I'm trying something new: I'm going to consolidate all of my blogs into one. Rather than finding a blog on this topic or that topic, you're going to find one blog about whatever is on my mind.
If you read a few entries and decide that this is a bad idea, please let me know.
The new url is: http://tedcoine.blogspot.com/.
Hope to see you there!
Ted
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
I'll regret this in the morning.
Okay, it is the morning. Anyway, here goes:
I just read an old post from May 30 on another of my blogs, www.naplesresource.blogspot.com, and discovered to my horror that I give a big thumbs-up to the city of Naples. I've got to amend that.
While it's true that most of my experiences with the city government has been terrific, that is not my experience across the board.
We had to cancel the Animal Lovers' Parade & Fair because of the city of Naples. First, they took away our venue, Gulf View Middle School, because the field was slated for re-sodding - this after they had urged us to use that location because of the beaten-up grass on that field, which would be perfect for animals, including horses, and high human traffic.
Then, they suggested we use Cambier Park - for over $1,000, not the original $270 we had agreed upon for Gulf View. And we would not be able to have all of our events there, such as a horse show or 4-H petting zoo - for some reason, these folks were particularly horrified by the prospect of rabbits, chickens, and one goat being in a pen at their park. Oh, and we could not use a large swath of the lawn there, either.
Throughout this catastrophe - which occurred just 19 days prior to our event - I got the distinct impression that two city bureaucrats in particular were taking some perverse form of delight in denying us our event.
I called and emailed Mayor Barnett, to ask if he would intercede for us. I'm still waiting for a reply. I did hear from someone down the chain of command who emailed to explain that he could not help me - which is why I asked the Mayor for help in the first place.
That is my take. I'm sure those involved - or, in the Mayor's case, conspicuously uninvolved - have a different version of how this went down. Best visit their blogs for that.
By the way: as of this writing, I still have 100 t-shirts commemorating this event that never was. Not only am I out hundreds of hours of my own time spent preparing, plus a few thousand dollars; we were hoping to raise thousands of dollars for the Humane Society, 4-H, Naples Equestrian Challenge, DAS, and quite a number of smaller organizations. Vendors were looking forward to this event to help promote their businesses. Canceling this event wasn't just a matter of canceling a good time.
I've been silent on this matter for about two months now, so as not to step on the toes of those I feel ruined this event for us. Guess I couldn't hold it in any longer. I hope nobody reads this. :)
I just read an old post from May 30 on another of my blogs, www.naplesresource.blogspot.com, and discovered to my horror that I give a big thumbs-up to the city of Naples. I've got to amend that.
While it's true that most of my experiences with the city government has been terrific, that is not my experience across the board.
We had to cancel the Animal Lovers' Parade & Fair because of the city of Naples. First, they took away our venue, Gulf View Middle School, because the field was slated for re-sodding - this after they had urged us to use that location because of the beaten-up grass on that field, which would be perfect for animals, including horses, and high human traffic.
Then, they suggested we use Cambier Park - for over $1,000, not the original $270 we had agreed upon for Gulf View. And we would not be able to have all of our events there, such as a horse show or 4-H petting zoo - for some reason, these folks were particularly horrified by the prospect of rabbits, chickens, and one goat being in a pen at their park. Oh, and we could not use a large swath of the lawn there, either.
Throughout this catastrophe - which occurred just 19 days prior to our event - I got the distinct impression that two city bureaucrats in particular were taking some perverse form of delight in denying us our event.
I called and emailed Mayor Barnett, to ask if he would intercede for us. I'm still waiting for a reply. I did hear from someone down the chain of command who emailed to explain that he could not help me - which is why I asked the Mayor for help in the first place.
That is my take. I'm sure those involved - or, in the Mayor's case, conspicuously uninvolved - have a different version of how this went down. Best visit their blogs for that.
By the way: as of this writing, I still have 100 t-shirts commemorating this event that never was. Not only am I out hundreds of hours of my own time spent preparing, plus a few thousand dollars; we were hoping to raise thousands of dollars for the Humane Society, 4-H, Naples Equestrian Challenge, DAS, and quite a number of smaller organizations. Vendors were looking forward to this event to help promote their businesses. Canceling this event wasn't just a matter of canceling a good time.
I've been silent on this matter for about two months now, so as not to step on the toes of those I feel ruined this event for us. Guess I couldn't hold it in any longer. I hope nobody reads this. :)
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Following is the unabridged version of the interview I did for our e-newsletter - which you can read here before we publish the newsletter! How's that for exclusive!?
If you are clicking over from said newsletter, you will notice that I left the questions in that you may have already read. Sorry. That's blog quality control for you.
