AIM reaches the STARS! CONGRATULATONS!

Detroit HS tech stars get backers

Principal Patricia Pickett, Superintendant Connie Calloway, Rev. Jesse Jackson. PHOTO BY JACKIE BARBER

By Eric T. Campbell

The Michigan Citizen

DETROIT - Leaders from the education, faith-based and labor communities came together in front of the Northwestern High School student body Thurs., Sept. 14, to announce the creation of the Northwestern High School Success Project.

The assembly, held in Northwestern�s auditorium was part of the Rainbow/PUSH Third Annual Community Symposium.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams, Detroit Schools Superintendent Connie Calloway and U.S. Representative John Conyers addressed the students.

The "Success Project" was initiated by a partnership of Northwestern Alumni with the Michigan Labor Constituency Council, the UAW, International Union, New Detroit Incorporated and the Rainbow/PUSH coalition.

Honorary Chairs and committee members include a long list of Detroit community leaders and activists. The five-year pilot program seeks to identify specific educational and structural needs at Northwestern and to raise a $500,000 fiduciary fund for the school to "augment their academic program over a five-year period", according to the symposium guide booklet.

The program also stresses the need for "community wide mobilization" to support student's scholastic needs and improve Detroit high school graduation rates.

"They've raised over $90,000 for us to augment our programs, organizations and clubs, to have a holistic approach, a community approach to transforming," Northwestern Principal Patricia Pickett told the Michigan Citizen. "We're going to try and develop a clean, safe learning environment with rigorous instruction. We're all stakeholders, continuously learning."

Northwestern High School was chosen to pilot the program in part because of its potential to incorporate an extended academic structure. The curriculum at Northwestern already includes nine advanced placement classes, four computer laboratories, two libraries and one of the only Planetariums located in a Michigan public school.

Dr. Shedrick Ward is the facilitator of the AIM program at Northwestern, which identifies and nurtures students from the ninth grade on and offers scholastic options based in technological fields.

"To bring the teachers together across areas to perform a unified approach" that's the American transformation of the high schools so that the kids are connected to places like Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, General Motors, who have their challenges in this global network," Dr. Ward told the Michigan Citizen in his office. "But young people still have some responsibility in understanding what that challenge is going to be when they leave high school."

In addition to the morning assembly, the Community Day Symposium also included a luncheon and town hall meeting, at which participants discussed and reviewed elements of the "Success Program".

The day ended with a black tie gala and fundraising dinner at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Keynote speaker Judge Greg Mathis has strong ties to the "Success Program" through his National Youth and Education Crusade, which focuses on issues of crime and education.

But the day was best exemplified by the gathering of the student body in the high school auditorium on Grand Boulevard, during which wisdom was passed from generation to generation in the spirit of community uplift and educational advancement.

"We are now the conscience of this country," congressman and Northwestern High graduate, John Conyers told the listeners. "We are now holding hands with the 6.6 billion people in the world and we can all make a difference."

Keynote speaker Rev. Jesse Jackson paid tribute to Northwestern High and its role, even beyond the neighborhood.

"You have such a sterling history and heritage of impacting our world by lessons taught and learned from this school," Jackson began.

He focused directly on the students in the building and their responsibility to uphold the advancements made by those in the Black community.

"We're going another way, against the odds, we at Northwestern, are going to higher ground," the audience repeated with Jackson. "We shall lift ourselves, and our community, our city, our state, by the power of our minds. We change our minds, and the whole world changes. We must first change our minds to change the world."

SWEET! (UWSEM Agenda for Change Initaitive)

September 7, 2007

United Way for Southeastern Michigan

1212 Griswold Street

Detroit, MI 48226

Ref: UWSEM Agenda for Change “Educational Preparedness” Collaborative LOI

Agenda for Change Committee:

Communities to Schools Regional Digital Collaboratory

SKETCH of INTENTION “Pilot Project”: Create and develop a youth-based digitally networked community (networked two-way telecommunications) of inclusive entities to include schools, neighborhood and city community centers, human service organizations, various community capacity building organizations, public service organizations, arts and cultural organizations, business, industry and government.

Attributes of Aspirations (Limited Only by Our Combined Imaginations, Creativity and Innovation)

• Community Interaction and Engagement

*Build deeper and richer community alliances. Build organizational leadership and capacity, service-learning and engagement vehicles for change from merely synergistic to systemic imperatives.

