The Daily Tell

Who among us hasn't dreamed of being a rock star? Whether you went to band camp, played air guitar like a pro or just like listening to your mp3 player, there's a little bit of a rock star in all of us. Now, one nonprofit group is making the dream of music come true for boys and girls across the country.

Little Kids Rock is a charity that works to provide children in 23 cities around the nation with free access to musical instruments and instruction. Budget cuts have forced thousands of schools to eliminate their extracurricular departments, including music education. Little Kids Rock is determined to put the sound of music back in public education in the United States.

"Playing music is more than fun – it’s transformational," the group writes on its website. In fact, it continues, children who play a music instrument are 52 percent more likely to go on to college than their peers who do not have access to musical education.

More than 45,000 kids have learned to play a few tunes on the guitar, piano, trumpet, violin, clarinet or any number of other instruments thanks to the efforts of Little Kids Rock. And this October, the group will be hosting its second-annual "Right to Rock" fundraiser at the B.B. King Blues Club and Grill in New York City.

The event, which will take place on October 21st from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., will feature student band performances, adult band performances and a special headliner performance by Vanilla Fudge – a band for whom Led Zeppelin opened in the 60's. A guitar auction will also be held, and participants will have the opportunity to bid on customized Fender Stratocast guitars designed by the likes of Slash, Gene Simmons, Van Morrison, Stephen Colbert, Stan Lee and many more. Finally, the event will also host an award ceremony to honor those who have given the most to the nonprofit and to music education in public schools.

All of the proceeds from the event and auction will be used to restore and revitalize music education by putting musical instruments and innovative musical instruction materials and strategies back into schools nationwide.

"Give me shelter," sang the Rolling Stones – and one group is working to do just that.

Shelter: It's one of the most basic of human needs, something that many of us take for granted every day. But for millions of people around the world, owning a home feels like an impossibility. That's why Habitat for Humanity is so committed to putting a roof over the heads of people in both the industrialized and the developing world.

Every week, more than a million people are born in cities in the developing world. As a result, the urban population of developing countries will double from 2 billion to 4 billion in the next 30 years. By the year 2030, an additional 3 billion people – about 40 percent of the world's population – will need access to housing. This translates into a demand for 96,150 new affordable units every day. That's 4,000 houses every hour.

Habitat for Humanity is committed to meeting this challenge. On October 4th, in recognition of World Habitat Day, the nonprofit will work to raise awareness about the issues facing the homeless population around the world. Habitat for Humanity will emphasize the connection between human health and housing and redouble its commitment to neighborhood revisitation in the United States.

In fact, the connection between health and housing is so great that the number of low-income families who lack access to a safe and affordable home is directly correlated to the number of children who suffer from asthma, viral infections, anemia, stunted growth and other health problems. About 21,000 children suffer from stunted growth attributable to a lack of stable housing, 10,000 children between the ages of 4 and 9 are hospitalized for asthma attacks each year because of cockroach infestation in their homes and more than 180 children die every year in house fires attributable to faulty heating and electrical equipment in unsafe homes.

By contrast, children who do have a safe and stable home are more likely to stay in school, do better on standardized testing and have a reduced chance of behavioral problems.

This year, Habitat for Humanity will once again host the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project as a part of World Habitat Day. The event is an annual, internationally-recognized week of building that brings attention to the need for safe and affordable housing. This year, the Carters will work alongside volunteers in several cities, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and Birmingham, Alabama, to build, remodel and improve 86 homes.
 

Four Young Entrepreneurs Addressing Social Issues to Speak at TEDxYSE Event

ARLINGTON, Va. – Sept. 13, 2010- Ashoka , the world’s community of leading social entrepreneurs, and Staples, Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLS), announced today the first four winners of eight in the annual Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition . The global competition highlights youth-led innovations addressing social issues affecting their communities, and is part of Ashoka’s Youth Venture(r), an initiative that fosters young entrepreneurs to become changemakers, people who are creating positive change in communities around the world. Since 2006, Staples Foundation for Learning, the charitable arm of Staples, Inc., has enabled Youth Venture to expand to eight countries in North America, South America and Europe through more than $2.5 million in funding.

“Staples and Ashoka understand the value that changemakers bring to anything they do and are heavily invested in helping more people become changemakers,” said Gretchen Zucker, executive director of Ashoka’s Youth Venture. “They are critical to the success of any organization, company or community, and together they form a powerful force for improving lives. Our Staples/Ashoka Competition winners, sourced from hundreds of entries spanning 44 countries, are demonstrating just how much one person can do to make a mark in the world, but the most important contribution we can make is to help everyone around us become changemakers.”