If you aren't on the Naples Social Action e-newsletter mailing list and want to be, please let me know and I'll add you: ted.coine@coineinc.com
There are over 500 good causes in Collier County. What makes the top 1% stand out above the rest? Its people. People like Threasa Miller of the PACE Center for Girls in Immokalee.
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Name: Threasa (“The- reesa”) Miller
Title: Founder & Executive Director
Organization: The Pace Center for Girls, Collier at Immokalee
www.pacecenter.org
Neapolitan since: 1980
Born in Tennesee
From the PACE website: “PACE provides a non-residential delinquency prevention program in 21 locations statewide, targeting the unique needs of females 12 to 18 who are identified as dependent, truant, runaway, ungovernable, delinquent, or in need of academic skills. PACE (Practical Academic Cultural Education) accepts referrals from the juvenile justice system, the Department of Children and Families, school personnel, community services agencies, parents, family members, friends and self-referrals. Its purpose is to intervene and prevent school withdrawal, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and welfare dependency.”
NSA: How did you get involved in PACE?
Miller: I worked in social services after college – investigating child abuse in foster care, then with the Department of Juvenile Justice. PACE was going to open a center in Southwest Florida, and I helped write the winning grant to bring it to Immokalee rather than Sarasota or Lee. The president of the organization asked me if I wanted to head it up, and I said “No!” – I loved what I was doing – but she isn’t one to take no for an answer, so she asked me to interview people for the job. I didn’t approve of the applicants, after all the hard work I’d put into the project, so she asked me if maybe I shouldn’t do it myself. Like I said, she didn’t take no for an answer. She wore me down, and I’m glad she did.
NSA: Could you explain what the “C” stands for in PACE?
Miller: The word “Cultural” means exposure and appreciation of things that are different for us. It includes all aspects of who we are, including our arts, our belief in humanity; we teach the girls that being different is good. One of our big goals is to stop bullying, and to do that we have to teach the girls to appreciate differences.
In Immokalee, race isn’t usually the problem, but it could be just different size, for instance: maybe the girls are picking on another girl for being big. We have to teach her that to hit is not a solution, and we have to teach them to appreciate her for who she is. That is all included in our cultural education.
Our teachers introduce the girls to the idea of cultural diversity. Well, one time I overheard girls calling it cultural conspiracy. I got a big kick out of the teacher’s explanation of the difference.
NSA: Your SPIRITED GIRLS!® program “teaches positive lifestyle choices.” How?
Miller: One of the things girls tell us is, they’re stressed; even kids these days are suffering from ulcers or high blood pressure. We tell them how to breathe, relax; we help them build a positive body image. We say, “Look at a TV ad. Is this real, is this true life?” Wellness, healthy eating, the need to drink more water are all things we cover. Right now, we’re working on teaching them how to express themselves, how to talk things out rather than fight.
NSA: It seems that PACE steps in to fill a need that the public school system can’t. Is that right?
Miller: This isn’t an either/or – it isn’t true that either they’re at PACE or they’re in public school. Without PACE, most of our girls would have dropped out or been kicked out of public school. There would be 100 more girls on the welfare role; and this is not just for them but for their family members, for all the children they would have.
Sometimes people can get narrow-minded and mean, and say things like ‘Why have a school like PACE? Kids should be able to tough it out with everybody else.’ That’s so wrong. Sometimes, especially when you have victims of trauma, one more hard knock pushes them over the edge. A gang doesn’t always seem so bad when you have that kind of background. We’re here as an alternative.
NSA: PACE has a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, yet it is only a little more costly for you to run than regular public schools, where classes are crammed at least 25 kids to a teacher. How do you do it?
Miller: We have very little administration. I double as a teacher; we’re all cross-and triple-trained because we have to fill in where we’re needed. We also operate less expensively because we use support services from public school administration, so we don’t have to duplicate them. We partner efficiently.
NSA: How important is that 10:1 ratio?
Miller: Class size is the number one factor to our success. Our girls need extra attention, and they get that. Nothing is more important in education than small class size.
NSA: You’ve bragged to me about the quality of your teachers. How do you attract and keep talent?
Miller: It’s always a challenge. Right now we have an awesome pool of teachers. We have alternative teachers; our science teacher is a retired scientist, a Ph.D. from Proctor & Gamble. He retired early, wants to make a difference, drives every day from Marco Island. He says, ‘I have a small class, I can get creative, I like the support from our administration, we have support via behavior management (public school teachers don’t have that to help them), I like to be able to give suggestions and the administration actually listens.’ Our math teacher has patents from his work with U.S. Surgical Steel. Our teachers are quality. We have to support them with the teaching part, because they didn’t study teaching in college; they have the knowledge part. They see that they’re making a difference. That’s what they want; that’s their challenge.
NSA: Is the PACE model something all school kids could benefit from?
Miller: Oh sure. It’s so embedded in respect, and who couldn’t benefit from that?