• Educational Enhancement and Distribution Channels

*Utilize existing K-12 educational assets; teachers, pedagogy, curriculum, underutilized digital infrastructure, etc. Develop digital media and learning curriculum, pedagogy, distribution methodologies and modalities aligned with new 21^st Century economic realities with a particular focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines. Create connections to relevant real-world experts and working environments.

• Youth Development and Leadership

*Create student-led, student-taught, project-based explorations emphasizing creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial endeavors that resonate with their world as they encounter it while also learning how to think instead of what to think.

• 21^st Century Skills for New Creative Economy Career Development

*Utilize digital technological innovations as a foundational element to further our youth’s interest in connecting socially to the world around them while coaching and facilitating conventional understandings (problem solving, critical thinking, cognitive discipline, creativity, innovation, collaboration, social responsibility) of how our great society works thereby enhancing our local, regional, state, national and global competitiveness in the urgent “brute-force to brain-force” transformation.

Importance: URGENT!

The Preschool Question: Who Gets to Go?

Va. Expansion Efforts Highlight Debate

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A01

The children in Carrie Hamilton's preschool class yesterday drew wobbly hearts with wobbly letters underneath. They tapped the buttons on a toy cash register and raced cars over roads built of wooden tracks. Hidden in the games and giggles were lessons on the building blocks of reading and math.

These Fairfax County 4- and 5-year-olds are part of a national push to devote more public resources to the youngest learners. They are also at the center of a debate, underscored last week in a Virginia policy shift, over whether the government should offer preschool to all children or concentrate on those from poor families.

Nationwide, about 950,000 children are enrolled in state-funded preschool, a 36 percent increase from five years ago, said experts who track the programs. As advocates promote quality pre-kindergarten as a way to prepare children for school, strengthen the workforce and reduce crime, states have increased funding since 2005 for such programs by 75 percent, to $4.2 billion, according to the District-based organization Pre-K Now. Some in Congress have also proposed more federal money to help build state preschool initiatives.

The questions about which children will benefit most from government-funded preschool and how great the investment should be are at the core of Virginia's effort to expand pre-kindergarten but have also arisen in Maryland. Next week, in its first foray into all-day preschool, Montgomery County plans to introduce full-day, federally funded Head Start classes for 260 students at 10 elementary schools that serve low-income neighborhoods. This week, Prince George's County expanded its full-day state-funded preschool program by half, to 261 classes, also targeting students from poor families.

After campaigning in 2005 to offer free preschool to every 4-year-old in Virginia regardless of family income, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) scaled back his plan last week and said he would focus resources on the neediest children.

In an interview yesterday, Kaine said his pledge to launch universal preschool was prompted by research showing that a tremendous amount of learning takes place before the first day of kindergarten. But education experts persuaded Kaine to build on the work of existing public and private preschools.

"Instead of just creating a system from scratch, why not take the existing network and focus on the goals of increasing access and increasing quality?" Kaine said. "We can change the financial criteria to help kids who can't afford it and have an impact on the quality of all parts of the system."

Virginia 4-year-olds who qualify for free school lunches -- those in households with incomes of less than $27,000 for a family of four -- are eligible for free preschool, and about 12,500 children take part at an annual state cost of about $50 million. Kaine's plan would extend benefits to children in families with incomes up to $38,000. The new proposal, which envisions enrolling about 17,000 more underprivileged children by 2012, would cost an additional $75 million a year.

Kaine also is calling for a state-led rating system to help parents gauge how providers measure up. Preschools, much like restaurants or hotels, would be rated on a five-star scale based on such factors as the educational level and training of teachers, class sizes and an expert's classroom observation.

Kaine's plan to offer universal preschool for all 100,000 4-year-olds in the state would have cost about $300 million annually.

Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley who is a leading proponent of income-targeted funding, said research has shown that children from poor families get the biggest boost from high-quality preschool. He said universal preschool provides unneeded benefits to wealthy families and said the emphasis should be on helping children in lower-income homes, who tend to start school knowing fewer letters and numbers than their peers.

"We need to focus scarce dollars where the benefit is the greatest, and that's to children from low-income and blue-collar households," Fuller said. "If dollars are sprinkled across all families rich and poor, it's illogical to think early learning gaps will be narrowed."

But other education experts said the country should shift to preschool for all children. They say every dollar spent on public preschool will improve school performance, lessen the need for remedial education and have other long-term benefits.

A recent study of New Mexico's preschoolers showed that students in the state program learned many more words and scored higher on a test of early math skills than peers who didn't attend.