The first four winners of the Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition are:

* Rebecca Kantar is a founding member of Minga, a youth-run civic organization dedicated to ending the global child sex trade through educating teens worldwide. Rebecca serves as Minga’s Director of Film Media and is a highly accomplished public speaker. She has been named as one of TIME Magazine’s Tomorrow25 and will be attending Harvard University as a freshman in September.

* Mohammed Berry, of the Republic of the Gambia, has a truly inspiring story of leadership and perseverance. Mohammed lost his father and contracted HIV at age 7and faced enormous social stigma and discrimination in his community. He is the founder of Aid for Smiles, a coalition of global social activists who work toward empowering and mainstreaming marginalized and socially disadvantaged young people. He also leads Speak AIDS, a campaign that confronts the misunderstanding and stigma associated with HIV-positive youth. Mohammed was recently nominated for the World Children Peace Prize.

* Shiv Dravid is the founder and creator of The Viewspaper, a youth journalism website for young people in India. Shiv was inspired to take action when he realized that his own daily experiences were quite different from the observations and discussions amongst media elites. The Viewspaper is seen by more than 150,000 readers a month and publishes daily articles written by youth staff writers. Over the last three years they have engaged close to 4,000 young people in sharing their views and opinions and have emerged as India’s largest youth paper. Shiv has ambitious plans to scale his work and hopes to branch out to 50 sites within the next year.
* Ben Lyon was inspired to create FrontLineSMS:Credit while traveling abroad in Uganda and East Timor. During his travels, Ben witnessed how communities and families in these countries were devastated by natural disasters like hurricanes and how soldiers did not receive the support they needed when returning home from war. Today, Ben is pioneering technology that is connecting microfinance institutions to their borrowers via cell phones in Sierra Leone. Ben is using his knowledge in economics and international studies to make a positive impact on these people and their communities. Ben has been selected an “Unreasonable Fellow” by the Unreasonable Institute, which attracts up to 25 high-impact, young social entrepreneurs from across the globe for a ten week conference.

“Together, Staples and Ashoka are providing young entrepreneurs with a chance to show how their Ventures are creating a positive, lasting impact in communities all around the world,” said Paul Capelli, vice president of community and public relations, Staples. Inc. “These first four finalists bring unique approaches to effecting social change, and serve as motivators to inspire young people to initiate and lead their own social change.”

The eight winners of the Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition will receive cash awards, consulting from Staples executives and an all-expenses-paid trip to speak at TEDxYSE, a Youth Venture-hosted conference which will be held at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC on Nov. 13. TEDxYSE leverages the global TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference model of thought leaders, which enables local community groups to organize, design and host their own independent, TED-like events. Actor James Cromwell will be the opening speaker at the event.

For more information, please visit http://www.tedxyse.com http://www.tedxyse.com. Tickets for the event will go on sale today and are available at http://www.tedxyse.com/register http://www.tedxyse.com/register.

The competition is open to existing and new Youth Venture teams comprised of young people between the ages of 12-24, who are creating entrepreneurial ventures that make a positive impact on communities. Nominations and entries will be accepted on a rolling basis through Sept. 30, 2010. For additional information on the Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition, please visit the competition web site at: http://www.genv.net/en-us/staples-yse

About Youth Venture

Ashoka’s Youth Venture aims to help an entire generation of young people develop as changemakers, who will improve their communities now and throughout their lives. Youth Venture inspires and supports teams of young people to launch and lead their own civic-minded organizations and businesses. Youth Venture was created by Ashoka, the global pioneer of the social entrepreneurship sector and the world’s biggest network of changemakers. We believe that the greatest contribution we can make to the world is to increase dramatically the number of changemakers today and in every future generation. This is the key factor for success for every part of society, from a school to a company to an entire country. Ashoka’s Youth Venture operates in 18 countries and engages 75,000 young people.

About Ashoka

Ashoka is the world’s community of leading social entrepreneurs-individuals with innovative and practical ideas for addressing social needs. Working with these social entrepreneurs, Ashoka builds communities of innovators who work collectively to transform society and design new ways for the social sector to become more productive, entrepreneurial and globally integrated. For more information, please visit www.ashoka.org.

About Staples
Staples, the world’s largest office products company, is committed to making it easy for customers to buy a wide range of office products and services. Our broad selection of officesupplies , electronics, technology, and office furniture as well as business services, including computer repair and copying and printing , helps our customers run their offices efficiently. With 2009 sales of $24 billion and 91,000 associates worldwide, Staples operates in 26 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia serving businesses of all sizes and consumers.

It's only been one day, but Bill Clinton is already announcing that more than $2.5 billion has been committed at the sixth annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting.

The project is expected to receive nearly 300 commitments – its highest number ever – during its two-day conference from September 21 to the 23 in New York City.