NSA: Your girls, who themselves are receiving help, also help others through volunteering. You say that makes a difference in their own lives. How?
Miller: They feel so much pride by being able to help someone else. 93% of our girls are on free or reduced breakfast and lunch. That’s a blow to their self-esteem. But once a month they have to serve lunch at the Guadalupe Center soup kitchen. The girls come back and say, “Those people are so poor, they have nothing. I feel so good about myself because I could help them.” I want them know that they’re part of the solution.
The United Arts Council sent a teacher out here a few years ago who taught them how to make pottery. The girls sold it and made $1,500, which they had to give away. The first year, they donated the money to buy snacks for the diabetic kids at Highlands Elementary School, because they were visiting and noticed that some kids weren’t getting anything at snack time, and they asked why. The girls made Highland’s nurse come and give a report on how their money was spent – it was terrific! The second year, they raised money and gave it to the Make a Wish Foundation. Giving deeply affects our girls. It’s so good for them.
NSA: The PACE website says you “deliver just and fair consequences and (the girls must) be accountable for our actions.” This isn’t the usual touchy-feely approach, is it?
Miller: Kids need rules and they need structure. There are some good consequences, and that is praise and reward. There are also bad consequences. If a girl comes in wearing flip-flops, that violates our dress code. We have shoes for her to wear – she may not like the shoes, so maybe she won’t do it again. If she swears, she’ll have to pick up trash. Our girls don’t swear that much.
NSA: Brilliant! Your advice to parents…?
Miller: Don’t make threats; don’t even say a word if you aren’t going to do it. “If you do that again, you’ll be grounded for a year!” You’re not going to ground anyone for a year. Try a night. And don’t say, “If you do it again.” They’ll do it again. Consequences have to be reliable.
NSA: What do you do if a student gets pregnant? Does PACE council its girls on birth control options? Do you provide birth control for them? What about if one of your students gets caught drunk or high – even off campus and after school hours?
Miller: We have partnered with Planned Parenthood, who taught them about abstinence. We teach them to have goals and a future; they can have kids any time. We train the girls to wait, but not all girls will wait. They can go to Collier County Health Services. If they get pregnant, we transfer them to the Teen As Parents Program (TAPP), where they get parenting classes and healthcare – that’s a critical need, and they can have their classes scheduled around their healthcare needs.
We lose about one girl a year this way. It’s always depressing, and we examine what we did wrong, where we can improve.
One way we handle this is through our Baby Can Wait program – we have an actual computerized baby, named Erin Pace. A girl will carry this heavy computerized baby around with her everywhere she goes, all day and night. We can check when it was changed, how long it was ignored - everything. It even has computer. In the car, it goes in a baby seat. At first, they think they want a baby, but we can barely make them keep it for 3 days. The girls say, “Would you do something with this baby?! It’s driving me nuts!” and we say, “No. it’s a baby. What can we do?” Any trick you can pull….
As for drugs: if you ignore that someone’s using, you’re condoning it. You can’t ignore the possibility that they’re high. Confront it. We have substance abuse prevention for high-risk girls. We refer them to David Lawrence for more intensive counciling if it’s needed.
One way we keep the girls from possessing drugs on campus is that they don’t carry anything – no purse, no book bag. There’s no place for them to hide drugs.
NSA: What about when a girl’s family is uncooperative or hostile to her involvement in PACE?
Miller: We sit down and talk with them. Usually when they’re upset, they’re angry because they feel they’re being ignored. When we listen to them, they usually calm down. It’s how respectful you are and how you treat the other person. You can give them the worst news in the world, and if you tell it to them in the right way, respectfully, you won’t have a problem.
NSA: Is there ever a time when you turn an applicant away as hopeless?
Miller: No. We don’t turn girls away.
But last year, for the first time, we sent two kids back to the public school, which I consider a loss on our part. We just had to tell them, you aren’t ready to change, to try counciling, to work on yourself, and our tax money is being wasted.
NSA: What happens to your girls? What percentage graduate? Do they work in the fields? Do any of them go on to college? Once they’re gone, do you give them any kind of follow-up support?
Miller: We stay with the girls after graduation, giving them at least three years of follow-up – we do everything, whatever they need. Tutoring, college applications, helping them find a job, crisis counciling…. One of our first graduates came here after a fight with her dad, a few years after graduation. She said she came here because she knew we’d listen. And we did. I spent an hour with her, talking it over in my office.
Last year eight girls graduated, and six went to college. We hired one of our former graduates to be our chef – she went to culinary arts school, and now she’s back to help us. Now she teaches the girls how to cook, and she says, “Look at all their energy! They can’t stay still.” We tell her, “Yes, that was you.” We’re very proud of her – and she’s a great chef!
