Inside Camp Erin: A Haven for Kids Who Have Suffered the Worst Kind of Loss

It has been almost two years exactly since 10-year-old Isaac Vogt and his 4-year-old sister, Katie, learned the meaning of the word “devastating.” On May 7, 2012, after a five-year battle with melanoma, their beloved mother, Lois, succumbed to the disease at the age of 42, leaving their father, Peter, as the sole parent of two young children who were blindly grappling with their grief.

Isaac, now 12, can be reserved and quiet. He doesn’t speak easily about his feelings, but what little he reveals is meaningful. Details about his mother, and his love for her, remain sharp in his mind. “I remember one time when my mom was in hospice, we both sat on her tiny medical bed playing Life on her old computer,” Isaac says, lingering over the memory. “She used to tell me all these stories about when she was a teacher, which I really liked.”
At any age, grieving the death of a parent is an exercise in isolation. For children like Isaac and Katie, now 6, it is an especially lonely experience, since it’s unlikely that they would know other kids who have gone through such loss. And yet, many children are dealing with the death of a loved one: According to a 2010 survey, one in seven American children will lose a parent or sibling before the age of 20, and the impact of their grief may be profound and long-lasting.
It’s for Isaac, Katie and the millions of other grieving children across the country that Camp Erin was created in 2002 by the Moyer Foundation, a nonprofit founded in 2000 by former Major League Baseball player Jamie Moyer and his wife, Karen. Camp Erin — a weekend-long, sleepover retreat — is the largest network of free children’s bereavement camps in the country, with 43 locations and counting. To date, Camp Erin has hosted more than 12,600 kids. It was in a wooded Minnesota setting last summer that Isaac was able to honor the memories of his mother, learn to process and talk about his grief, and participate in traditional, fun camp activities, all the while connecting with other kids who have had similar experiences.
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In short, at Camp Erin, Isaac’s healing truly began. “Losing a loved one is never easy, no matter what age you are,” says Karen Moyer, vice president of the Moyer Foundation. “Studies show if you don’t deal with grief, you have a higher risk of depression, relationship issues and alcohol and drug abuse. Whenever there’s any type of distress in your life, it’s really important to acknowledge it and not run away from it. Face it, own it and try to live on in your memories.”
Camp Erin — which was recently the subject of the HBO documentary “One Last Hug: Three Days at a Grief Camp”  — was born of such a memory. In 1998, when Jamie was pitching for the Seattle Mariners, he and Karen were invited to meet 15-year-old Erin Metcalf and her family through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Erin was battling liver cancer and, being an avid baseball fan, she had requested to meet a few players. “There was an immediate connection,” Karen says of their first meeting. “I stayed in touch with the family through Erin’s suffering and her eventual passing [in 2000 at the age of 17]. I was so touched by her, her faith and her embracing death. She had sisters and was very concerned about them and how they would grieve. For me, on a personal level, that was really amazing. ”
In 2002, the Moyers established Camp Erin in Everett, Wash., hosted by the hospice that the Metcalfs used. From there, the camp expanded throughout the Northwest, before going national. In 2007, the Moyers donated $1 million to fund the program’s expansion, with the goal of having a Camp Erin in every city with a Major League Baseball team. “I think it became a legacy, after Jamie’s long and successful career, that he could leave something behind in the cities that he played in,” Karen Moyer says.
Each of the Camp Erin locations partners with a local grief-counseling organization, which runs the camp and provides support services. While each camp follows the specific model laid out by the Moyer Foundation, it’s up to the partner organizations to make the camps their own. They train the volunteers and do the necessary community outreach to let people know about Camp Erin and increase attendance. In turn, the Moyer Foundation makes a 10-year, $100,000 financial commitment to each partner organization to allow it to continue hosting Camp Erin at least once a year. Some locations have already reached the 10-year mark, and Karen Moyer says that so far, the partner organizations have been able to keep their Camp Erin programs afloat on their own, through fundraising and volunteer efforts.  “The communities are really taking it on and sustaining it much longer than we would be able to,” she says. “We’re planting the roots and they’re helping it grow.”
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For the past five years, Minnesota’s Camp Erin has been hosted by a Twin Cities-based organization called Youth Grief Services (YGS). It is the only program in the state that offers bereavement counseling for the whole family, centered on grieving children. Jenny Simmonds, lead program coordinator for YGS, says that she has had parents drive their kids 30 miles or more to attend its seven-week grief-counseling series. With the introduction of Camp Erin, YGS has reached kids from all over Minnesota and from other states as well. “We know kids heal through play, and camp is a ripe environment for that,” Simmonds says. “The kids go canoeing and swimming and all those fun camp things, just knowing that they’re doing that with kids who understand what it’s like. That’s very healing.”
A typical Camp Erin program starts before the weekend actually begins. In Minnesota, Simmonds says they host a “save your spot” pizza party for the campers and parents about two weeks before camp. This event gives campers the chance to meet their cabin mates and counselors, while also giving parents some peace of mind that their kids will be taken care of while they’re away. “Kids are coming here not knowing [anyone] except for a sibling in some cases,” Simmonds says. “There’s a lot of nervousness in the beginning. Also, sometimes it’s the first time they’ve been separated from their parents since the loss.”
For Peter Vogt, the introductory session made a big difference. Not only did he feel comforted knowing that Isaac would see some familiar faces by the time he got to the camp, but he was also grateful that the counselors told parents what to expect after the campers came home. “Isaac, he’s an introvert like his old man. He’s not prone to talking about stuff immediately after it happens,” Vogt says. “They told us that it might be a few days until they start to talk about things [that happened at camp], and I found that helpful.”
Once the kids get to camp, they say a quick goodbye to their parents or guardians before starting the opening ceremony. Here, the kids post a picture of their lost loved ones on a memory board and introduce themselves to other campers. It’s emotional and daunting all at once. “It was kind of strange in the beginning, the first night we’re there, talking about what happened in front of the whole camp,” Isaac says of the opening ceremony. “I didn’t exactly enjoy that.”
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But the discomfort of talking about their loved ones wears off as the days go on. They hold sharing circles, where the kids attempt to express their feelings of grief through words or pictures. They also participate in fun camp activities like climbing walls, canoeing, swimming and fishing. And on Saturday night, they take part in a luminary ceremony, during which each camper releases into the water a lit lantern that he or she has decorated and says goodbye to the person they lost. “That can be pretty heavy, and we don’t want the kids to be too emotionally raw, so afterward we have a big luau party with lots of games,” Simmonds says. “The kids are really bonded by then.”
The next morning, the kids break up into their sharing circles and get ready for the closing ceremony, when they perform skits and songs that they prepared with their groups over the weekend. After just two short days, parents say they start noticing a marked change in their kids. “You can tell as a parent if your child has bonded with kids or not,” Vogt says. “Isaac had definitely bonded with some of the kids he was with and some of the adult leaders, too. So much of Camp Erin boils down to feeling like you’re not the only one. And that’s the biggest benefit from it.” Vogt was so happy with the camp that Isaac is going back this summer, along with Katie, who is now old enough, as well as the two children of Vogt’s fiancée, who lost her husband six months after Lois Vogt passed away.
That’s the fundamental mission that drives Camp Erin — to be the place that helps bereaved children realize they’re not alone. “I’m always touched by the campers who come on that Friday night, basically as strangers, and how they can comfort each other in their moments of sadness in the memory board scene, and just hug each other,” Karen Moyer says. “They laugh and cry. It’s safe. And for some kids, who haven’t cried yet and they finally do so at camp, that’s the real beginning of their process of healing.

“Miracles happen at the camp in the sense that things you think are impossible become possible,” she says. “It can be lifesaving, quite honestly. Kids learn how to live on in this world.”

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Could Mentors Be the Key to Lifting Families Out of Poverty?

