LIVE UNITED Y’All!

By Kelly Thompson, Director of Engagement Initiatives

As the saying goes, “It is not a question of IF, but WHEN.” When disasters strike a community, a county, a state, a nation, we all hope and pray that some kind of preparedness plan is in place. Very often, there is a plan, but it turns out to be a partial or uncompleted plan for action.

As a community we’ve watched as many disasters have affected our community in the past two years: the windstorm, the ice storm, and the flood of August 4^th, 2009. As a world we watched in horror the naturally occurring events that affected our brothers and sisters in Haiti this year and in 2009 our neighbors in Indonesia.

In all of these instances we’ve asked ourselves, “What can I do to help?” and “What can I do to protect myself and my family?” These questions are important to ask and even more important to contemplate as a part of a preparedness plan.

At Metro United Way we’ve witnessed first hand the overwhelming outpouring of caring, and volunteer time given by those in our community to help those in extreme need. This past fall we welcomed over 500 volunteers who came to aid of those needing flood clean-up assistance; these responders, and those participating in previous disasters were instrumental in creating the rapid action required to get help to people as soon as possible.

What we’ve learned from these experiences is that we would like to formally create a list of “Ready-Responders” joining an elite list of volunteers who agree to heed the call of duty when a disaster strikes.

Are you interested in becoming a member of this special group? Chances are if you have responded to our calls for flood volunteers, or windstorm volunteers we’ve got your name, but we want to hear from you just in case!

You can drop us a email at the Volunteer Engagement Center at patty.belden@metrounitedway.org or stopping by our Metro United Way booth at the upcoming Emergency Preparedness Fair on Saturday, February 29^th from Noon until 4pm.

Louisville Emergency Preparedness Fair

Saturday, February 27, 2010

11:30 am  Kickoff with Mayor Jerry Abramson

12:00 – 4:00 pm

The Salvation Army Male Campus

911 South Brook Street.

Free Admission

Bring a canned good for Dare to Care Collection

Door Prizes  –  Children’s Activities   –   Food & Drink

Come learn what you can do to be better prepared  - as an individual, a family, a block or street, a neighborhood,  suburban city,  subdivision,  condo association, church group, Scout group, service group, etc.

Education for Everyone! Take advantage of these free trainings at the Fair:

• Family Emergency Planning
• Power Line Safety
• Generator Safety
• Making a 72-hour survival kit
• Document storage – what documents do you need and storage options
• Red Cross Training
• Heating and cooking without power
• Caring for Pets in an emergency

Are You Ready for an Emergency?

Do your have ready for yourself, your family & your neighbors:

• A 72-hour survival kit
• An Evacuation plan
• Food & water for emergencies
• A plan for no electricity
• Know your neighbors

Events, Volunteering Disaster, emergency, emergency preparedness, Haiti

By Kelly Hutchinson, Donor Relationship Manager

Talk about pomp and circumstance! One can only imagine what a great and inspiring commencement address students and proud family members would hear if President Barack Obama delivers the graduation address message to the Eagles at Eastern, the Yellow Jackets at Central High School or some lucky Bulldogs at New Albany High School. I am sure any school in our region would never be the same.  

Well if you haven’t heard yet…this could really happen thanks to an exciting contest that is underway and dubbed as The Race to the Top High School Challenge. The “Race” as I will call it, encourages schools to share how they are making strides on personal responsibility, academic excellence and college readiness.

What a great opportunity to spread the word and encourage your favorite school or student you know to check it out, enter the contest and GO FOR IT!  Don’t delay as the deadline is fast approaching for March 15^th and President Obama will select the winner of the contest from the entries who make it as finalists. The application has four essay questions that focus on demonstrating how your school is helping prepare students to meet the President’s 2020 goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

Regardless of your political views, we can all agree that we all win in our community when children succeed in school, graduate on time and continue to college or gain technical skills for employment in today’s economy.