NSA: The PACE Center, the actual facility, is an oasis in Immokalee – it’s gorgeous inside and out. I understand that its funding and construction was a huge feat: congratulations are in order! Now that is behind you, what is your next big challenge?
Miller: There are a million things I want to do. I want to truly do a culinary arts program where our kids run a business. I want us to have full-time nursing care. Now, we have a girl with lupus; earlier, we had a girl with a halo brace for a neck injury. I want to set up good solid career training, so that employers say, “This is a PACE graduate. They know how to do this – interview, dress for work, MS Office, spread sheets…. Yes, I’ll hire this person, because she’s from PACE.” I want us to have an after-school program for middle schoolers – we have the facility right now, and nowhere else in Immokalee does that. We just need funding to get it started.
If you are clicking over from said newsletter, you will notice that I left the questions in that you may have already read. Sorry. That's blog quality control for you.
If you aren't on the Naples Social Action e-newsletter mailing list and want to be, please let me know and I'll add you: ted.coine@coineinc.com
There are over 500 good causes in Collier County. What makes the top 1% stand out above the rest? Its people. People like Threasa Miller of the PACE Center for Girls in Immokalee.
Neapolitan of Note: Threasa Miller
Name: Threasa (“The- reesa”) Miller
Title: Founder & Executive Director
Organization: The Pace Center for Girls, Collier at Immokalee
www.pacecenter.org
Neapolitan since: 1980
Born in Tennesee
From the PACE website: “PACE provides a non-residential delinquency prevention program in 21 locations statewide, targeting the unique needs of females 12 to 18 who are identified as dependent, truant, runaway, ungovernable, delinquent, or in need of academic skills. PACE (Practical Academic Cultural Education) accepts referrals from the juvenile justice system, the Department of Children and Families, school personnel, community services agencies, parents, family members, friends and self-referrals. Its purpose is to intervene and prevent school withdrawal, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, substance abuse and welfare dependency.”
NSA: How did you get involved in PACE?
Miller: I worked in social services after college – investigating child abuse in foster care, then with the Department of Juvenile Justice. PACE was going to open a center in Southwest Florida, and I helped write the winning grant to bring it to Immokalee rather than Sarasota or Lee. The president of the organization asked me if I wanted to head it up, and I said “No!” – I loved what I was doing – but she isn’t one to take no for an answer, so she asked me to interview people for the job. I didn’t approve of the applicants, after all the hard work I’d put into the project, so she asked me if maybe I shouldn’t do it myself. Like I said, she didn’t take no for an answer. She wore me down, and I’m glad she did.
NSA: Could you explain what the “C” stands for in PACE?
Miller: The word “Cultural” means exposure and appreciation of things that are different for us. It includes all aspects of who we are, including our arts, our belief in humanity; we teach the girls that being different is good. One of our big goals is to stop bullying, and to do that we have to teach the girls to appreciate differences.
In Immokalee, race isn’t usually the problem, but it could be just different size, for instance: maybe the girls are picking on another girl for being big. We have to teach her that to hit is not a solution, and we have to teach them to appreciate her for who she is. That is all included in our cultural education.
Our teachers introduce the girls to the idea of cultural diversity. Well, one time I overheard girls calling it cultural conspiracy. I got a big kick out of the teacher’s explanation of the difference.
NSA: Your SPIRITED GIRLS!® program “teaches positive lifestyle choices.” How?
Miller: One of the things girls tell us is, they’re stressed; even kids these days are suffering from ulcers or high blood pressure. We tell them how to breathe, relax; we help them build a positive body image. We say, “Look at a TV ad. Is this real, is this true life?” Wellness, healthy eating, the need to drink more water are all things we cover. Right now, we’re working on teaching them how to express themselves, how to talk things out rather than fight.
NSA: It seems that PACE steps in to fill a need that the public school system can’t. Is that right?
Miller: This isn’t an either/or – it isn’t true that either they’re at PACE or they’re in public school. Without PACE, most of our girls would have dropped out or been kicked out of public school. There would be 100 more girls on the welfare role; and this is not just for them but for their family members, for all the children they would have.
Sometimes people can get narrow-minded and mean, and say things like ‘Why have a school like PACE? Kids should be able to tough it out with everybody else.’ That’s so wrong. Sometimes, especially when you have victims of trauma, one more hard knock pushes them over the edge. A gang doesn’t always seem so bad when you have that kind of background. We’re here as an alternative.
NSA: PACE has a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, yet it is only a little more costly for you to run than regular public schools, where classes are crammed at least 25 kids to a teacher. How do you do it?
Miller: We have very little administration. I double as a teacher; we’re all cross-and triple-trained because we have to fill in where we’re needed. We also operate less expensively because we use support services from public school administration, so we don’t have to duplicate them. We partner efficiently.
