When we launched HuffPost Impact, our new section devoted to service, causes, and giving back, I wrote about my longstanding (and, now, finally realized) desire to put the spotlight -- 24/7 -- on the work of nonprofit groups in a way that enables people to be inspired and immediately take action to address the urgent needs in our society.
To this end, we have decided to regularly feature nonprofit groups that are working in the trenches every day to help turn people's lives around.
To kick things off, I've decided to pick an organization very close to my heart, A Place Called Home.
A Place Called Home is a remarkable place, with a remarkable backstory.
Back in the early 90s, Debrah Constance was a successful real estate agent, earning over $100,000 a year. She also had a serious drinking problem, for which she was eventually hospitalized. Her recovery inspired her to find a new focus for her life: service.
Determined to make her life about something larger than herself, she met with a consultant for nonprofits who stopped her in her tracks by asking: "What do you really want to do with your life?"
The answer came to her in an instant: "All I want to do is open a safe house for children who live around Jefferson High School, in South Central Los Angeles, where they can get off the street, get a healthy snack, watch TV and do their homework."
The next day, she told her boss she was quitting. He gave her six months severance pay and an office. Six months later, she opened A Place Called Home (APCH).
It started with twelve inner city kids in the basement of a church. Within three years, A Place Called Home was serving 400 kids and moved to a new 10,000 square foot facility. It now has a LAUSD school on site and boasts a recording studio, a computer center, and programs in music, art, dance, yoga, tutoring and mentoring.
I met Debrah in 1994, and was immediately swept up by her energy, passion, and commitment to helping "her kids." I eventually joined the organization's advisory board. Volunteering at A Place Called Home has had a profound effect on my life, and on the lives of my daughters.
Spend any time there and you can see that, even over 17 years later, Debrah and a great team -- executive director Jonathan Zeichner, chief operating officer Angela Maldonado and associate director Scott Culbertson -- are people on a mission: providing at-risk kids with a secure place where they can break free from the gangs, drugs, and poverty that surround them.
One of the most inspiring -- and most in need of help -- programs at A Place Called Home is their scholarship program, in association with the David & Linda Shaheen Foundation, which helps kids go to college or a trade school -- kids who often couldn't even dream such a thing was possible.
The kids at A Place Called Home live in some of the poorest and most crime-riddled neighborhoods in the country. Many go to Jefferson High, which has the fifth lowest graduation rate in the entire country. They often have siblings in gangs, parents who are sometimes in jail and sometimes less than supportive, and they are usually the first in their family to have even considered applying to college -- let alone actually go.
To make this dream a reality, A Place Called Home started a SAT prep program. So far, 100 percent of the students who have entered the SAT program have completed it. The students then apply for an A Place Called Home scholarship -- the money goes towards tuition, guidance counseling, and basic needs like clothes to wear to class.
Talk to the folks at A Place Called Home, and the success stories roll out: Gerica, who became interested in filmmaking at APCH and who is now majoring in film at San Jose State; Martha, who got a scholarship and went on to earn her nursing degree; Elijah, who scored so high on the SATs he had his pick of schools -- he ended up choosing a small school in Colorado, the first in his family to go to college.
Last year, A Place Called Home gave out 58 scholarships totaling $250,000. But, given the number of worthy applicants, if they had the money, they could easily quadruple that number.
"There's this misconception," says executive director Jonathan Zeichner, "that kids who grow up in this neighborhood -- which is rife with violence and gangs and poverty and a liquor store on every corner -- don't want to excel. But, as soon as you give them the opportunity and let them know that it's a possibility for them, they're clamoring for it."
To help one of the kids at A Place Called Home excel -- to take the leap from the mean streets of L.A. to a college campus -- we've created a special HuffPost Impact Fund. With $5,000 we can give a worthy student a leg up on a much brighter future.
To donate, click on the widget below. You can also give to A Place Called Home directly from your cellphone -- text HOME to 85944 and $5 will be added to the Fund and charged to your phone bill (all of the money will go to the scholarship fund). Don't forget to confirm your donation by replying YES.
(UPDATE: thanks to your generosity, we have reached our goal of raising $5,000. Since there are so many worthy applicants, we're going to keep the Fund active -- let's see if we can raise enough to send another at-risk kid to college.)
Once the HuffPost Impact Fund goal has been reached, and the A Place Called Home scholarship recipient chosen, we will keep you updated on who is picked and what school the student will be going to, so you can see how your contribution is changing a life.
So please give what you can to A Place Called Home's scholarship program. And please send me your suggestions for other great groups we should be turning the Impact spotlight on.
Contributions made through the above widget go to the Causecast Foundation, the online donation nonprofit partner of The Huffington Post. Causecast does not take any fees from this transaction and guarantees that 100% of your donation, minus the PayPal transaction fee of .044%, will go to A Place Called Home.
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Madonna: Raising Malawi: Will You Join Me?
I am making a straightforward request. I'm writing to urge you to join me in saving the lives of some of the world's most vulnerable children. And I'm asking you to do it right away.