Countless programs have perfected the mentoring model between kids and adults. But what about a mentoring program for all adults?
For more than a decade, the nonprofit Circles USA has proved that mentors can help low-income adults thrive. Scott Miller started the organization (which pairs those struggling with poverty with higher-income coaches) back in 2000 as, according to the website, “a way to increase the capacities of communities to address poverty.” There are now local Circles branches in 23 states.
The mentors help guide their mentees through such important tasks as polishing a resume, negotiating debt repayments, setting up a bill-paying system, finding a job, and ensuring good childcare. Each week, participants meet together for support and to discuss life strategies.
Cynthia Bowers interviewed Miller in 2011 for CBS News. “If you’re in poverty in this country, it is just a day-to-day grind to get things done,” Miller said. “So very intelligent, very emotionally capable people are stuck in this cycle of non-stop problem solving. And so people coming along and lifting some of that burden is huge.”
But easing that burden is difficult. While Bowers noted that the drop out rate for the program is high — 58 percent — those who do stay involved in Circles reap big rewards: “Our research now shows that their income is going up on average 48 percent. Their assets are going up by 115 percent and their welfare is going down by 36 percent.”
In December, the Circles program in Coshocton, Ohio graduated its first class of leaders who will guide their own Circles groups. One of the new leaders is Larry Stottsberry, who told Mark Fortune of the Coshocton Beacon, “Being a veteran, being out of the military, and thinking you can be successful, sometimes you get down in a rut, something had to bring me out of it. This group brought me out…This is more about showing people that are struggling that you care about them when you are together. It’s more about helping each other out even if you don’t have anything to help them out with. It’s like my mom and dad always said, ‘Even though you don’t get anything for Christmas, it’s being there and sharing love.'”
With generous people like Larry Stottsberry signing on to help those less fortunate then themselves every year, the circle of success is bound to continue.
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Meet the Kid Who Turned a Health Scare Into Inspiration (Again, and Again)

A type 1 diabetes diagnosis didn’t stop 11-year-old Anja Busse of Antigo, Wis. It inspired her.
Rocked by the diagnosis six months ago, Busse knew what would make her feel better: an American Girl doll going through the same experience.
But there wasn’t one.
So Busse created an online petition urging the company to create accessories that a type 1 diabetic like herself might use. So far, Busse has garnered over 3,000 signatures.
“I feel so different now and my whole life has been turned around,” she writes. “I just want everyone to feel good about themselves no matter if they have something ‘wrong with them’.”
Among her wants: a glucose meter, an insulin pump, and “pick-me-ups”— snacks that diabetics keep on hand to control their blood sugar.
“There are thousands of girls with diabetes and it’s really hard for some of them getting diagnosed,” she told Lisa Haefs of the Antigo Daily Journal. “It’s easier with a doll that looks just like you. You have someone to take care of.”
According to the American Diabetes Association, about 1 in 400 people under the age of 20 in America have type 1 diabetes.
Busse isn’t the first child to ask American Girl Doll for more diversity.
Last year, Melissa Shang, 10, who suffers from a form of muscular dystrophy, started a petition to feature a disabled girl as a “Girl of the Year” doll. She’s gained over 142,000 signatures.
Mattel, which manufactures American Girl Dolls, responded with a letter that read in part, “We receive hundreds of passionate requests to create a variety of dolls and books based on a wide range of circumstances, and we are always considering new ways to enhance our product lines.”
The uber-popular American Girl line already offers such accessories as glasses, hearing aids, wheelchairs, and an allergy-free lunch — so Busse’s request isn’t too far-fetched.
And it’s not the pint-sized activist’s only project. Busse and her parents started the nonprofit Boxed for Joy, sending care packages to kids newly diagnosed with diabetes. And the pre-teen is recruiting for the local Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund’s Walk to Cure Diabetes. She has a national sponsor, Shwings, a company that manufactures little wings to lace onto sneakers.
It’s an apt metaphor for a kid with potentially debilitating disease who keeps finding more ways to help others.
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Thanks to This Program, Inner-City Children Are Dancing

While most kids bust a move with games like Just Dance on their Wii Fit, Chanda Ford-White is giving children another option for getting physical.