NSA: How important is that 10:1 ratio?
Miller: Class size is the number one factor to our success. Our girls need extra attention, and they get that. Nothing is more important in education than small class size.
NSA: You’ve bragged to me about the quality of your teachers. How do you attract and keep talent?
Miller: It’s always a challenge. Right now we have an awesome pool of teachers. We have alternative teachers; our science teacher is a retired scientist, a Ph.D. from Proctor & Gamble. He retired early, wants to make a difference, drives every day from Marco Island. He says, ‘I have a small class, I can get creative, I like the support from our administration, we have support via behavior management (public school teachers don’t have that to help them), I like to be able to give suggestions and the administration actually listens.’ Our math teacher has patents from his work with U.S. Surgical Steel. Our teachers are quality. We have to support them with the teaching part, because they didn’t study teaching in college; they have the knowledge part. They see that they’re making a difference. That’s what they want; that’s their challenge.
NSA: Is the PACE model something all school kids could benefit from?
Miller: Oh sure. It’s so embedded in respect, and who couldn’t benefit from that?
NSA: Your girls, who themselves are receiving help, also help others through volunteering. You say that makes a difference in their own lives. How?
Miller: They feel so much pride by being able to help someone else. 93% of our girls are on free or reduced breakfast and lunch. That’s a blow to their self-esteem. But once a month they have to serve lunch at the Guadalupe Center soup kitchen. The girls come back and say, “Those people are so poor, they have nothing. I feel so good about myself because I could help them.” I want them know that they’re part of the solution.
The United Arts Council sent a teacher out here a few years ago who taught them how to make pottery. The girls sold it and made $1,500, which they had to give away. The first year, they donated the money to buy snacks for the diabetic kids at Highlands Elementary School, because they were visiting and noticed that some kids weren’t getting anything at snack time, and they asked why. The girls made Highland’s nurse come and give a report on how their money was spent – it was terrific! The second year, they raised money and gave it to the Make a Wish Foundation. Giving deeply affects our girls. It’s so good for them.
NSA: The PACE website says you “deliver just and fair consequences and (the girls must) be accountable for our actions.” This isn’t the usual touchy-feely approach, is it?
Miller: Kids need rules and they need structure. There are some good consequences, and that is praise and reward. There are also bad consequences. If a girl comes in wearing flip-flops, that violates our dress code. We have shoes for her to wear – she may not like the shoes, so maybe she won’t do it again. If she swears, she’ll have to pick up trash. Our girls don’t swear that much.
NSA: Brilliant! Your advice to parents…?
Miller: Don’t make threats; don’t even say a word if you aren’t going to do it. “If you do that again, you’ll be grounded for a year!” You’re not going to ground anyone for a year. Try a night. And don’t say, “If you do it again.” They’ll do it again. Consequences have to be reliable.
NSA: What do you do if a student gets pregnant? Does PACE council its girls on birth control options? Do you provide birth control for them? What about if one of your students gets caught drunk or high – even off campus and after school hours?
Miller: We have partnered with Planned Parenthood, who taught them about abstinence. We teach them to have goals and a future; they can have kids any time. We train the girls to wait, but not all girls will wait. They can go to Collier County Health Services. If they get pregnant, we transfer them to the Teen As Parents Program (TAPP), where they get parenting classes and healthcare – that’s a critical need, and they can have their classes scheduled around their healthcare needs.
We lose about one girl a year this way. It’s always depressing, and we examine what we did wrong, where we can improve.
One way we handle this is through our Baby Can Wait program – we have an actual computerized baby, named Erin Pace. A girl will carry this heavy computerized baby around with her everywhere she goes, all day and night. We can check when it was changed, how long it was ignored - everything. It even has computer. In the car, it goes in a baby seat. At first, they think they want a baby, but we can barely make them keep it for 3 days. The girls say, “Would you do something with this baby?! It’s driving me nuts!” and we say, “No. it’s a baby. What can we do?” Any trick you can pull….
As for drugs: if you ignore that someone’s using, you’re condoning it. You can’t ignore the possibility that they’re high. Confront it. We have substance abuse prevention for high-risk girls. We refer them to David Lawrence for more intensive counciling if it’s needed.
One way we keep the girls from possessing drugs on campus is that they don’t carry anything – no purse, no book bag. There’s no place for them to hide drugs.
NSA: What about when a girl’s family is uncooperative or hostile to her involvement in PACE?
Miller: We sit down and talk with them. Usually when they’re upset, they’re angry because they feel they’re being ignored. When we listen to them, they usually calm down. It’s how respectful you are and how you treat the other person. You can give them the worst news in the world, and if you tell it to them in the right way, respectfully, you won’t have a problem.
NSA: Is there ever a time when you turn an applicant away as hopeless?