18 years and started up as a result of the civil unrest in South Los Angeles. Since our inception in 1992, we have served nearly 17,000 students with our after-school middle school mentoring program. What we offer is a truly unique team mentoring program that brings together 3 mentors with 12 middle school students. We provide an activity-based curriculum that focuses on teambuilding, leadership skills development, and community service. This program truly makes a difference in the lives of the youth we serve, but equally as important, in the lives of the mentors who give their time to these kids. I am a mentor myself and find that what I learn from the kids impacts me in a profound way each week. Please take a look at our website, www.latm.org and we'd love to provide you with more information about what we do!
In revenge the common man has lost or is losing his knowledge and skill and decision making capacity for lack of opportunity from the moment of birth. This is the history of traditional organizations.
I am sure you recognize that the vast plurality or majority of students have lost their motive for learning for recognizing a hopeless future of worthless chance for growth, advancement, achievement and marked performance. They are not inclined to be induced to learn facts, concepts, and generalizations devoid ot application and action.
The recent administrations have faced one disappointment after another in their educational panaceas for economic inequality and opportunity. Yet, each succeeding President promises that his educational program will bring new jobs and a cornucopia of opportunity. Our leaders persistently chose ot live in a world of self deception and delusion rather than face our problems head on.
I greatly applaud what you are doing here. In fact it is exactly in line with THE GOOD MEN PROJECT, which I co-founded. Our mission is to spark a national discussion on manhood via our book and dvd and, in the process, raise funds for at-risk boys. All proceeds goes to our Foundation. We just started our national book tour in Sing Sing prision to make the point that NO ONE is excluded from this conversation.
You can see our launch info here:
Good Men Launch Behind Bars and Head for Hollywood Hills: http://pitch.pe/31091
This American Employment Recovery Act would renew our quest towards a more perfect union whereas the elitist higher education degrees create two classes of Americans that divide and isolate.
NEWS RELEASE: DREAM CLCSDA 2009
To: All Concerned Media/Humanitarians
Literacy Classes for Seniors/Disabled America Panama City, Florida
Re: Computer Literacy Classes for Seniors/Disabled Graduation 2009 on
Nov. 13/14 2009 (Friday, 2:00 P. M. - 4:00 P.M.)(Saturday, 3:00P.M.-6:00P.M.)
MESSAGE: PUBLIC NEWS RELEASE
“Bridging the Digital Divide”
Linda Miklowitz will be the Computer Literacy Classes for seniors/Disabled Special Graduation Speaker on November 13, 2009 in the St. Andrews Towers Community–Recreation Room 1st Floor Linda Miklowitz has been a newspaper reporter in Miami Beach and Gainesville, FL. She is now an owner of a government relations firm providing advocacy and communication services mainly to non-profit organizations and candidates in the environment.
Ms. Miklowitz is the mother of two college seniors, a son in journalism at FAMU, and a daughter in voice at FSU who focuses on musical theater and jazz...She loves technology and is fascinated by the Internet's power. Saturday, November 14, 2009, (Time: 3:00P.M. - 6:00 P. M.) Graduation 2009 Ceremony and Celebration for D.R.E.A.M. Computer Literacy Classes for Seniors/Disabled America
private schools, would like to express a pet theory.
Close to 50% of kids in America never finish 12 years of formal education,
and they grow up to be the 50% of adults who have no wealth. Negative
wealth actually, living on plastic money surely.
Last November close to 50% of voters refused to go to the polls, no doubt the
lower half of society. Which means that mainstream media lies to us by saying
that Obama won the election by 52% of the vote, as it was actually 26% of all voters.
So we have an intelligence dictatorship, with the upper half of society
sharing all the wealth, the lower half sharing all the poverty, and nothing
will ever change until we start discussing the root cause or it all.
I told my son, be zen with debt, take out the loans, or else move to another capitalist country where they will offer him an opportunity to be educated without offering his first born for the privledge
The goal of your article is noble, I don't dispute that. But the trustees of Social Security and Medicare have warned of a fiscal disaster that dwarfs the on-going Wall Street meltdown: a 100+ trillion dollar liability due to baby boomer retirements.
Contact your HuffPost reporter, Rachel Weiner, as I emailed her a proposal that at least mitigates this coming crisis.
Why is it a crisis? The Encyclopedia Britannia lists three reasons for the bloody French Revolution:
1) The average French citizen was dying (starving) while the wealthy could afford what they needed.
2) The government was broke due to financing a war (the American Revolution) and could not act to help the dying.
3) The economic system did not offer the average citizen a way to improve his standard of living.
In 21st century America, medical research is about to yield treatments from, for example, stem cell research which will allow rebuilding a person's heart, liver, kidneys, etc. This will add decades of additional, active years to a person's life. The problem is that neither Medicare nor private insurance (or any combination of them) will be able to cover the costs of such treatments for 76 million baby boomer retirees. But the wealthy will be able to afford the medical treatments they'll need.
end Part1/2
In other words:
1) Average Americans will begin dying of treatable conditions of old age, but not the wealthy. (Prior to 1965, Medicare's start, the average retiree barely lived past 65.)
2) The government, financially broke by several stupid wars and financial mismanagement, will be unable to help the average retiree.
3) The average retiree, due to the state of our economy, can do nothing to improve his or her standard of medical care...
See my point?
Yet there is a way to mitigate the worst of this coming disaster
Don't forget the California Medicaid program that will chauffer minorities to dental appointments.