Ford-White runs the Cleveland Inner City Ballet, a classical dance program that serves underprivileged and economically disadvantaged youth. Classes, which are held at the Collinwood Recreation Center and the First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland in Shaker Heights, expose children to the music of Tchaikovsky, as well as the French language (think: plié, rond de jambe, arabesque).

Initially, the dance classes were part of a city-funded program called the Hough Dance School with Ford-White teaching them. She later resigned her position and opened the Inner City Ballet in order to better serve underprivileged students whose families can’t afford pricey ballet instruction. The program holds classes in a couple of locations so they can maximize the number of children exposed to the world of classical ballet.

Although dancing may appear to simply be an amusing extracurricular activity, consistent practice of the rigorous discipline can have a drastic impact on students: A 2000 study from The University of Connecticut found that ballet significantly impacted at-risk children.  The creativity and discipline of dance spilled over into other areas of the students’ lives and contributed to the development of “psychologically healthy” adults.

Students of the Cleveland Inner City Ballet are expected to attend class on time, wearing proper attire. Their accomplishments are put on display during recitals, such as their holiday performance of “The Nutcracker”, which also acted as a fundraiser.  Financial support comes from the contributions of students, private donors, Ford-White’s personal funding, and performance ticket sales. The company was most recently featured in February on WVIS PBS’s local network show Applause as part of Black History Month.

One of its star students, 11-year-old Demetrius Lee told Cleveland.com that he believes ballet “would build my strength and knowledge of different cultures”, but adds that it has merits on its own. “I just like to dance, and it’s fun.”

People, Not Stocks, Are What This Special Nonprofit Invests In

We’ve all heard of investing in companies, but what about investing in individual people? Perhaps, the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.
After all, that’s the model of the Albuquerque-based nonprofit Prosperity Works. Ona Porter, the president and CEO of the organization told Kevin Robinson-Avilia of the Albuquerque Journal, “We believe in the concept that income gets you by, but assets get you ahead. Asset building creates a safety net for people to leverage more opportunities. It seeds dreams.”
So who’s eligible to enroll? People who earn up to 200 percent of the federal poverty rate — that’s $42,000 for a family of four — can build assets in three ways: personal, financial, and social. (Those earning more than that aren’t disqualified completely; they can still take free classes.)
The financial portion of the program involves free financial literacy and management classes, as well as Individual Development Accounts, or IDAs, through which participants can save money and receive dollar-for-dollar matching funds (up to $4,000) encouraging them to save. Once their goal is met, the participant can tap into the money to pay for education, fund a business, or put a down payment on a home.
Participants also build personal assets through gaining additional education or certifications and develop social assets by learning what resources are available to them in their communities. Porter describes the program as, “a coach-based empowerment model that helps people build financial stability and create opportunities for themselves.”
The unique approach seems to be working. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides grants for programs running IDAs — $20 million worth in 2013. According to the HHS, since 1999, 84,000 people have participated in IDAs, saving more than $76 million in income.
One success story is Rick Noland, who used his matching funds to expand his bike rental business. He started The BikeSmith in 2010 with 16 bicycles. Now, he has his own 800-square-foot shop near Old Town Albuquerque and recently hired his first employee. Noland said that the Prosperity Works program was a life-changer. “It forced me to take a comprehensive look at all my finances, put things into perspective and create a new plan for the future. It helped me better control and manage things, and now, several years later, I’ve become essentially debt free.”
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This Man Is on a Cross-Country Mission to Meet Every One of His Facebook Friends