Miller: No. We don’t turn girls away.
But last year, for the first time, we sent two kids back to the public school, which I consider a loss on our part. We just had to tell them, you aren’t ready to change, to try counciling, to work on yourself, and our tax money is being wasted.
NSA: What happens to your girls? What percentage graduate? Do they work in the fields? Do any of them go on to college? Once they’re gone, do you give them any kind of follow-up support?
Miller: We stay with the girls after graduation, giving them at least three years of follow-up – we do everything, whatever they need. Tutoring, college applications, helping them find a job, crisis counciling…. One of our first graduates came here after a fight with her dad, a few years after graduation. She said she came here because she knew we’d listen. And we did. I spent an hour with her, talking it over in my office.
Last year eight girls graduated, and six went to college. We hired one of our former graduates to be our chef – she went to culinary arts school, and now she’s back to help us. Now she teaches the girls how to cook, and she says, “Look at all their energy! They can’t stay still.” We tell her, “Yes, that was you.” We’re very proud of her – and she’s a great chef!
NSA: The PACE Center, the actual facility, is an oasis in Immokalee – it’s gorgeous inside and out. I understand that its funding and construction was a huge feat: congratulations are in order! Now that is behind you, what is your next big challenge?
Miller: There are a million things I want to do. I want to truly do a culinary arts program where our kids run a business. I want us to have full-time nursing care. Now, we have a girl with lupus; earlier, we had a girl with a halo brace for a neck injury. I want to set up good solid career training, so that employers say, “This is a PACE graduate. They know how to do this – interview, dress for work, MS Office, spread sheets…. Yes, I’ll hire this person, because she’s from PACE.” I want us to have an after-school program for middle schoolers – we have the facility right now, and nowhere else in Immokalee does that. We just need funding to get it started.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
OLPC story - New York Times
September 24, 2007
Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free
By STEVE LOHR
One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, has considerable momentum. Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month.
Orders, however, are slow. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
But Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, views the problem as a temporary one in the long-term pursuit of using technology as a new channel of learning and self-expression for children worldwide.
And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.
One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.
Just what Americans will do with the slender green-and-white laptops is uncertain. Some people may donate them to local schools or youth organizations, said Walter Bender, president of the laptop project, while others will keep them for their own family or their own use.
The machines have high-resolution screens, cameras and peer-to-peer technology so the laptops can communicate wirelessly with one another. The machine runs on free, open source software. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Mr. Bender, a computer researcher. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”
The machine, called the XO Laptop, was not engineered with affluent children in mind. It was intended to be inexpensive, with costs eventually approaching $100 a machine, and sturdy enough to withstand harsh conditions in rural villages. It is also extremely energy efficient, with power consumption that is 10 percent or less of a conventional laptop computer.
Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried.
So the laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August. The results were reassuringly positive. The focus-group subjects liked the fact that the machine was intended specifically for children, and appreciated features like the machine-to-machine wireless communication. “Completely beastly” was the verdict of one boy. Another environmentally conscious youngster noted that the laptop “prevents global warming.”
Still, the “Give 1 Get 1” initiative is mainly about the giving. “The real reason is to get this thing started,” Mr. Negroponte said.
He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.
“It could trigger a lot of things,” Mr. Negroponte said.
Late last year, Mr. Negroponte said he had hoped for orders for three million laptops, but those pledges have fallen short. Orders of a million each from populous Nigeria and Brazil did not materialize.
Still, the project has had successes. Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas. Mexico and Uruguay, Mr. Negroponte noted, have made firm commitments. In a sponsorship program, the government of Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia.
Each country will have different ideas about how to use the machines. Alan Kay, a computer researcher and adviser to the laptop project, said he expects one popular use will be to load textbooks at 25 cents or so each on the laptops, which has a high-resolution screen for easy reading.
“It’s probably going to be mundane in the early stages,” said Mr. Kay, who heads a nonprofit education group, whose learning software will be on the XO Laptop. “I’m an optimist that this will eventually work out,” Mr. Kay said.
Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free
By STEVE LOHR
One Laptop Per Child, an ambitious project to bring computing to the developing world’s children, has considerable momentum. Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month.
Orders, however, are slow. “I have to some degree underestimated the difference between shaking the hand of a head of state and having a check written,” said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the nonprofit project. “And yes, it has been a disappointment.”
But Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, views the problem as a temporary one in the long-term pursuit of using technology as a new channel of learning and self-expression for children worldwide.
And he is reaching out to the public to try to give the laptop campaign a boost. The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.
One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.
Just what Americans will do with the slender green-and-white laptops is uncertain. Some people may donate them to local schools or youth organizations, said Walter Bender, president of the laptop project, while others will keep them for their own family or their own use.