"Even though it costs more, the public is better off if they make sure it gets to all kids," said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "Even middle-income kids, the middle 60 percent, have a 1 in 10 chance of failing a grade, a 1 in 10 chance of dropping out of high school. A lot of that can be traced to how far behind they were when they started kindergarten."

Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, which backs universal access, applauded Kaine's proposal. "Given the political realities of the state, he's starting where he should," Doggett said, alluding to Virginia's budget constraints.

The federal Head Start program provides preschool for about 900,000 children from low-income homes across the country, and many states fund classes targeted largely to disadvantaged children. Georgia and Oklahoma offer universal preschool that reaches large percentages of children. Other states, including West Virginia and New York, are working toward such programs.

In Florida, voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2002 that mandates pre-kindergarten for all children, but critics contend the quality of the program has suffered because of a lack of funding. Last year, California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed the wealthy to pay for universal preschool.

In the District, more than 5,000 children are enrolled in full-day preschool programs in public schools.

The nonprofit preschool of Annandale Christian Community for Action, where Hamilton's students played yesterday, is one of several private centers in a pilot program started by Kaine to help Virginia reach more children from disadvantaged homes. This summer, the center has new state funding for 26 additional children.

Camilla Torejo, 4, showed off her artwork as classmates flipped through books, played computer games and zoomed around with toy cars. "I made this heart and this heart and this heart," Camilla said. Next to them, she wrote her name.

Staff writer Daniel de Vise contributed to this report.

From Time to Time a SUMMARY is Necessary. THAT TIME IS NOW!

Let there be LIGHT!

---

May 20, 2007

Solar Flashlight Lets Africa’s Sun Deliver the Luxury of Light to the Poorest Villages

By WILL CONNORS and RALPH BLUMENTHAL

FUGNIDO, Ethiopia — At 10 p.m. in a sweltering refugee camp here in western Ethiopia, a group of foreigners was making its way past thatch-roofed huts when a tall, rail-thin man approached a silver-haired American and took hold of his hands.

The man, a Sudanese refugee, announced that his wife had just given birth, and the boy would be honored with the visitor’s name. After several awkward translation attempts of “Mark Bent,” it was settled. “Mar,” he said, will grow up hearing stories of his namesake, the man who handed out flashlights powered by the sun.

Since August 2005, when visits to an Eritrean village prompted him to research global access to artificial light, Mr. Bent, 49, a former foreign service officer and Houston oilman, has spent $250,000 to develop and manufacture a solar-powered flashlight.

His invention gives up to seven hours of light on a daily solar recharge and can last nearly three years between replacements of three AA batteries costing 80 cents.

Over the last year, he said, he and corporate benefactors like Exxon Mobil have donated 10,500 flashlights to United Nations refugee camps and African aid charities.

Another 10,000 have been provided through a sales program, and 10,000 more have just arrived in Houston awaiting distribution by his company, SunNight Solar.

“I find it hard sometimes to explain the scope of the problems in these camps with no light,” Mr. Bent said. “If you’re an environmentalist you think about it in terms of discarded batteries and coal and wood burning and kerosene smoke; if you’re a feminist you think of it in terms of security for women and preventing sexual abuse and violence; if you’re an educator you think about it in terms of helping children and adults study at night.”

Here at Fugnido, at one of six camps housing more than 21,000 refugees 550 miles west of Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, Peter Gatkuoth, a Sudanese refugee, wrote on “the importance of Solor.”

“In case of thief, we open our solor and the thief ran away,” he wrote. “If there is a sick person at night we will took him with the solor to health center.”

A shurta, or guard, who called himself just John, said, “I used the light to scare away wild animals.” Others said lights were hung above school desks for children and adults to study after the day’s work.

Mr. Bent’s efforts have drawn praise from the United Nations, Africare, Rice University and others.

Kevin G. Lowther, Southern Africa director for Africare, the largest American aid group for Africa, said his staff was sending 5,000 of his lights, purchased by Exxon Mobil at $10 each, to rural Angola.

Dave Gardner, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said the company’s $50,000 donation in November grew out of an earlier grant it made to Save the Children to build six public schools in Kibala, Angola, a remote area of Kwanza Sul Province.

“At a dedication ceremony for the first four schools in June 2006,” Mr. Gardner said in an e-mail message, “we noticed that a lot of the children had upper respiratory problems, part of which is likely due to the use of wood, charcoal, candles and kero for lighting in the small homes they have in Kibala.”

