Foundation Welcomes Grant Ideas
An award-winning service-learning project in New York State that helps older persons in daily living and gives students exposure to careers in elder-care service — and includes a credit-bearing course on elder care practice and policy — is now accepting proposals for mini-grants to help colleges develop such internships.
The Foundation for Long Term Care (FLTC), Inc., a non-profit education and research foundation in Albany, is making an effort to expand the program with hopes it will become as mainstream as literacy and tutoring service-learning programs.
The foundation developed its new college internship program and has published a detailed manual, Service Learning in Elder Care: A Resource Manual (Foundation for Long Term Care, $12, including postage and handling), for colleges and elder-care agencies on how to develop them.
Carol R. Hegeman, co-editor of the manual and FLTC’s project director of the service learning in elder care projects, says that the program, which received a 1994 award from the National Council on Aging and the 1997 New York Governor’s Community Service Award, helps fulfill an ever more critical need with the percent of the population 85 or older expected to burgeon in the coming years.
For more information on participating in the program, applying for a a grant, or obtaining the manual, see the project’s web page at <http://www.nyahsa.org/NYAHSA/FLTC/ Research_and_Grants>. Or, call Carol Hegeman at (518) 449-7873, fax (518) 455-8908; or email: [email protected].
‘Eloquent’ Educator Kozol Here on Friday
The New York State Writers Institute, the Greater Capital Region Teacher Center, and the National Research Center on English Learning & Achievement have joined forces to sponsor “A Conversation with Jonathan Kozol” on Friday, Oct. 17, at 5 p.m. in the Campus Center Assembly Hall. Kozol, educator and activist, will discuss the challenges of teaching in an urban environment.
The author of ten nonfiction books that chronicle the widespread problems in the U.S. of poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, and unequal schools, Kozol in 1964 moved from Harvard Square into a poor black neighborhood of Boston and became a fourth grade tea-cher in the Boston public schools. His first book, Death at an Early Age (1967), won a National Book Award describing that experience and has sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S. and abroad.
In subsequent years, Kozol has focused on issues of illiteracy, homelessness, and poverty. Illiterate American (1985) became the center of a national campaign to spur federal and private action on adult literacy. Night-long conversations with mothers and children at a homeless shelter in New York led to Kozol’s next book, Rachel and Her Children (1988), a powerful portrait of the day-to-day life struggle of some of the poorest people in America. The New York Times called the book “a searing indictment of society,” and the Chicago Sun-Times called Kozol “today’s most eloquent spokesman for America’s disenfranchised.”
Kozol examined the differences between inner-city schools and suburban school in Savage Inequalities (1991), which was a finalist for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle award and won the New England Book Award. Kozol’s most recent book is Amazing Grace, the story of children, priests and parents living in the racially isolated and impoverished South Bronx.
For additional information contact Ellen Sullivan at the Greater Capital Region Teacher Center, (518) 479-4083.
Egyptian Parliamentary Staff Visits through CLD
A delegation of six executive leadership staff members from the Egyptian Parliament will visit North America over the next two weeks on a study program hosted by the University’s Center for Legislative Development.
Abdo I. Baaklini, director of the Center and professor in the Department of Public Affairs and Policy, said that visit will take place from Oct. 18 to 31. The members of the delegation are senior managers of various research and information departments of both houses of Parliament (the People’s Assembly and the Shoura Council). The trip will enable them to acquaint themselves with the research and information services and systems of both the Canadian and American governments, following similar visits to both Poland and the Czech Republic just prior to their arrival.
“This visit supports the Egyptian parliament’s expanding role in the political and economic development of Egypt,” Baaklini said. “As part of that process, the parliament must continue to acquire the institutional and managerial capacity to be effective, and the staff delegation’s visits, coordinated by [CLD], will assist in that effort.”
The delegation’s visit is part of the ongoing Decision Support Services Project between CLD, along with other partners, and the Egyptian government to enhance the parliament’s ability to manage information and information resources, thereby enabling members and staff to perform decision-making tasks in a more effective manner.
The itinerary includes a week’s visit in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where the delegation will meet the Minister of Finance, the director of the research branch of the Parliamentary Library, party caucus research staff, committee staff, NGOs, and other ancillary institutions. In Washington D.C. the following week, the delegation has appointments on Capitol Hill with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, with Congressman Michael McNulty of Albany and his legislative director and staff, Brookings Institute, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and other pertinent groups and offices.
Baaklini will travel to Washington D.C. at the close of the three-week Europe/N. American tour to facilitate a wrap-up session.
“A legislature cannot be an informed or effective political institution unless it stays up-to-date with the advances in research practices and information dissemination,” Baaklini said. “An exchange of ideas and experiences on the critically important issue of legislative research systems and resources is beneficial to both the Parliament and the Canadian and American legislatures.”