The machines have high-resolution screens, cameras and peer-to-peer technology so the laptops can communicate wirelessly with one another. The machine runs on free, open source software. “Everything in the machine is open to the hacker, so people can poke at it, change it and make it their own,” said Mr. Bender, a computer researcher. “Part of what we’re doing here is broadening the community of users, broadening the base of ideas and contributions, and that will be tremendously valuable.”
The machine, called the XO Laptop, was not engineered with affluent children in mind. It was intended to be inexpensive, with costs eventually approaching $100 a machine, and sturdy enough to withstand harsh conditions in rural villages. It is also extremely energy efficient, with power consumption that is 10 percent or less of a conventional laptop computer.
Staff members of the laptop project were concerned that American children might try the pared-down machines and find them lacking compared to their Apple, Hewlett-Packard or Dell laptops. Then, in this era of immediate global communications, they might post their criticisms on Web sites and blogs read around the world, damaging the reputation of the XO Laptop, the project staff worried.
So the laptop project sponsored focus-group research with American children, ages 7 to 11, at the end of August. The results were reassuringly positive. The focus-group subjects liked the fact that the machine was intended specifically for children, and appreciated features like the machine-to-machine wireless communication. “Completely beastly” was the verdict of one boy. Another environmentally conscious youngster noted that the laptop “prevents global warming.”
Still, the “Give 1 Get 1” initiative is mainly about the giving. “The real reason is to get this thing started,” Mr. Negroponte said.
He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.
“It could trigger a lot of things,” Mr. Negroponte said.
Late last year, Mr. Negroponte said he had hoped for orders for three million laptops, but those pledges have fallen short. Orders of a million each from populous Nigeria and Brazil did not materialize.
Still, the project has had successes. Peru, for example, will buy and distribute 250,000 of the laptops over the next year — many of them allocated for remote rural areas. Mexico and Uruguay, Mr. Negroponte noted, have made firm commitments. In a sponsorship program, the government of Italy has agreed to purchase 50,000 laptops for distribution in Ethiopia.
Each country will have different ideas about how to use the machines. Alan Kay, a computer researcher and adviser to the laptop project, said he expects one popular use will be to load textbooks at 25 cents or so each on the laptops, which has a high-resolution screen for easy reading.
“It’s probably going to be mundane in the early stages,” said Mr. Kay, who heads a nonprofit education group, whose learning software will be on the XO Laptop. “I’m an optimist that this will eventually work out,” Mr. Kay said.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
My friend Michael isn't as sold on the XO $100 laptop as I am. His gripe is that kids in the Third World need food to eat, water pumps that work, can openers, pencils and paper.... What follows is my reply to his email to that effect, which was also copied to a couple of other interested parties who are part of this conversation.
My friend Steve Popper travels the globe purchasing lumber. He says that traveling from the airport to his meetings in the third world is horrendous - the poverty is so incredible, he doesn't even like to look out the car window. So a few years ago he and his family established a school in a village in Haiti. He figured, "Hey, there's no school; that's why these kids will spend their whole lives in penury. Let's fix that." Steve's upper-middle-class; I think a school in Haiti is pretty affordable.
The problem is that the kids didn't learn much in their new school. The reason? They were hungry. I can't pay attention if I'm late for snack time. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids who are actually starving. So Steve did some research and found Kids Against Hunger. He brought it to our Rotary club, and in less than a month, in two events he - and a few hundred of his closest friends - packaged over 600,000 meals. About half went to the poor here in SWFL, the remainder to Haiti and Jamaica - the poorest parts in the South of Jamaica, hit worst by Dean. To avoid pilfering (99% of foreign aid to Haiti is stolen, mostly by the gov.), we sent the meals to Rotary clubs in the villages where the food is needed. We have 8 more packaging events lined up this season.
Poor people need food. And fresh water, and shoes, and $.01 drops of medicine to fight ringworm, and affordable (but not free) condoms, and mosquito netting.... People need education and micro credit, too, so that they can take care of themselves, rather than hope that the largess from America continues unabated. My vote is, if this guy or that group is passionate about one of those things, then why tell them to wait until other needs have been met first? Steve wants to feed kids, I want to give them laptops, and Michael wants them to have can openers. They need all 3, so good for all of us! By pursuing what inspires us most, we'll each be more effective and we'll stay engaged longer.
Now, to introduce Tim Falconer: he is well ahead of me in his efforts to get the XO to the kids who need it. He and some friends (www.waveplace.com) are about to start a project with some XOs in St. John (the US Virgin Island). It's a small population - only about twice as many kids as Immokalee. And, like Immokalee, if you want to make a living wage, you have to leave to do it.
Waveplace isn't just going to buy laptops from MIT and hand them over to a bunch of kids, then split town. Their project includes teaching the children how to use the laptops, and really it's about teaching them effectively through the conduit of a laptop. Tim's idea is to train the children of the Caribbean, starting with St. John, to apply their creative talents to IT work, sourced all over the globe via the Internet.