While Facebook began as an exclusive site for young college kids, its reach has expanded far beyond that. With the worldwide social network now boasting more than 1.28 billion users, the concept of what it means to friend someone seems to be lost on most people.
Which is exactly why 35-year-old Army vet Mikel McLaughlin is asking: What does it mean to be Facebook friends? He’s hoping to find an answer during his cross-country quest to meet every single one of his friends on the online platform. The law school graduate set out on his journey April 2, documenting his story on his website, “We’re Friends, Right?
McLaughlin, a Minnesota native, came up with the idea after hearing about people applying some “spring cleaning” to their social network. Rather than deleting people he hadn’t spoken to in awhile, he wanted to do the opposite.
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“Originally, the thought was I wanted to test the friendships I had on Facebook to see how close they were to traditional friendships,” McLaughlin told the Good News Blog. “If I could travel great distances to see these people, would they give me an hour or two of their time?”
But he’s found something more than that while traveling across the country in a rented red Volkswagen Beetle. Along the way, he’s managed to make new friends, including people he wasn’t exactly sure why they were connected on Facebook.
“I had absolutely no idea who he was or why we became Facebook friends in the first place”, he wrote on his blog. “Today, we figured it out together.”
Now on day 36, McLaughlin is about a third of the way through his network of 422 friends. While he admits he was previously friends with one out of every four Facebook friends, he’s hoping to turn some of his virtual acquaintances into real friends.
“I think if I can meet up with these people, I know spending time with them makes you more likely to be compassionate…I thought if I could be a little better perhaps everybody could be the same.”

This Inspiring Former Inmate Teaches Yoga in an Unlikely Spot

We often think of yoga as a hobby for young women clad in trendy, overpriced Lululemon spandex. But an unlikely teacher is showing his community that the ancient art is actually a healthy practice for everyone. 
At the young age of 17, Marshawn Feltus went to jail for shooting and killing another teenager. He served 18 years and nine months of his 38-year sentence before he left the prison walls behind to begin his life anew as a yoga teacher in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago’s gang-riddled West Side.
Now the founder of Awareness, Change & Triumph (ACT) Yoga, Feltus is repaying his community by teaching them the meditative benefits of  yoga, WTTW reports.
As a power lifter in prison, Feltus spent most of his workouts focusing on his physique through weights, only to cause severe muscle pain and injury. When another inmate aptly named “Buddha” suggested he try yoga for pain relief, Feltus decided to give it a shot.
The improvements were not limited to pain relief. Feltus said yoga reduced his pain and stress, helped him sleep more and gave him a better sense of well-being. After pouring over any book he could read on the subject, Feltus went on to teach Ashtanga yoga — one of the most popular forms — to more than 800 male prisoners.
After his release, he received his yoga teacher training in 2012 and last year opened ACT Yoga, the first yoga studio in the West Side community. By opening the center in an unlikely neighborhood, Feltus is hoping to empower and inspire locals to practice yoga as a tool in overcoming adversity.
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“There’s no way that you could ever bring back a life,” Feltus said. “But to be able to see people flourish from what you can give them, even though there some things that I can’t repair, for those things that I can repair, that’s what I want to do. That’s what I feel like I’m called to.”
Feltus is particularly passionate about working with young men in the neighborhood and has even managed to get a few into his classes. Yoga student Jacqueline Jackson points out that young guys on the street have often lost hope, and Feltus “brings them hope.”
“A lot of times in urban communities yoga is not something that we’re into, or we think of it as something for other people. But it really is something for us. It’s something for everybody,” yoga student Bridgett McGill said.
While Feltus has received offers to teach yoga at health clubs in other parts of Chicago, he’s determined to bring balance to the residents of Austin. He teaches at churches, schools and offices, and is hoping to bring his practice to Cook County Jail, where other inmates could find inspiration just like he did.
Namaste.

