The Daily Tell

The Rockefeller Foundation, committed to pursuing the eradication of human suffering, recently announced the winners of the 2009 Jane Jacobs Medal.

Damaris Reyes, executive director of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) and Richard Kahan, founder and CEO of the Urban Assembly, each received the medal and a prize of $100,000. The medal awards individuals whose work “creates new ways of seeing and understanding New York City, challenges traditional assumptions and creatively uses the urban environment to make New York City a place of hope and expectation,” says the Foundation.

The Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism went to Damaris Reyes, whose organization works to promote tenants’ rights, eviction prevention, economic justice and community revitalization for public housing developments in the Lower East Side.

In addition to ensuring that the neighborhood remains a unified, non-discriminatory community, GOLES has fought for tenant protection legislation, opportunities for civic engagement, local small business support and job opportunities for neighborhood residents.

The winner of the Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership, Richard Kahan, began his career as a builder and planner, eventually becoming president of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, president of the Convention Center Development Corporation and chairman of the Battery Park City Authority.

Kahan founded the Urban Assembly in 1990 to combat urban poverty issues, eventually focusing it on education.

Through Urban Assembly, Kahan established nearly two dozen specialized schools focused on preparing underserved middle and high school students to graduate from college.

Kahan also founded Take the Field, a nonprofit organization that has rebuilt 43 outdoor athletic facilities for public school and community use.

The medal is dedicated to Jane Jacobs, whose book “Death and Life of Great American Cities” is said to have changed the way people perceive urban development.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will continue its support of the community revitalization of Macon, Georgia with a $5 million grant, the Foundation announced this week.

The grant will fund a $3 million campaign to encourage and implement residents’ ideas about transforming the College Hill neighborhood, and a $2 million grant to Mercer University to found the College Hill Alliance.

The Knight Foundation recently commemorated the opening of Mercer Village, College Hill’s first retail district, one year after the Foundation awarded Mercer University a community planning grant. The grant announced this week continues with a similar mission, but marks the largest single grant to date from the Foundation in Macon.

Mercer University president William D. Underwood called the grant “a major catalyst for implementing the master plan, for funding creative, transformational ideas from residents and organizations in the Corridor and for attracting private and public financing that will allow realization of the College Hill vision.”

The $3 million grant will go toward the Knight Neighborhood Challenge, a campaign that funds the best residents’ ideas for revitalizing the community’s parks, arts and entertainment scene, and public spaces, all while promoting civic engagement.

The grant will also allocate $2 million to found the College Hill Alliance, an organization that will work to accelerate neighborhood revitalization, with a focus on beautification and securing additional investors.

The College Hill Corridor Commission was founded in 2007 by Mercer University and former Macon mayor C. Jack Ellis, inspired by the community revitalization ideas of Mercer University students.

“The Knight Foundation’s investment will leverage additional capital and will advance a physical and social resurgence in the historic and cultural heart of one of the South’s great cities,” said Underwood.

Through the process of setting down their own, new roots, U-Haul customers have been given the chance to help the environment.

Since April of 2007, U-Haul has developed a partnership with The Conservation Fund’s Go Zero program. Through charitable contributions from its customers, U-Haul has donated more than $1 million to the program.

After each in-town and out-of-town move, U-Haul customers have been encouraged to donate money in order to offset the carbon emissions created by their relocation. Since the partnership began, over 287,000 U-Haul customers have opted to donate in the name of ecological charity.

“The support and generosity from U-Haul and its customers for this program is unprecedented,” Jena Meredith, director of the Go Zero program, said.

Funds donated by U-Haul’s customers have helped The Conservation Fund plant 133,000 trees in two national wildlife refuges – Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge in Kansas and Red River National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana.

The program makes use of a carbon-collecting process called carbon sequestration, where carbon dioxide is collected by trees and converted into oxygen. Over 100 years about one ton of carbon dioxide is sequestered for every tree planted.

As they grow, the trees planted through the help of U-Haul and its customers are expected to trap 156,000 tons of carbon dioxide. As a result the habitats at both refuges will improve, as will their air and water quality.

“By leveraging our human, technical, financial and business resources, U-Haul and our customers have made a real difference in protecting the environment and mitigating our greenhouse gas emissions,” John “J.T.” Taylor, president of U-Haul International Inc., said.

Along with buying and planting trees, the Go Zero program uses donated funds to procure lands for wildlife refuges and national and state parks. More information about donating to the program can be found at The Conservation Fund’s website.

The Lustgarten Foundation recently announced it has awarded $1.6 million in grant money to institutions that research pancreatic cancer.

The grants represent the foundation’s initial awards for 2009, with six research centers. In all, the foundation expects to award $4 million in grant money this year, which is twice that of last year’s amount.

Cablevision Systems Corp is underwriting Lustgarten’s administrative expenses. As a result, all money donated to the foundation goes to pancreatic cancer research. In 1999, Marc Lustgarten, a former vice chairman for Cablevision and president of Madison Square Garden, died because of pancreatic cancer.