Kids in poverty world-wide are physically removed from the teachers and resources they need to have an education that is every bit as good as, say, our two girls here in Naples. But with an XO and a Internet connection, these children can enjoy access to the best the world has to offer. My good friend and colleague, Tim King, who is running Coine Language School for us up in Boston, has done a lot of real-time tutoring over the years through an online course out of Taiwan. Because of the XO, kids in St. John will be able to have world-class teachers like Tim King at their disposal.
What a brave new world is this!
My friend Steve Popper travels the globe purchasing lumber. He says that traveling from the airport to his meetings in the third world is horrendous - the poverty is so incredible, he doesn't even like to look out the car window. So a few years ago he and his family established a school in a village in Haiti. He figured, "Hey, there's no school; that's why these kids will spend their whole lives in penury. Let's fix that." Steve's upper-middle-class; I think a school in Haiti is pretty affordable.
The problem is that the kids didn't learn much in their new school. The reason? They were hungry. I can't pay attention if I'm late for snack time. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids who are actually starving. So Steve did some research and found Kids Against Hunger. He brought it to our Rotary club, and in less than a month, in two events he - and a few hundred of his closest friends - packaged over 600,000 meals. About half went to the poor here in SWFL, the remainder to Haiti and Jamaica - the poorest parts in the South of Jamaica, hit worst by Dean. To avoid pilfering (99% of foreign aid to Haiti is stolen, mostly by the gov.), we sent the meals to Rotary clubs in the villages where the food is needed. We have 8 more packaging events lined up this season.
Poor people need food. And fresh water, and shoes, and $.01 drops of medicine to fight ringworm, and affordable (but not free) condoms, and mosquito netting.... People need education and micro credit, too, so that they can take care of themselves, rather than hope that the largess from America continues unabated. My vote is, if this guy or that group is passionate about one of those things, then why tell them to wait until other needs have been met first? Steve wants to feed kids, I want to give them laptops, and Michael wants them to have can openers. They need all 3, so good for all of us! By pursuing what inspires us most, we'll each be more effective and we'll stay engaged longer.
Now, to introduce Tim Falconer: he is well ahead of me in his efforts to get the XO to the kids who need it. He and some friends (www.waveplace.com) are about to start a project with some XOs in St. John (the US Virgin Island). It's a small population - only about twice as many kids as Immokalee. And, like Immokalee, if you want to make a living wage, you have to leave to do it.
Waveplace isn't just going to buy laptops from MIT and hand them over to a bunch of kids, then split town. Their project includes teaching the children how to use the laptops, and really it's about teaching them effectively through the conduit of a laptop. Tim's idea is to train the children of the Caribbean, starting with St. John, to apply their creative talents to IT work, sourced all over the globe via the Internet.
Kids in poverty world-wide are physically removed from the teachers and resources they need to have an education that is every bit as good as, say, our two girls here in Naples. But with an XO and a Internet connection, these children can enjoy access to the best the world has to offer. My good friend and colleague, Tim King, who is running Coine Language School for us up in Boston, has done a lot of real-time tutoring over the years through an online course out of Taiwan. Because of the XO, kids in St. John will be able to have world-class teachers like Tim King at their disposal.
What a brave new world is this!
Monday, September 24, 2007
Guest spot on OLPC
Wayan Vota was kind enough to post this for me: http://www.olpcnews.com/sales_talk/donors/americans_help_olpc.html. Thanks Wayan!
Sunday, September 23, 2007
One Laptop Links
As I promised my audience at the Unitarian Universalist Forum this morning, here are some links to different sites with more information on my favorite project, the One Laptop Per Child Innitiative (OLPC).
Please note the second link. I found it just this minute - apparently, starting Nov. 12, you will be able to buy one XO for your child when you buy one for a child in the Third World. I know what Ayla and Maryn are getting for early & late birthday presents, respectively.
60 Minutes story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
Donate or "Buy two, get one": http://www.xogiving.org/
MIT Media Lab's site: http://laptop.org/
MIT Media Lab's wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home
An unofficial site dedicated to OLPC: http://www.olpcnews.com/
Please note the second link. I found it just this minute - apparently, starting Nov. 12, you will be able to buy one XO for your child when you buy one for a child in the Third World. I know what Ayla and Maryn are getting for early & late birthday presents, respectively.
60 Minutes story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/20/60minutes/main2830058.shtml?source=search_story
Donate or "Buy two, get one": http://www.xogiving.org/
MIT Media Lab's site: http://laptop.org/
MIT Media Lab's wiki: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home
An unofficial site dedicated to OLPC: http://www.olpcnews.com/
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