As a proud member of the EHS class of 1982…I do not remember who spoke in the hot gym at graduation. I bet if it had been the President of the United States of America I would have!  To learn more visit     http://www.whitehouse.gov/commencement

Education, Events, General Cental High School, Eastern High School, Graduation Commencement, New Albany High School, President Obama, Race to the Top, School Contest

“I’m starving!” How many times do we say this with out actually considering what it means to truly be starving? Better yet, how many times do we say this while we’re in the McDonald’s drive-thru waiting on our two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun? Don’t forget the fries, diet coke, and yes, I think I will super-size!

My point is that most of us have not experienced true hunger. Most of us have not struggled to scrape together enough money each week to feed our family. Skipped our own meal to allow enough food for our kids. Picked food out of a dumpster or crossed our fingers that the diners we’re waiting on will accidentally leave their doggie-bag behind. That is starvation; hunger. It’s real and it’s all around us. According to Dare to Care Food Bank, “Over 175,000 people in Kentuckiana struggle daily to get the food they need to be healthy.” This number takes a minute to digest (no pun intended).

The good news is that there are organizations working to change this. Today I want to talk about Dare to Care Food Bank and the great work they are doing particularly with mobile pantries.

The traditional food bank model relies on neighborhood food pantries to get food to people needing help. Dare to Care provides the partner church or other nonprofit with food and they then distribute the food to those needing emergency food assistance.

Many families and individuals, however, need help but live in neighborhoods lacking these partner pantries. They may have other issues that also prevent them from accessing a traditional pantry.

The Dare to Care Mobile Pantry is a direct service to reach those in crisis who are struggling to access the help they need. With the Mobile Pantry program, Dare to Care brings the pantry to the neighborhood. Partnering with an agency that wants to help its neighborhood but doesn’t have the ability to operate a regular pantry, Dare to Care will schedule a time when it can deliver perishable and non-perishable food for immediate distribution. Dare to Care staff stay with the delivery truck to assist with the program.

This innovative program has improved nutrition in areas of Kentuckiana where fresh produce and emergency food are otherwise inaccessible.” (This information was taken from the Dare to Care website, click here to learn more.

Since beginning my career with Metro United Way in July 2009, I have had the pleasure of volunteering at five Mobile Pantries. The experience has made me very thankful for the life that I have. Recipients line up early, sometimes before the truck arrives, with old grocery bags, laundry baskets, boxes, anything they can use to carry their food. One Tuesday in December, it must have been 20 degrees, I remember being cold in my thick winter coat, gloves, hat, and scarf. When I pulled up to the volunteer, a least a fifty people were already waiting. Many of them had small children and hardly any of them had coats. These people were willing to freeze to get a few bags of food. This is starvation.

Mobile Pantries are happening each month, click here to help or contact Mary Sullivan at mary.sullivan@metrounitedway.org.

Volunteers setting up at City View Park.

Advocacy, General, Volunteering dare to care, hunger

By John Nevitt

photo by DavidDMuir - click on photo for link

Just about everyone is feeling economic pressures these days in one form or fashion. At one extreme are families who have lost their home due to foreclosure, or who have lost their job through no fault of their own. These families are faced with making tough decisions about how to meet their most basic needs.

For the rest of us, we are deeply concerned about large dips in our retirement savings and investments, and we are fearful about the next downsizing at work.

Whatever an individual’s circumstances may be, it is safe to say that financial worries abound, and there are lots of good, hard-working folks in our community who are struggling to make ends meet and to provide for themselves and their families.

Let me tell you about one valuable service in our regional community supported by Metro United Way – free tax services. Through a long-standing partnership with the IRS and an effort known as VITA (volunteer income tax assistance), and a large number of community based organizations, volunteers are trained to complete your federal and state tax returns, and file them for you – at absolutely no cost to you if your household income is less than $49,000.

“What’s the catch?” you might wonder. “How can this be free?” “What strings are attached?” These are all good questions to ask.