When Budget Cuts Closed Their Kids’ Schools, These Parents Took on the System

Last year, Sheila Armstrong’s son Skylar, 12, walked one minute from his home to William H. Harrison Elementary School in Philadelphia, where he never had more than 25 kids in a class, and every teacher knew him by name. Armstrong, a single mother, didn’t worry about her son’s safety when he was at school, and springtime simply meant more time on the playground. She knew aides would look out for him during lunch and recess, and a school nurse was there if he should need help. Simple amenities, yes. But in Philadelphia, they are a lost luxury.
When Harrison Elementary shut its doors for good at the beginning of this school year, there was literally nothing Armstrong — or any other parents, students or teachers — could do about it. Harrison Elementary was one of 24 Philadelphia schools closed by the city in 2013 in an effort to help with a $304 million budget shortfall. The move was part of a district-wide slaughter, which included slashing extracurriculars, laying off 676 teachers and nearly eliminating guidance counselors citywide.
“Gov. [Tom] Corbett visited Harrison when he first ran for governor,” says Armstrong. “He spoke to us and promised he would do anything he could do in his power to keep it open. A year and a half later the school was shut down.” What many parents viewed as mixed messaging left them feeling frustrated and powerless. Since then, education funding has become a big problem for the Republican governor — and one of the biggest talking points for those seeking to become his Democratic rival in next week’s gubernatorial primary race in Pennsylvania.
Officials from the School District of Philadelphia (PSD) said they chose to close schools like Harrison based on factors like enrollment, the age of the facilities and the quality of the educational programming. Over the past decade, PSD has lost more than 50,000 students due to a declining birth rate and the rise of charter schools and other educational opportunities in the city, resulting in many schools operating well below their capacity levels. Harrison Elementary had major enrollment declines, expensive building repairs on the horizon and was operating at only 39 percent of capacity, according to educational planner Bill Montgomery. The school also failed to pass the Adequate Yearly Progress  tests that serve as a benchmark in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
For the district, closing schools down was a way to save money fast. But what about the broken educational system that had produced these underperforming schools in the first place? Could anything be done to change it? Fortunately, Armstrong found a coalition of people who, like herself, were ready to jump in and help. POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower & Rebuild) began in the spring of 2011 with a handful of clergy and lay leaders listening to the stories of more than 1,000 people on the streets and in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples. The group identified the biggest problems affecting Philadelphians — poverty and education becoming top priorities — and set to work trying to fix them.
Today, POWER is a well-oiled interfaith community-organizing machine — with more than 40 congregations and 500 community organizers — funded by charitable foundations, some local unions, personal contributions from individual donors and congregational membership dues. The group’s successes have made national headlines: In November 2013, POWER won a new minimum wage for workers at Philadelphia International Airport in a highly publicized local win. Thanks to POWER’s lobbying, the city council will put a referendum on next week’s ballot that would expand the city’s minimum wage and benefits so that it applies to all workers, including those working for subcontractors.  Michael Nutter, Philadelphia’s mayor, has even issued an executive order raising the city’s minimum wage from $7.50 to $12 per hour starting in January 2015. The referendum will make sure that order stays put, regardless of who’s in charge.
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POWER’s plan for education reform in the city was to develop one-on-one relationships with parents. Armstrong was identified as a mother with leadership potential for her outspokenness, knowledge of the education system (she works as a teacher’s aide) and fierce determination to fight for her sons’ safety. POWER representatives asked her to help organize regular meetings where parents discussed their hopes and dreams for their kids and the barriers they faced. Building on these conversations, POWER planned to take parents’ stories and ideas to principals and district leaders, changing schools individually.
“We knew to organize around education we needed to work with parents because the people closest to the students need to be the ones calling the shots,” says Cecily Harwitt, POWER’s lead organizer for education. Recruiting parents turned out to be the easy part. “As we started organizing, we’d go to the principal with ideas we got from the parents,” Harwitt says of simple requests like adding an additional lunch aide to help with crowded cafeterias. “The principal would like the idea but then say, ‘right now we don’t have money for paper, so we really can’t talk about that.'”
