Ideas In Action
"Well, we try. We donate 2 percent of every tee sold to the Acumen Fund. It's a nonprofit that uses a business-like approach to solve problems of poverty."
"The main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, where hundreds of homeless people spend every day, is the first in the country to keep a full-time social worker on hand, according to the American Library Association."
"The first step in fighting poverty is understanding the struggle of the poor, according to the organization charged with leading that fight in Manatee County."
"Chambliss told students she joined the Army after barely graduating from high school -- having waited too long to finally take it seriously -- and then finding herself homeless and with few options."
"With a careful sequence of courses, including ninth-grade algebra, and attention to skills like note-taking, the early-college high schools accelerate students so that they arrive in college needing less of the remedial work that stalls so many low-income and first-generation students."
"She rejects the idea that Oregon lacks qualified people of color to lead committees, serve in office or otherwise shape public policy. Members of minority groups need to lead discussions on poverty, discrimination and schools, she said."
"Campbell and Chapman were matched through Capital Partners for Education, a nonprofit organization in Northwest Washington that provides students from low-income families with mentoring and academic and enrichment support."
"Each year on the day before Thanksgiving, a charity run by local orthopedic foot and ankle surgeon Stephen Conti and his family gives new shoes to homeless people and provides them with free foot care."
"It has provided the Red Line's Hollywood and Vine station with an attractive new yellow-glass canopy... On the other side of the complex, the apartment block includes 78 units set aside for low-income tenants."
"The program, funded by the United Way, focuses on working families with dependent children whose incomes are at or below 200 percent of the poverty level and residing in and around San Antonio's Southwest Side."
"When Michael Deschaine of Baden embarked on his Eagle Scout project, he picked a cause that would probably not occur to most middle-class teenagers. He decided to help the homeless."
"Friends since they met in business school at the University of California, Berkeley, Ms. Richmond and Ms. Tobey founded Revolution Foods Inc. to ride a political and economic wave: surging support for healthier food in school cafeterias."
"The state's leading anti-homeless activist is asking Utahns to donate $2, $5 or $10 to the Pamela Atkinson Homeless Trust Fund when they do their tax returns."
"A 2007 study by Carnegie Mellon University showed that in a group of low-income preschoolers, playing a board game with numbers, such as Chutes and Ladders, helped them improve their performance on four kinds of numerical tasks."
Steering funding away from prisons and towards social and educational programs helps lower the crime rate. For example, San Francisco's Truancy Reduction Initiative has shown a 20 percent reduction in early childhood truancy by working with parents.
"Moses, a sophomore at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, is studying television production -- but not in high school. He is one of 10 children from low-income communities who are taking part in Hope Leadership Academy..."
"Low-income refers to someone earning about 80 percent of the area's median income, or AMI. Moderate income equates to about 80 percent to 120 percent of AMI while above moderate is about 120 percent to 160 percent of AMI."
"The biggest overhaul in its 35-year history leaves the federal Women, Infants and Children nutrition program with a dual mission: fight childhood hunger and childhood obesity at the same time."
"'I visit a lot of schools where 95 percent of the kids are on reduced or free lunch,' he says. 'Those schools are full of good kids. We just need to give them a chance to get out of abject poverty.'"
"'It was really nice,' said Burns, who lives on Cypress Avenue. 'It's really something that they do something like that, especially in this area. It's low-income, and people can't afford to go to the grocery store, let alone buy batteries.'"
"She is among a growing legion of female veterans who have turned to the street after a failed transition from military to civilian life. At a time when women are assuming an ever-expanding role in the armed forces, the number of homeless female veterans is rising."
"Brian Spicker of Valley of the Sun United Way said about 8,000 individuals experience homelessness each day in Maricopa County, and 14 percent of Arizona's population lives in poverty."
"It calls for four impoverished neighborhoods -- Englewood, Auburn Gresham, Chicago Lawn and Pilsen -- to be declared 'digital excellence demonstration communities' that will be flooded with technology to demonstrate the Internet's 'transformative power.'"
"A new report urges Pilgrims Inn and other local agencies to modernize how they serve people at risk of becoming homeless, from opening a 24-hour point of entry center to deploying medical teams that would help speed the recovery process."
"Hungerford herself is gearing up for a trip to visit her new grandson in Sydney, Australia. She'll lead a Stitchin' Mission class at an Anglican church there and send quilts to the homeless survivors of a bushfire that scorched an area near Melbourne in February."
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