”


http://bridgemi.com/2013/04/living-on-right-side-of-county-line-means-more-life-better-health/

From Prison to Paycheck: Grand Rapids' 30-2-2 Initiative

"Our experience is that people with criminal backgrounds make great employees,'' says Mark Peters, CEO of Butterball. "They found an employer willing to take a chance on them, so they're eager to prove themselves and grow with the company."

Cascade Engineering, a global manufacturer, has about 60 formerly incarcerated people among its 500 Grand Rapids employees. The company has an explicit anti-racism statement and a felony convictions policy that removes prior convictions as a bar to employment. It also supported a "Ban the Box" campaign to eliminate the standard question on job applications regarding prior convictions. At Butterball, nearly 30 of its 170 employees are former prisoners. Peters initially championed hiring them on grounds of fairness, but now he also recognizes their significant contribution to the company.

http://www.policylink.org/site/c.lkIXLbMNJrE/b.8526303/k.E5C6/Americas_Tomorrow__January_23_2013.htm?section=story1&msource=ESGM20130123#.UQBxAyfAfJY



Anti-Racism Statement

At Cascade Engineering, we believe in the values of diversity and inclusion. More specifically, we believe in the diversity of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, experiences, and the inclusion of people regardless of their race, color, sex, language, national origin, religion, orientation or age. In addition to supporting the principles of diversity and inclusion, Cascade Engineering is on a journey to be an anti-racism organization. Our statement defining our journey is as follows:

Cascade Engineering is an anti-racism organization. Cascade Engineering defines being an anti-racism organization as creating an environment where all employees regardless of race or the color of their skin know they are valued. We acknowledge that racism can be unconscious or unintentional and identifying racism as an issue does not automatically mean those involved in the act are racist or intended the negative impact. As an anti-racism organization we will purposefully identify, discuss and challenge issues of race and color and the impact(s) they have on the organization, its systems, and its people. We will also challenge ourselves to understand and correct any inequities we may discover within Cascade Engineering and gain a better understanding of ourselves during this purposeful process. Being an anti-racism organization is a journey and it is the learning along the way that makes this work worth all of our efforts.

Our goal is to create and maintain an environment where employees feel safe to discuss race and the importance it has on our organization and our lives outside of work. Cascade Engineering will continue to purposefully discuss and deepen our understanding of race and racism. As part of this journey, Cascade Engineering was audited by the Partners for a Racism Free Community (PRFC), non-profit organization whose purpose is “to achieve a standard of excellence in racial equality, choosing to become identified with others of a like mind in order to create the critical mass necessary for community transformation.” Cascade Engineering has been certified as a Full Partner by the PRFC, and is the only manufacturer certified in the State of Michigan. The next and highest level of certification is Credential Partner and we hope to be the first business certified in the state.

We are deeply committed to purposefully studying the impacts of race and racism throughout the organization. This work can be uncomfortable and even painful to some, but we have found that the greatest challenges bear the greatest rewards. By embracing the principles of diversity and inclusion our culture is strengthened and our workplace is more dynamic. We would like to recognize and thank our employees, suppliers and stakeholders for supporting our 2012 Diversity Calendar.

http://www.cascadeng.com/about/antiracism.htm

A Blueprint for a Profitable Urban Farm

The analysis suggests that at least three to 10 acres of contiguous space would be needed to create a viable commercial farm.

Global Green USA projects that in that space a profitable farm could be built to support three full-time equivalent staff. Based on three different crop scenarios, the report suggests that revenues could top $160,000 and profits could be more than $10,000 per year. It's kind of like an abbreviated business plan for potential urban farmers in Youngstown, showing at least one way to turn this idea into actual jobs.

The organization has been working with Youngstown since 2009 to help develop a sustainable city plan and to turn the city into a model of recovery for other struggling Rust Belt cities.

The city has been losing population for the last 30 years, and its shrinkage has been compounded by a worsening economic situation. As jobs dried up and people left town, the city became home to large amounts of vacant property – 22,000 empty plots according to an official count. Like many other cities facing similar increases in vacant land, urban agriculture has been seen as an option for putting land back to use. It's also an official strategy. The city's 2010 plan emphasizes the importance of shrinking the city.

About 44 acres of formerly vacant land is now being farmed in Youngstown. Based on this report, an ambitious group of farmers could soon be adding another 5.5 acres to that total, as well as a few local jobs.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/06/blueprint-profitable-urban-farm/2179/