Armstrong told the coalition about how drastically her son’s situation had changed since Harrison Elementary closed. Skylar’s new school is a 25-minute walk across vacant lots, housing projects and a major four-lane thruway where the traffic lights sometimes go out. Crossing guards are nonexistent.
And then there’s Skylar’s asthma. At school, “he is responsible for taking care of it himself,” Armstrong says. There is no guarantee that a nurse will be there to help her son out. Since the cuts, schools are lucky to have a nurse in the building one day a week. School policy mandates that students with chronic health problems like asthma store their medications in the nurse’s office. Principals and their secretaries are responsible for administering medication. It doesn’t always work: Earlier this year, a sixth-grader died of an asthma attack that started at the William C. Bryant Elementary School in Philadelphia, where there was no nurse on duty.
Though these initial conversations got parents talking, those involved quickly realized that the situation was too extreme to fix only on a school-by-school basis. Capitalizing on parents’ desire to act, not just talk, POWER tapped into its network of congregations and was soon holding rallies in churches across the city, organizing protests that shut down major thoroughfares and calling upon the mayor to act.
The first time Armstrong spoke publicly was at a rally of more than 300 people at Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church last August. She brought down the house with her emotional stories of students who were failed by Philly schools. “That rally was so much more energizing than the meetings,” Harwitt says. “This was a time when we said we’re tired of this crisis-to-crisis mentality, and we started thinking about fair funding.” POWER members realized they would have to change the system at its core by going after the very way schools get money across the state.
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Pennsylvania is one of only three states in the country, along with Delaware and North Carolina, without a fair funding formula, meaning that the state doles out money based on property taxes collected within each district — richer districts get more money. High poverty schools in Pennsylvania receive $3,000 less per student than wealthy ones.
Along with parents like Armstrong, POWER is fighting to make the lack of a fair funding formula the single biggest issue in the governor’s race, strategically engaging voters and holding candidates accountable. Before the Democratic primary next week, POWER plans to move 5,000 voters to the ballot by canvassing neighborhoods across the state and stocking phone banks with parent volunteers. The next planned phase will be mobilizing another 5,000 voters for the general election in November. And POWER has built a denominational network across Pennsylvania, working with interfaith organizations in Pittsburgh and Allentown to push forward the same agenda.
According to David Koppisch, a POWER fundraiser, the results have been surprising. “Nine months ago [when POWER first started engaging parents in their cause to change schools], the feeling was there was no way we could get the attention of the governor and the state legislature. Now it’s clear it’s the issue or at least tied for the top issue of the governors’ race.” In fact, every Democratic candidate has claimed to support a full fair- funding formula.
Even as the larger battles over fair funding still loom, parents in Philadelphia are counting small victories. Armstrong’s son is doing well in the sixth grade at the Spring Garden School, thanks in large part to his mom and other parents. Armstrong has helped to organize a “safe corridor” staffed by a network of parent volunteers. Every day after school, parents stand at corners along the route from Spring Garden to faraway neighborhoods along these displaced children’s commutes. They shepherd students home, keeping behavior in check and dangerous elements like rowdy teens, drug dealers and violence at bay. Parents have also started volunteering during lunch hour now that the weather is warmer so that children can have the proper supervision to get out for recess. But with the sun and warmth, Armstrong starts to worry.
“With the warmth comes chaos. Right now there is a lot of violence in the high schools, and they don’t have the staffing to make a difference,” she says. When those high schools let out, the students start to linger on the Spring Garden property, fighting with the younger kids and causing trouble. Without the resources to provide adequate staffing and supervision, Armstrong and her small army of parent volunteers have been filling in to make up that difference — for now. She hopes her efforts toward fixing the route of the problem will pay off and those resources will be restored with a fair funding formula.
“Schools don’t have the proper resources on a state level. These children are our future taxpayers. What is our future going to look like if we’re not educating them properly?” Armstrong says.
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Did You Know It’s Possible to Fundraise More Than $50 Million in Less Than 24 Hours?

