EDUCATION : View Posts

PORTLAND, Ore. – The Walmart Foundation’s Oregon State Giving Program recently awarded $446,250 to eight Oregon nonprofits including Willamette Farm and Food, Food for Lane County, Portland Adventist Community Services, Boys and Girls Club of Albany, Portland State University Foundation, Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital, Grow Portland and ACCESS.

Twice a year, The Walmart Foundation’s Oregon State Giving Program awards grants to local organizations that address the needs of the communities they serve and make a significant social impact. Combined with $208,000 given to organizations earlier in 2013, Walmart provided a total of $654,250 to Oregon-based groups for the year.

“We are proud to support the efforts of these eight organizations to achieve our shared goal of helping communities throughout Oregon live better,” said Madeleine Havener, vice president for Walmart. “Walmart strongly believes in giving back locally, and we look forward to watching these great organizations continue their work and find new ways to positively impact lives.”
Willamette Farm and Food received $26,000 to help support Oregon Farm to School Education, Family Outreach, and School Garden Programs.

“This grant will allow us to continue to offer our Farm to School Program education program for children and families and to continue to serve as a resource to farm to school programs throughout Oregon. By educating students about where their food comes from and connecting their families with resources to access healthy, locally grown food, we are giving them the opportunity to connect with their local food system, creating healthier children and a stronger community,” said Megan Kemple, Farm to School Program Director, Willamette Farm and Food Coalition

Food for Lane County received $50,000 to help support food distribution throughout Lane County.

“Childhood hunger is a very serious problem in Lane County. Too many children arrive at school unprepared to learn or focus due to empty stomachs. And during summer months, many families are unable to provide the lunches normally available during the school year. Walmart’s $50,000 donation will enable us to increase the amount of healthy nutritious food we provide to kids during and after the school year through our Cereal for Youth and Summer Food programs. Children need good nutrition to create a solid foundation that has implications for a child’s future physical and mental health, academic achievement, and economic productivity,” said Beverlee Hughes, Executive Director, Food for Lane County
Portland Adventist Community Services received $62,738 that will be used to purchase a new van for meal delivery and food distribution.

“The new truck will allow PACS to pick up perishable food from a number of local stores and the Oregon Food Bank. The food will then be distributed at the PACS Food Pantry and its Mobile Food Pantry to low-income families. In addition, it will enhance PACS’s ability to accept fresh and non-perishable food since this vehicle will keep these items refrigerated during transport to the pantry”. Paul Cole, Executive Director, PACS

Boys and Girls Club of Albany received $50,738 that helps to support and further the “Training Teens for Tomorrow Workforce Development Project”.

“To be ready for entry- level work and then move to the next level, young people must exhibit basic work and interpersonal skills, professionalism and develop transferable work skills that prepare them for careers in their chosen field while conveying the necessity of staying in school and attaining graduation. Thanks to the generous support from the Walmart Foundation’s State Giving Program, the Club’s T3 program will be able to provide more than 100 teens with the chance to gain job training and paid work experience, volunteer and community service experience, socialization with peers, academic success coaching, preparation for the future and on-going relationship-building with caring adult role models. We are thrilled to be able to leverage this grant award from the Walmart Foundation and to offer even more vulnerable youth the opportunity to create pathways out of poverty,” said Michelle Davis, Chief Professional Officer, Boys and Girls Club of Albany
Portland State University Foundation received $98,608 which will help to build the “Expanding Harvest for Healthy Kids Program”, a nutrition program for low-income children in Multnomah County.

“This additional funding from the Walmart Foundation will allow us to scale up our outreach to more children and their families,” said Betty Izumi, an assistant professor in PSU’s School of Community Health and co-director of Harvest for Healthy Kids. “We’ve been working in Head Start classrooms since 2010 and we’ve seen that this approach can make a difference,” said Betty Izumi, Assistant Professor, Harvest for Healthy Kids
Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital received $63,904 for the “Health Professional Preparation Program”.

“This grant will enable Oregon Pacific Area Health Education Center, as the educational outreach department of Samaritan North Lincoln Hospital, to expand our Healthcare Professional Preparation Program to fourteen high schools and more than 300 students in our nine county region. Due to the generosity and vision of the Walmart Foundation, these students, who come from underserved and rural areas, will be better equipped academically and intellectually to graduate and move into professional healthcare training and educational tracks,” said Donald Skinner, Executive Director, Oregon Pacific Area Health Education Center

Grow Portland was awarded $45,000 to help promote and expand the “Urban Agriculture 2020 Initiative”.

“Grow Portland is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the expansion of urban gardening and urban agriculture in the Portland Metropolitan Area. Founded in 2010, the organization is focused on creating thriving gardens on previously underutilized urban land. In three years, the organization built three community gardens providing 200 garden plots to around 600 participants. This year, thanks to help from Walmart, Grow Portland is launching it’s Urban Agriculture 2020 initiative that aims to add half a million square feet of urban food production by the year 2020. The goal of this initiative is to build urban agricultural spaces that offer varied ways for the residents around these gardens to be involved in growing healthy food for their family and community,” said David Beller, Director Grow Portland

ACCESS received $50,000 to help develop their nutrition programs, including the “Store Food Recovery Program.”

“Thanks to the generous grant from the Walmart Foundation we have been able to expand our Food Recovery program and the amount of food distributed from an average of 56,000 pounds monthly to over 80,000 pounds. This will increase our capacity and ability to ensure that thousands of hungry families in Jackson County will have more fresh meat, dairy and produce on their tables this winter and beyond,” said Philip Yates, Nutrition Director, ACCESS

Earlier this year, Walmart’s Oregon State Giving Program granted $208,000 to five nonprofits from Portland, Salem, and Corvallis including:

$35,000, Community Outreach (Corvallis) for the creation of a new transitional shelter for women and children.