Kerri Kaplan, executive director of The Lustgarten Foundation, said that many of the grants will go to institutions that have been building off the work of The Genome Project, which decoded the genetic blueprint of pancreatic cancer. Other research projects dealing with pancreatic cancer also will benefit from the money.

“If successful, this research will move us another step closer toward the goal of making pancreatic cancer detection as easy as a routine blood test, and provide the framework for developing life-saving treatments,” Kaplan said.

The six research centers that will receive the initial round of grant money include: The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; John Hopkins University; The Ohio State University; the University of Michigan Medical School; and the University of California, San Francisco.

Every year more than 37,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 34,000 people die from it annually. Like most cancers, early detection is one of the most important factors for a person’s ability to survive.

For those diagnosed with the disease, 5 percent survive five years. Those with the most advanced type of the cancer die in under a year. In all, pancreatic cancer is the fourth-highest cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

Tackling unemployment, unfair labor practices, hunger, homelessness, pollution and more seems to be a huge task for only four days. But that is what this year’s Clinton Global Initiative annual summit will attempt, former President Clinton announced this week.

CGI’s fifth annual summit, held from September 22-25 at the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, will feature an agenda filled with new initiatives, adjusted to confront the challenges of today’s world.

“We recognized that the CGI of old was no longer going to be a feasible model to move forward on,” Edward Hughes, CGI’s deputy director and the director of this year’s summit, told Reuters.

The summit’s main action areas are titled “Harnessing innovation for development,” “Strengthening infrastructure,” “Developing human capital,” and “Financing a sustainable future.”

The sub-topics will include food scarcity, clean water, renewable energy, green transportation systems, healthcare systems, urbanization, green jobs, responsible labor practices, job creation, micro-insurance, affordable housing in developing countries, small- and medium-sized enterprise finance, and financing climate adaptations.

The special meeting programming will feature an “Investing in women and girls” initiative, as well as the Clinton Global Citizens Awards. Last year’s award winners include Neville Isdell, chairman of the board of the Coca-Cola Company, as well as Julio Frenk, Senior Fellow of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The summit is usually attended by heads of state, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, celebrities, philanthropists, heads of foundations, CEOs and heads of nongovernmental organizations. Last year’s summit was attended by President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, Bill Gates, Lance Armstrong, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

CGI, which was founded in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton, aims to use collaboration from the private and public sectors, as well as nongovernmental organizations and global leaders, to confront the world’s most challenging problems.

The Initiative has invested more than $46 billion in 150 countries, helping more than 200 million people.

Gallup’s most recent poll indicates that Americans’ confidence levels in banks and big businesses are at a record low, making it the perfect time for television to introduce a banking billionaire whose change of heart turns him into a passionate, world-traveling philanthropist.

NBC’s new eight-part series, The Philanthropist, follows philandering billionaire Teddy Rist – played by James Purefoy of HBO’s Rome – as he decides to use his wealth and business skills for the good of mankind.

His adventures lead him to Nigeria, Haiti, Myanmar, Kashmir and more, as he negotiates with drug dealers, fights with corrupt officials, and uses his rogue wit to save the world.

The show’s concept is loosely based on the story and philanthropic work of Bobby Sager. The Boston-based entrepreneur was president and partner of Gordon Brothers Group, a global advisory, acquisition and capital solutions company that boasts more than 20 offices around the world and $40 billion in annual transactions and appraisals.

Though Sager did not have the philandering back story presented by the series, he did have a change of heart and left Gordon Brothers to pursue a life of philanthropy and humanitarian work.

In 2000, Sager founded the Sager Family Traveling Foundation Roadshow, and began traveling the world with his wife and two kids, meeting with villagers and presidents alike. The Sager family’s experiences include passing out blankets to Pakistani earthquake refugees, teaching science to high Tibetan monks, and supporting micro enterprises in Rwanda and Palestine.

“By being on the ground, face-to-face with the people we are trying to help, my family and I get to live amazing life moments, learning, feeling, and accomplishing,” Sager writes in his forthcoming book, Power of the Invisible Sun.

“The idea that people give to charity because they are supposed to isn’t sustainable, and people who need help deserve real long-term commitment. Finding ways to serve your self-interest fuels that commitment,” he writes.

Businesses and residents from New Orleans to Texas can look forward to feeling much safer in unsafe weather, thanks to a recent grant from the Houston Endowment.

A two-year grant worth $1.25 million was just given to SSPEED, a center that works to identify and improve deficiencies in severe storm prediction and management.

SSPEED, which stands for Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters, was formed in 2007 – two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans region. Katrina is estimated to have caused at least $81 billion in property damage, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The Rice University-based center focuses on improving methods to predict oncoming storms, best maintain land and property in areas that are vulnerable to storm surge or flooding, prepare for storm planning or evacuation, assess possible flood damage, use wetlands to lessen flood risks, and protect infrastructure in areas that are particularly vulnerable to severe storms.