While charitable giving tends to peak around the holiday season, local nonprofits across the country banded together one day this May to raise more than $50 million in donations in a single 24-hour period.
Give Local America, a single-day online fundraiser, collected donations from an astonishing number of donors — more than 300,000!— and raised money for about 7,000 local charities (ranging from youth outreach and education to arts and animal welfare), according to a press release. The event coincides with the centennial celebration of America’s first community foundation — raising awareness about local charities but also honoring the importance of community in the this country.
The initiative kicked off at midnight last Tuesday, ABC reports. The third annual event claims to be the largest, one-day charitable online crowd-funding event to date.
Organized by platform technology firm Kimbia, Give Local America draws on the spirit of giving locally, allowing donors a chance to champion their community needs. A donor had to give only $25 to be a part of the campaign.
In Sarasota, Florida, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County said in the three years of participating in Give Local America, they’ve tripled the number of organizations involved and raised over $2 million each year. (Sarasota is one of 120 communities that benefited from the online campaign this year.) Meanwhile, local nonprofits and community foundations collected $6 million in matching funds.
MORE: The Giving Guide: 5 Things to Ask Before Donating to a Charity (And 5 Things That Shouldn’t Discourage You)
Adding a little friendly competition to the program, participating community foundations and nonprofits raced against each other to raise funds. The Community Foundation of Sarasota County took the top spot, hitting the $1 million mark in the first 20 minutes of the event. Community Foundation of Sarasota’s Roxie Jerde boasted donations came from all 50 states and also from abroad.
Lynn Alexander, vice president of Michigan’s Community Foundation of St. Clair County told the Port Huron Times Herald she was “blown away” by the amount raised in her region. Alexander admitted that while majority of the funds raised took place during the 24-hour window, she and her colleagues spent a lot of time raising awareness leading up to the big day.
“It was like getting ready for a race,” she said. “The race doesn’t last very long, but you want to make sure you are in shape and ready.”
However, Alexander and other local leaders believe the message is not about how much is raised, but more about engaging donors to more frequently support causes: “The next step is getting each nonprofit to tell their stories to the people who support them,” she said, “so it’s not once a year or once every couple of years that they are reaching out to donors saying here’s what we do and here’s what we need.”