So far, commitments include $55 million in mobile and Internet technologies from the Omidyar Network to support transparency and empowerment for entrepreneurs in emerging economies, $10.1 million from the MasterCard Foundation, in partnership with Camfed, to support education and business opportunities for women in the African nations of Ghana and Malawi and $1 million from Google to be contributed to the flood relief effort in Pakistan.

Several other companies also pledged to take non-monetary steps to create change around the world. Procter & Gamble announced its commitment to distributing two billion packets of a water purification product in developing countries. In addition, the Ocean Conservancy announced its intention to establish a Gulf Coast restoration center in Louisiana and AmeriCares plans to build a safe haven to protect a thousand adolescent girls from sexual assault in post-earthquake Haiti.

Another major focus of the CGI is waste management. Clinton also announced a series of new waste intiatives, many of which were developed through CGI’s Rethinking Waste Action Network.

"CGI members come from ninety different countries, speak many languages, work in all sectors and approach problems in unique ways," said Clinton. "But together, their desire and capacity to build a better world for our children and grandchildren has resulted in 1,946 commitments, valued at $63 billion dollars, which have already improved nearly three hundred million lives." 

Actor Liam Neeson has played some pretty tough guys on camera. In Taken, the Irish actor starred as a former spy who rescued his daughter from European kidnappers. In the A-Team, he played an army colonel. And, in perhaps the manliest role of all, he played the Greek god of all gods Zeus in Clash of the Titans.

But now, the famous thespian is looking a little softer – especially when he recently posed for a photo shoot sporting a bright pink handbag.

The handbags Neeson is modeling are being sold by Cancer Research UK, with all proceeds are going toward breast cancer research. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the UK, and Neeson wants to inspire shoppers to spend their money on both the latest trends and disease research at once by investing in one of the chic pink purses.

"Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, which means there aren't many families who haven't been affected by it in some way, and mine is no exception," the actor said. "The good news is that more women than ever before are surviving breast cancer thanks to the work of Cancer Research UK, so make sure you show them your support this Breast Cancer Awareness Month."

The actor is one of four well-known British celebrities who posed for the nonprofit. Neeson was joined by former soccer player Les Ferdinand, TV star Martin Clunes and movie director Michael Winner, all of whom have lost someone they loved to breast cancer. For Neeson, it was his mother-in-law's sister, actress Lynn Redgrave – just a year after his wife, Natasha Richardson, was killed in a tragic skiing accident.

In addition, the pictures used in the promotional shoot were taken by Terry O'Neill, a photographer who is himself a survivor of cancer. 

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is the recipient of a $10 million gift from Bank of America – including a collection of art worth $5 million.

The cash component of the donation will go toward supporting museum exhibitions, programs, operating expenses and capital improvements. Some money will be set aside to fund special events that the museum is planning to hold as part of the opening of the museum's Art of the Americas wing and Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard in November.

The "New MFA," as the expansions have been nicknamed, was designed by internationally renowned London-based architects Foster + Partners. The Art of the Americas wing will allow the MFA to display more than 5,000 works of art, spanning three millennia, from North, Central and South America. The wing's official public opening, scheduled for Saturday, November 20, will be celebrated with a free Community Day which will include special events for the public, for MFA members and for campaign donors throughout November and will be funded by the Bank of America gift.

The donated art, valued at $5 million, comes from the Bank of America Collection, which is one of the oldest and largest corporate holdings of art in the world. It includes Ellsworth Kelly's Blue Green Yellow Orange Red, a 1968 abstract piece, and other famous works, which will soon be displayed in the MFA's new wing.

"Bank of America has been a preeminent supporter of arts and culture for many years – around the globe as well as here in Boston," said MFA director Malcolm Rogers. "This gift of funds, in addition to this iconic painting by Ellsworth Kelly, affirms the company's position as a civic leader and its strong commitment to both the museum and the cultural life of the city of Boston."

The gift cements Bank of America's place as the MFA's largest corporate sponsor. To commemorate the bank's longtime support, the plaza in front of the museum's Huntington Avenue entrance has been renamed the Bank of America Plaza on the Avenue of the Arts.

The City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism will soon to be able to establish a center focused on entrepreneurial journalism, thanks to grants totaling $6 million from the Tow and John S. and James L. Knight foundations.

Two years ago, the Tow Foundation awarded the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism a $3 million challenge grant designed to encourage the school to match the funding. Now, with a $3 million grant awarded this month by the Knight Foundation, the school has matched the Tow grant and will be able to receive the full award.

The $10-million Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism will teach innovation and business management, conduct research on new journalism business models and help develop journalistic enterprises. The school will also launch the nation's first Master of Arts degree in entrepreneurial journalism, which will add business training and research to the school's existing three-semester journalism program. Courses taught at the center will be open to graduate students as well as to mid-career professional journalists, who will be eligible to earn a certificate in entrepreneurial journalism that could help them further their careers in the areas of business and finance.