$30,000, Salem-Keizer Education Foundation (Salem) to assist with expansion of Learning Gardens program to four additional Salem-Keizer Schools.

$30,000, Human Solutions (Portland) to provides Healthy Food choices to low-income working families living in Human Solutions housing.

$35,000, Our House of Portland (Portland) to provide additional access to healthy food and nutrition education for HIV/AIDS individuals in the Portland area.

$50,000, Portland Rescue Mission (Portland) to aid with expansion of services for homeless women and children.
To be considered for support, perspective grantee organizations must submit applications through the Walmart Foundation State Giving Program’s online grant application. Applicants must have a current 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in order to meet the program’s minimum eligibility criteria. Additional information about the program’s funding guidelines and application process are available online at www.walmartfoundation.org/stategiving. The current application cycle opened on January 19, 2014.

This Press Release is courtesy www.walmart.com

Washington, D.C. — A new national study released today by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) shows that millions of Americans make volunteering a priority in their lives. The annual Volunteering and Civic Life in America research shows that volunteering in the U.S. remains stable and strong across generations.

“Volunteering is a core American value. Americans who volunteer enrich our communities and keep our nation strong,” said Wendy Spencer, CEO of CNCS. “As citizens, there are so many ways we can make a difference for those who are in need, during this holiday season and throughout the entire year.”

This year’s report found that one in four adults (26.5 percent) volunteered through an organization in 2012, demonstrating that volunteering remains an important activity for millions of Americans. Altogether, 64.5 million Americans volunteered nearly 7.9 billion hours last year. The estimated value of this volunteer service is nearly $175 billion, based on the Independent Sector’s estimate of the average value of a volunteer hour.

The research shows that Americans’ commitment to volunteering spans generations. Key highlights of the report include:

•The volunteer rate of Generation Xers has trended upward over the past 11 years, increasing nearly 5.5 percentage points, and Generation X has the highest volunteer rate of any age group.

•Volunteers age 65 and over spent a median of 90 hours on volunteer activities in 2012, the highest amoung any age group, and nearly twice the 50 median annual hours served by the general volunteer population.

•Volunteering has trended upward among teenagers (ages 16-19) over the past six years, up nearly 3 percentage points since 2007.

•Working mothers continue to volunteer at a significantly higher rate than the population as a whole and people who do not live with children under 18 (38.5 percent compared to 26.5 percent and 23.8 percent, respectively).

•The volunteer rate of parents with children under age 18 (33.5 percent) remained higher than the population as a whole (26.5 percent) and for persons who do not live with under 18 (23.8 percent).

•Volunteers are almost twice as likely to donate to charity as non-volunteers. Eight in ten (79.2 percent) volunteers donated to charity, compared to four in ten (40.4 percent) non-volunteers. Overall, half of all citizens (50.7 percent) donated at least $25 to charity in 2012.

“Volunteering is a critical component of civic life,” said Ilir Zherka, Executive Director of NCoC. “When people are involved in their communities through service, giving, political involvement, and other civic actions, our country is stronger and more prosperous.”

“Helping others who are in need and working together to strengthen our communities is an important American tradition that helps make our nation so resilient,” said Spencer. “But volunteering goes beyond helping other people; studies have shown that the volunteers themselves benefit, whether through increased job prospects, better health, or even better overall well-being.”

The research comes on the heels of the “Volunteering as a Pathway to Employment” study released by CNCS over the summer, which found that unemployed individuals who volunteer over the next year have 27 percent higher odds of being employed at the end of the year than non-volunteers. Among rural volunteers and volunteers without a high school diploma, the likelihood increases to 55 and 51 percent, respectively.

As volunteering remains strong in America, momentum continues to build around national service and its important role in addressing critical local issues. This year marks the 20th anniversary of AmeriCorps, celebrating more than 800,000 members who have served our country since the program’s inception. In 2012, AmeriCorps members recruited and managed more than four million volunteers.

CNCS’ more than 360,000 Senior Corps volunteers are also helping millions of Americans find economic empowerment by mentoring and tutoring youth, helping veterans transition into civilian life, and conducting job training to unemployed individuals.

This Press Release is courtesy Corporation for National And community Service www.nationalservice.gov

On Monday, the United States Senate voted for cloture on the motion to proceed to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) by a vote of 61 – 39. This bill would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Originally introduced in 1994, ENDA last received a vote in 2007 when it passed a Democratic-controlled House and then stalled in the Senate. Since that time, the term “gender identity” has been included in the final text to cover transgender individuals. Seven Republicans joined all fifty-three Democrats and two Independents to bring the measure to the floor for debate. Senators Kelly Ayotte (NH), Rob Portman (OH), and Patrick Toomey (PA) offered amendments that purportedly strengthen the Title VII religious exemption in the bill. We have maintained that a narrow exemption for one segment of the religious community does not lessen the bill’s assault on the deeply held religious beliefs of employers and employees. Furthermore, the bill does not shield religious institutions from punitive measures by federal or state agencies (i.e. those issuing licenses, permits, or tax-exempt status). In light of recent actions by the Internal Revenue Service and several state legislatures, ENDA’s arbitrary and capricious provisions expose employers to a potential onslaught of litigation and would severely curtail speech and religious freedom. Speaker of the House John Boehner has stated that the bill is not a legislative priority and encourages frivolous lawsuits. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has indicated to Politico that she may file a discharge petition (which must be signed by 218 voting Members) and force a vote in the House. The measure passed the Senate on Thursday.
Courtesy of American Association of Christian Schools

The sluggish global economy is having a negative impact on how much people give to support charitable deeds in society. According to major charities across the US, the base is reducing as well as the level of donations.

There are major reductions in the rice production across the nation