Thousands More Angelenos Can Now Enjoy Farmer’s Market Produce

While this sounds downright strange, the sale of cigarettes is giving some California residents access to healthy fruits and vegetables.
Thanks to a new $2.5 million grant from First 5 L.A. (a nonprofit funded through California taxes on tobacco products), thousands of low-income families in Los Angeles are going to be crunching into healthy farmer’s market goods.
The sizable grant was given to Market Match, a program that provides a dollar-for-dollar match at farmer’s markets to shoppers receiving economic assistance through EBT (Electronics Benefits Transfer, which is more widely know as food stamps) or WIC (the supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children).
According to the Los Angeles Times, the new funds could triple the impact of Market Match over the next several years. James Haydu, the executive director of Sustainable Economic Enterprises-Los Angeles, told David Karp of the Times, “It will not only expand the countywide program, but through the next five years it will make it far easier to be able to quickly explain how the system works to ensure that as many people as possible can take advantage of it.”
In 2010, Market Match started with only $3,000 of funding, serving just two farmer’s markets. With such a tiny amount of money available, the dollar-for-dollar matches quickly ran out. But with a projected $80,000 available to fund next year’s program, many more families will be able to enjoy the benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables. Market Match is now available at 14 L.A. farmer’s markets, and organizers hope to expand it to 37 markets during the grant-funded period.
Martin Bourque, the director of the Ecology Center in Berkeley, California, that manages the Market Match program, said that the funds will not only benefit low-income people in Los Angeles, but also enhance the health of California’s rural lands and its economy. Their survey of farmers at the markets indicated that 80 percent of them sold more produce as a result of the program.
“It’s important to remember that in addition to serving low-income shoppers, every dollar they spend is going to one of California’s small family farmers,” Bourque said. “So every dollar is doing double-duty — not only helping poor people in Los Angeles, but reaching out and helping some of California’s most economically devastated rural communities as well.”
Who knew the simple purchase of some locally-grown strawberries had the power to accomplish all that?
MORE: How 40 Pounds of Leftover Broccoli Sparked A Farm-Friendly Innovation