As you may know, Metro United Way’s mission is to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of our community. Free tax services help us fulfill our mission. For many families, a tax refund represents a significant amount of their annual income, and comes in one lump sum. The goal of this program is to increase income by ensuring individuals and families are claiming all of the tax credits for which they are eligible, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. We know nationally that as many as 20-25% of families who are eligible are not claiming this credit due to lack of awareness, or because they don’t know how to complete the required tax forms. This represents tens of millions of dollars for our regional community – money that could be helping families during tough times, and benefitting our local economy.

Working with the IRS, volunteers are trained to determine if you are eligible, and to claim this credit that can bring as much as several thousand dollars back to families, can be significantly more depending on household size and income. By having your taxes done at one of the many VITA tax sites located across our regional community, you can be assured that there are volunteers certified by the IRS to assist you, maximize your tax refund, and leave you with a smile on your face, because there is no cost to you other than your time, and there are no strings attached! Filers with bank accounts who choose direct deposit can have their return in as little as 10 days or less.

If you need help, visit one of the free VITA tax sites supported through Metro United Way, in partnership with the Louisville Asset Building Coalition (LABC) for Jefferson County, the Southern Indiana Asset Building Coalition (SIABC) for Clark, Floyd and Harrison Counties in Indiana, and HJW Career and Financial Literacy Institute for Oldham and Shelby Counties.

If you would like to volunteer to help with free tax services, please contact the appropriate organization for your region. Last year, these efforts served 10,000 filers in our regional area, and additional volunteers are always needed as we strive to serve more.

Income free tax preparation, HJW Career and Financial Literacy Institute, LABC, SIABC, taxes, VITA

By Angie Ditsler

Photo by guldfisken - click on photo for link

Russ told me once that his earliest memories as a child are of his mom walking him to the Crescent Hill Library every week to read to him and let him pick out books to take home. He told me that even as an adult he still vividly remembers the smell of the books in that library, and they conjure up fond memories for him every time he drives past it to this day.

Needless to say, this has led to ongoing jokes in our family about “smelling books.” Whenever I can’t decide which book to pick up next to read, Russ’ typical response to me is usually something like “Well, which one smells better?”

On a more serious note though, we’re both grateful to have been instilled with a love for reading in our childhood. Evening routines for us usually involve a glass of wine and a good book, and one of our favorite things to do on Sundays is to peruse the aisles of Books-a-Million or Barnes and Noble then relax and read until the store closes.

An aspiring writer himself, my husband devours books at about twice the rate I do. Russ accomplished a long-time goal of his when he recently published his first novel, a political thriller called Agent of Influence. He spent six years researching and writing his book, and the past year and a half has really been a team effort as we’ve worked together revising, editing, and trying to get it published. Being exposed to books at an early age has really inspired us and honed our talents in different ways: I always remind Russ that he is the creative genius in the family, while I have eye for detail.

Now that I get to work on various Success By 6 initiatives in my professional life, the importance of exposing young children to positive and healthy experiences early on like reading really hits home for me. One thing that my husband and I agree on is that when we have children of our own some day, we want them to grow up smelling books the same way we did. Who knew that a memory like the smell of a book could have such an impact on someone’s life?

Education, General Agent of Influence, books, reading, Success By 6

by Jan Sherrell

It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.
– Tom Brokaw

I’ve recently been thinking about what a burden it would be to win the lottery or to have been born with a silver, diamond studded spoon. No, really! Surely the newness of being really rich would wear off. You would become suspect of the motive of everyone around you. Wouldn’t there come a point when I have bought enough shoes that the thrill of the hunt is gone? Travel would lose its draw over time. Eventually my mind would turn toward others. What good can I now do with all this richness?

To be crazy rich- what would that be like? It could be a real burden. It would be important to me to really accomplish something. I could, of course, form another nonprofit like tons of well-meaning folk do. A nonprofit sporting my name doesn’t really appeal to me, though. Digging in and really determining what could make a difference in my community or even the world (if I go with the super crazy, stupid rich) is not a simple task. I am not a talker either, I’m a doer. So it would be a challenge for me to slow down, study some issues, learn much and develop a strategy. I’d definitely bring in people smarter than me.