The Awty International School, a large prep school in Houston, has sent hundreds of the flashlights to schools it sponsors in Haiti, Cameroon and Ethiopia, said Chantal Duke, executive assistant to the head of school.

“In places where there is absolutely no electricity or running water, having light at night is a luxury many families don’t have and never did and which we take for granted in developed countries,” Ms. Duke said by e-mail. Mr. Bent, a former Marine and Navy pilot, served under diplomatic titles in volatile countries like Angola, Bosnia, Nigeria and Somalia in the early 1990s.

In 2001 he went to work as the general manager of an oil exploration team off the coast of the Red Sea in Eritrea, for a company later acquired by the French oil giant Perenco. But the oil business, he said, “didn’t satisfy my soul.”

The inspiration for the flashlight hit him, he said, while working for Perenco in Asmara, Eritrea. One Sunday he visited a local dump to watch scavenging by baboons and birds of prey, and came upon a group of homeless boys who had adopted the dump as their home.

They took him home to a rural village where he noticed that many people had nothing to light their homes, schools and clinics at night.

With a little research, he discovered that close to two billion people around the world go without affordable access to light.

He worked with researchers, engineers and manufacturers, he said, at the Department of Energy, several American universities, and even NASA before finding a factory in China to produce a durable, cost-effective solar-powered flashlight whose shape was inspired by his wife’s shampoo bottle.

The light, or sun torch, has a narrow solar panel on one side that charges the batteries, which can last between 750 and 1,000 nights, and uses the more efficient light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.s, to cast its light. “L.E.D.s used to be very expensive,” Mr. Bent said. “But in the last 18 months they’ve become cheaper, so distributing them on a widespread scale is possible.”

The flashlights usually sell for about $19.95 in American stores, but he has established a BoGo — for Buy One, Give One — program on his Web site, BoGoLight.com, where if you buy one flashlight for $25, he will buy and ship another one to Africa, and donate $1 to one of the aid groups he works with.

Mr. Bent, who is now an oil consultant, lives in Houston with his wife and four young children. When he is not in the air flying his own plane, he is often on the road.

Traveling early this month in Ethiopia’s border area with Sudan, Mr. Bent stopped in each town’s market to methodically check the prices and quality of flashlights and batteries imported from China.

He unscrewed the flashlights one by one, inspecting the batteries, pronouncing them “terrible — they won’t last two nights.”

On his last day along the border, Mr. Bent visited Rapan Sadeeq, 21, a Sudanese refugee who is something of a celebrity in his camp, Bonga, for his rudimentary self-made radios, walkie-talkies and periscopes.

The two men huddled in the hut, discussing what parts would be needed to power the radio with solar panels instead of clunky C batteries. “Oh, I can definitely send you some parts,” Mr. Bent said. “You can be my field engineer in Ethiopia.”

Will Connors reported from Fugnido, Ethiopia, and Ralph Blumenthal from Houston.

On Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurialism in Michigan

Monday, April 16, 2007 Updated Study Says Michigan Still Struggles to Grow Entrepreneurs

LANSING - The latest Small Business Foundation of Michigan's Entrepreneurship Score Card, released Monday, finds that Michigan last year lost ground in developing new, high growth job-creating entrepreneurial small businesses. The Score Card gives Michigan a 2006 grade of "D-minus" for entrepreneurial dynamism, down from the 2005 "D" grade and edging closer to the failing "F" grade that Michigan received for 2004. The Score Card project is a collaborative project of the Small Business Foundation of Michigan (SBFM) and GrowthEconomics, Inc. Financial sponsors are Automation Alley, Central Michigan University, the Edward Lowe Foundation, Lawrence Technological University, MERRA, the Michigan Entrepreneurial Education Network, Michigan State Housing Development Authority, Michigan Technological University, MiBiz, Next Energy, Schoolcraft College, Saginaw Valley State University and the Small Business Association of Michigan. The SBFM defines entrepreneurial dynamism as a composite measure of Michigan’s performance in entrepreneurial change, entrepreneurial vitality and entrepreneurial climate. “While Michigan has not achieved its full entrepreneurial dynamism potential, there are some things it does right – it is still making tremendous progress in areas critical to robust entrepreneurship, such as private lending to small businesses, university spinout businesses and entrepreneurial education,” said SBFM executive director Mark Clevey. “However, the economic impacts of factors like globalization and restructuring of old-line industries will continue to have negative effects on entrepreneurship. Michigan needs to do even more if it is to accelerate entrepreneurial dynamism and create more jobs for our struggling economy.” Here’s how Michigan ranks compared to other states: Entrepreneurial Change (the amount of recent entrepreneurial growth or decline in an economy): 46th Entrepreneurial Vitality (the absolute level of entrepreneurial activity): 38th Entrepreneurial Climate (the capability of an economy to foster entrepreneurship): 38th Business Costs and Productivity: 41st Quality of Life: 37th Government Efficiency and Regulatory Environment: 26th Infrastructure: 24th University Spinout Businesses: 16th Workforce Preparedness: 10th Education and Workforce: 8th Broadband Coverage: 4th Private Lending to Small Businesses: 3rd Although the Foundation does not advocate policy positions, Clevey says Michigan can improve its entrepreneurial dynamism by paying greater attention to entrepreneurial education, economic development strategy, access to capital, technology commercialization and developing a business climate that nurtures entrepreneurs. Promotion sponsors are Ann Arbor SPARK, Creating Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC), Michigan State University; Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, Great Lakes Angels, Inc., Great Lakes Entrepreneur Quest, Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance, Michigan Homeland Security Consortium, Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, Michigan Ross School of Business, Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity, James Madison College, Michigan State University; Midland Tomorrow, Michigan Venture Capital Association, Prima Civitas Foundation and Vision Tri-County.