SSPEED’s first project will be to assess the damages that Houston would have incurred had Hurricane Ike struck the city more directly. As it was, Hurricane Ike caused an estimated $13 to $21 billion in damages in Texas and Louisiana, according to Risk Management Solutions.

The center is also currently working on a new computer model that would map an expected storm, based on tracking from the National Hurricane Center, creating live predictions in real time.

The center hopes that improving these storm predictions and assessments will lead to more efficient storm responses and preparations.

“With hurricane season here, we can all appreciate the practical applications likely to be gained from the research that Houston Endowment has so generously funded,” said David Leebron, president of Rice University. “There are dollars and, more important, lives to be saved by improving our ability to make effective responses to these massive hurricanes.”

The potential impact of the grant is not to be underestimated – according to the National Hurricane Center, Texas and Louisiana represent two of the top three most hurricane-affected states, second only to Florida.

President Obama’s United We Serve initiative, an 81-day campaign to expand and improve the nation’s volunteer and community service efforts, began this week and will end in a National Day of Service and Remembrance on September 11th.

“This summer, I’m calling on all of you to make volunteerism and community service part of your daily life and the life of this nation,” said President Obama in a video message released last week. “Economic recovery is as much about what you’re doing in your communities as what we’re doing in Washington – and it’s going to take all of us, working together.”

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has already responded to the President’s call to action with $1.6 million in grants, directed to grassroots nonprofits and state service commissions in New Mexico, Mississippi, Michigan and New Orleans.

In Silicon Valley, the response to the president’s call to service has taken an innovative approach.

A team of professionals from technology, marketing and public sectors has come together to create All for Good, an open source application founded on President Obama’s public service message.

The free website builds on social networking technology to let users find, submit and share community service opportunities in their neighborhoods, helping nonprofit organizations connect with a broader base of volunteers. It has been called a “craigslist for service.”

The website is now run by a nonprofit organization staffed by volunteers, whose founding Board of Directors includes executives of companies such as Facebook, Craigslist, Google, LinkedIn and the Huffington Post.

United We Serve kicked off with a National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco on June 22, which saw 4,000 volunteers and service leaders.

The latest U.S. Census data found that 61.8 million people, or 26.4 percent of the population, volunteered last year, a level consistent with the previous year’s data.

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which works with nonprofit community development organizations to revitalize distressed neighborhoods, was awarded nearly $2.1 million in grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service.

The grant will support LISC’s AmeriCorps program, which encourages civic engagement and volunteerism by helping community members transform their own neighborhoods.

Though LISC’s AmeriCorps program is just one branch of AmeriCorps – a program administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service itself – the branch is unique because the majority of its volunteers come from the communities it serves.

“AmeriCorps members are invaluable assets to neighborhood nonprofits and the communities where they operate,” said Michael Rubinger, president and CEO of LISC. “But they also represent the future of community development. Through their LISC AmeriCorps experience, they create a pipeline of professionals who can continue this important work long after their national service is concluded.”

The AmeriCorps program works in a variety of ways within a community, supporting initiatives from affordable housing development and home ownership counseling to community building activities, recreation and education programs, and environmental efforts. Volunteers are encouraged to take active roles in improving their communities, to help transform the neighborhoods into thriving areas for working, living, and raising families.

In addition to the AmeriCorps grant, LISC also received stimulus funds under the Obama administration, through the program for national service under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“We’re thrilled that the Corporation for National and Community Service has again recognized the value that LISC AmeriCorps members offer to low-income communities, and we’re even more excited about the increased focus on national service we’ve seen under the Obama administration,” said Rubinger.

LISC has provided nearly $28 billion in development projects since its creation in 1980, and has raised more than $9 billion in its mission to revitalize communities and establish quality affordable housing.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $16.5 million in grants to 15 community colleges this week, in an effort to boost graduation and retention rates for low-income students and students of color.

The grants will fund the Foundation’s Developmental Education Initiative, in line with the Foundation’s mission to ensure that all people – especially those who are disadvantaged – have equal access to opportunities to succeed in life and school.

The grant will go toward programs developed by Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative that aims to increase educational attainment, especially in disadvantaged students.

The 15 community colleges receiving grants – all located in Connecticut, Texas, Ohio, Virginia and Florida – will use the money to develop their remedial education programs, using strategies such as increasing technology use, streamlining high school and college standards and creating mentor programs. This will benefit more than 133,000 students in remedial education classes at those colleges.

“The pressing need to shore up weak academic skills in first-year students is one of the most significant, but least discussed, problems confronting higher education,” said Carol Lincoln, director of the Developmental Education Initiative and national director of Achieving the Dream for MDC.

“Colleges that can figure out how to quickly and efficiently boost basic skills, particularly among students of color and low-income students, will play a leading role in helping them earn the college degrees necessary for economic success in America today,” she said.

The 2008 U.S. Census indicates that workers with a bachelor’s degree earn an average of $26,000 more than workers with only a high school diploma.