The school isn't concerned about reports claiming that America is experiencing the "death of print media" and the end of newspaper and magazine journalism.

"We are optimists about the future of journalism," said CUNY School of Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, who will head the center when it opens next month. "We tell our students they will build that future. To help them do that, we realized we have to give them the ability to create and run new products and new companies. We must train not just journalists but entrepreneurial journalists."

Located in midtown Manhattan, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is just one block from Times Square and next door to The New York Times. 

The White House has announced the launch of a new program called Change the Equation, a private-public partnership designed to spur innovative thinking in science, technology, engineering and math.

The program, nicknamed CTEq, is an extension of the $250-million public-private Educate to Innovate initiative, a separate program launched earlier this year by President Barack Obama. The commitment to science, technology, engineering and math education comes after a series of studies showed that America was slipping in international rankings of progress in these key areas.

According to the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment comparison, American students came in 21st out of 30 in science literacy among students from developed countries, and 25th out of 30 in math literacy. In addition, on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress math tests, 4th graders showed no signs at all of progress and 8th graders demonstrated only modest evidence of progress.

"'I can't do math' has become an iconic excuse in our society," said Linda Rosen, CEO of CTEq. "Many Americans have expressed it, but I don't believe it's an accurate reflection of who we are or, more importantly, what we can do … If we don't encourage our children and students to get excited about math as well as science, technology, and engineering, we are denying them the chance to reach their potential and be prepared for a future filled with opportunity."

More than 100 companies and several foundations have made commitments to CTEq and have expressed their dedication to preparing U.S. students for science- and technology-related careers as an investment in business, the economy and the future of the nation. In collaboration with the Obama administration, state houses nationwide and the education and foundation communities, CTEq will aim to improve teaching methods for math and science at all grade levels, to create a larger and more racially-, ethnically- and gender-diverse pool of highly capable teachers and students, to deepen student appreciation and excitement for math-based programs and careers, especially among women and students of color, and to create a renewed and sustained commitment to science and mathematical innovation in the U.S. 

The California Institute of Technology has announced two grants, totaling $10 million, which will be used to establish a new center aimed at developing innovative solutions to reduce the risks and costs of natural threats and disasters.

Southern California is no stranger to such disasters. Major earthquakes – such as a 1994 quake centered in the city of Northridge, less than 20 miles from Pasadena, where Caltech is located – have caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in public and private damage. The center will also be dedicated to research about disasters that are much less common in California, such as blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Comprised of the Geological and Planetary Sciences and Engineering and Applied Science divisions at Caltech, the Terrestrial Hazard Observation and Reporting Center will focus on the practical aspects and public policy implications of everything from droughts to wildfires to global climate change.

"From the current flooding in Pakistan, to the recent earthquake in Haiti, to the constant threat of wildfires in our own backyard, we are consistently reminded of the devastating impact natural hazards can have on society," said Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau. "Now … Caltech scientists and engineers will be able to study these critical issues in a unique interdisciplinary environment. [The center] will help communities around the world determine how to best prepare for, anticipate, and respond to various natural hazards, hopefully saving lives in the process."

The creation of the center is funded by a $3.35 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and a gift of $6.7 million from philanthropists Foster and Coco Stanback of Irvine, California. It will work to facilitate the transfer of ideas and technologies that show promise of practical implementation and develop and prioritize research strategies and activities. 

Mark your calendars for October 30, 2010 – the day when comedian and TV personality Stephen Colbert will be hosting the March to Keep Fear Alive in Washington, DC.

"America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear – that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty," the satirical event's press release states. "But now, there are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear … Join The Rev. Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A. on October 30th for the 'March to Keep Fear Alive' in Washington, DC."

It all started with one Reddit user posting on the website about an idea he had in a dream – that Stephen Colbert could host a mock rally in response to Glenn Beck's recent Restoring Honor event in the nation's capital. Fellow users took action, dubbing the event Restoring Truthiness, designing a new Reddit page for the rally and hosting their own website, Time magazine reports.

Fans decided to do more than just counter Beck's message of fear and impending doom. They decided to prove the Republican pundit's dire predictions about the fall of American values wrong by doing good – donating more than $100,000 and counting to educational charities through DonorsChoose.org, an organization of which Colbert is a board member, in only one day.

The fundraising shattered previous recordholder Hillary Clinton's efforts, which raised $29,945 for DonorsChoose – as well as DonorsChoose's servers, which broke down temporarily under the flood of donations.

And Colbert won't be alone in his efforts. Fellow comedy news anchor Jon Stewart will be hosting a competing rally on the same day, entitled "The Rally to Restore Sanity."