Author: Staff Writer Source: MITechNews.Com

On Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurialism in Michigan

Monday, April 16, 2007 Updated Study Says Michigan Still Struggles to Grow Entrepreneurs

LANSING - The latest Small Business Foundation of Michigan's Entrepreneurship Score Card, released Monday, finds that Michigan last year lost ground in developing new, high growth job-creating entrepreneurial small businesses. The Score Card gives Michigan a 2006 grade of "D-minus" for entrepreneurial dynamism, down from the 2005 "D" grade and edging closer to the failing "F" grade that Michigan received for 2004. The Score Card project is a collaborative project of the Small Business Foundation of Michigan (SBFM) and GrowthEconomics, Inc. Financial sponsors are Automation Alley, Central Michigan University, the Edward Lowe Foundation, Lawrence Technological University, MERRA, the Michigan Entrepreneurial Education Network, Michigan State Housing Development Authority, Michigan Technological University, MiBiz, Next Energy, Schoolcraft College, Saginaw Valley State University and the Small Business Association of Michigan. The SBFM defines entrepreneurial dynamism as a composite measure of Michigan’s performance in entrepreneurial change, entrepreneurial vitality and entrepreneurial climate. “While Michigan has not achieved its full entrepreneurial dynamism potential, there are some things it does right – it is still making tremendous progress in areas critical to robust entrepreneurship, such as private lending to small businesses, university spinout businesses and entrepreneurial education,” said SBFM executive director Mark Clevey. “However, the economic impacts of factors like globalization and restructuring of old-line industries will continue to have negative effects on entrepreneurship. Michigan needs to do even more if it is to accelerate entrepreneurial dynamism and create more jobs for our struggling economy.” Here’s how Michigan ranks compared to other states: Entrepreneurial Change (the amount of recent entrepreneurial growth or decline in an economy): 46th Entrepreneurial Vitality (the absolute level of entrepreneurial activity): 38th Entrepreneurial Climate (the capability of an economy to foster entrepreneurship): 38th Business Costs and Productivity: 41st Quality of Life: 37th Government Efficiency and Regulatory Environment: 26th Infrastructure: 24th University Spinout Businesses: 16th Workforce Preparedness: 10th Education and Workforce: 8th Broadband Coverage: 4th Private Lending to Small Businesses: 3rd Although the Foundation does not advocate policy positions, Clevey says Michigan can improve its entrepreneurial dynamism by paying greater attention to entrepreneurial education, economic development strategy, access to capital, technology commercialization and developing a business climate that nurtures entrepreneurs. Promotion sponsors are Ann Arbor SPARK, Creating Entrepreneurial Communities (CEC), Michigan State University; Corporation for a Skilled Workforce, Great Lakes Angels, Inc., Great Lakes Entrepreneur Quest, Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance, Michigan Homeland Security Consortium, Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, Michigan Ross School of Business, Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance, Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity, James Madison College, Michigan State University; Midland Tomorrow, Michigan Venture Capital Association, Prima Civitas Foundation and Vision Tri-County.

Author: Staff Writer Source: MITechNews.Com