Would I have to narrow down into one goal and fund initiatives around it so that you could see and measure a change? Or would I fund lots of interesting, proven initiatives, sharing the wealth across a gamut of needs? See what I mean about the burden it would be? Someone always has an opinion on what you did or did not fund. Being generous can be criticized if it doesn’t agree with someone else’s agenda. Careful what you wish for. Winning that lottery may not be nirvana.

Metro United Way isn’t super crazy rich. But our work is supported by the resources given us. We take time to study the community, to know the issues, to listen to the experts. We are striving toward naming goals, setting strategies and objectives to get us there.

To give money is an easy matter and in any person’s power, but to decide to whom to give and how much and when and for what purpose and how, is neither in every person’s power, nor an easy matter.
–Aristotle

Just because these quotations both point out it is hard work to determine where to put your resources, it shouldn’t stop you from going ahead and giving and trying to change things for the better. Hmm, guess I’d have to really buy a ticket before I need to worry about being super, crazy rich from winning the lottery.

General community issues, decision making, goals, lottery, rich, strategy

By Kerri Cokeley

In my work with the youth in our community, one thing is staggeringly clear: the majority of adults are not good role models in the eyes of our young people. In a recent survey of Southern Indiana high-schoolers, only 19% of students report having parents and other adults in their life that model positive, responsible behavior.

At Metro United Way, we are working with students to learn more about what they expect of us, their elders (among many other things we are learning.) In the meantime, I think there are some obvious issues that could be addressed. Here is my list of reasons for adults to be better role models, inspired by what I have learned from listening to young people and from observing the behaviors of some adults I know.

*When reading this please remember, I am not a psychologist, a sociologist, a child development specialist, a parent, nor a perfect person for that matter. I am simply a person that experienced a challenging childhood and tries to be empathetic and helpful for the younger generation.

10 Reasons To Be a Better Role Model

10. We are imperfect people. We need to acknowledge that and be more aware of our actions and words.

9. Children start their lives respecting adults; let’s be deserving of that respect.

8. Young people are capable of achieving great things. They want adults to encourage them to do well and hold them accountable when they should be doing better.

7. Research has shown that children have higher success rates as adults when they have 5 caring adults in their life outside of their parents during childhood. Do you have young people in your life that you should be more “present” for?

6. Communication is one of the biggest areas of concern for Southern Indiana high school students. In fact, they say that adults communicate expectations, but then don’t follow up with the results. (In a way, kids are telling us they wish parents would ground them when they break the rules and that schools would dole out punishment more consistently.)

5. The majority of youth report that they don’t have adults in their life who consistently engage them in good conversation, listen to them, and care about their concerns. I know there are times when a child’s opinion isn’t relevant to a decision, but they do deserve to have their thoughts and feelings acknowledged.

4. We need to quit saying one thing and then doing another. Children catch on to this, and it sends a very confusing message on how to act and make decisions.

3. Playing together is a great way to build caring relationships with young children in your life. As that child grows, they will think of you as someone who enjoys time with them and will be more likely to come to you for advice when they are faced with tough situations.

2. Let’s be honest with young people. When appropriate, it is good to share mistakes you have made in the past. We don’t have to give every gory detail, but to share our missteps, the repercussions, and ways that we could have handled the situation better provides information that can help them become better decision makers.

1. In all the student survey results we have collected, we see things that are shocking and sadly true. But one stat that gives us great hope is that the majority of students report having a positive view of their future. I believe we owe it to the next generation to help them turn this positive view into the best future possible.

In closing, I can’t imagine a more meaningful contribution I can make for the future of our community than being a person that helps young people reach their fullest potential. We all interact with young people in some way- some of us more than others. As adults, we shape these interactions, and I think we can do better! Don’t you?

Education developmental assets, youth