Please consider the following questions:

1. Can you write?
2. Did you go to college?
3. Do you like helping others?

If you answered “yes” to the above questions then you can make a tremendous difference in an Austin student’s life – and their family and their community – by helping Austin seniors write college scholarship essays.

Thanks to College Forward, there are a number of Austin kids who are the first from their families to be accepted to college. But now they have to find a way to pay for it.

Okay, maybe this wasn’t your favorite part of getting ready for college. But you’re different now. You’ve been through college; you know what they’re looking for. And now you can finally put your college years to work! Imagine this for a moment:

Picture sitting at a desk with a student, going over her essay, helping her identify parts of the story she left out. Now picture her saying thank you and promising to let you know how it turns out. Now picture yourself finding out she’d won that scholarship - thanks to you.

How amazing would that be?

You can be one of the 40 volunteers College Forward needs to make all this happen. Here’s some information:

When: Saturdays, Dec. 5, 12, 19 and Jan. 9
Time: 10am-2pm (you’ll attend a short training session before the workshop)
Where: 312 W. Murray Ave. Manor, TX 78653

To learn more and sign up, contact volunteer coordinator Karena Rogers volunteer@collegeforward.org or 512-452-4800 ext. 225 to

P.S. Have you heard about College Forward? They’re an Austin-born nonprofit that helps low-income and first-generation students consider, apply for, navigate and attend college. Since 2003 its helped hundreds of Austin students and this year its students have been accepted to more than 70 colleges and universities  – and that’s just in this past November!

According to Jesse Noyes of College Forward, “We also help students STAY in college. A lot of our students, since they are first-generation college students, need support while they are in college and that’s a big part of what we do, supporting students while in college.”

And here’s where you fit it: These students have come so far, and now they have to pay for it! So please spend a little time this Saturday – or one of the following Saturdays – to help.

The Tolfree family, helped by Foundation Communities.

PROBLEM:

More than 2,000 Austin families will consider “canceling Christmas” this year because they can’t afford the toys, gifts or even food to celebrate.

SOLUTION:

You or your company can adopt a family and save Christmas.

It’s simple. Just visit Foundation Communities to download a family sponsorship form, fill it in to let them know what size family you’d like to sponsor, etc.

Send in your family sponsorship form by December 11.

This is your chance to be a hero, folks. Your donation goes straight to the families with the most need, and you can spend as much or as little as you want. Foundation Communites offers lots of gift ideas for each person in the family, so this is a easy, fun way to share the joy of the season.  

And if you’ve ever seen a child on Christmas morning opening a present and seeing exactly the toy they asked Santa for…  Seriously, it will make your whole year.

What I love about Foundation Communities is that they have an amazing way of helping not just families with the most need but Austin overall because they’re repurposing empty hotels and apartments and condos into affordable housing that helps get families off the streets. They also give them a leg-up offering classes, training, community daycare and other services that give families a solid base for success.

So I don’t feel bad about pulling out my marketing copywriting hat to sell this opportunity to you.

Get the form here.

Send it in by December 11.

Get your co-workers, employees, and family involved.

Save Christmas!

Imagine having no middle school for your child. That’s the situation for many East Austin families. A new middle school not only fills that void, it creates an innovative learning environment that prepares these kids for college – not just high school but college.

Tomorrow night (November 5), Southwest Key will host an open house for the East Austin College Prep Academy. They’re very proud. And they want everyone to attend.

We had a feature about mentoring and middle school and drop-out rates in AISD in our latest issue (download it here). Frankly, the numbers scare the hell out of me. And if you plan to raise a family in Austin, they should scare you, too.

Great news: Not only can you do something about it, others are doing something about it, too.

Southwest Key has a weird name but you should get to know them because they are the largest Hispanic-serving nonprofit in Austin. They started this middle school where there was none, and it’s going to make a huge difference in Austin’s Hispanic community.

We talked to John Turner, the Interim Director of Communications for Southwest Key.

1. This year there were 90 sixth graders that started the academy. Next year you’ll have a seventh grade and then an eighth grade campus. Who are these students and what middle schools/high schools would they otherwise attend?

We are based in the Govalle/Johnston Terrace neighborhood in East Austin, a neighborhood that has not had a middle school for many years. As there is no local middle school, the students were being bused out to middle schools in other parts of the city.

 Our students come from 26 different schools in Austin and have chosen our school because it is based on the highly successfully YES college prep model that has been ranked among the top 100 schools in America by US News & World Report. 

 2. Why a middle school? Wouldn’t a college-prep program focus on high school students?

There’s a number of reasons why a middle school. We canvassed the local community and parents, and they overwhelmingly requested a middle school. Many parents found it hard to get involved with their kids education due to the busing, so housing the school in our community center made a lot of sense.

We also analyzed research about at what stage was the best place to start affecting education and the drop-out rates, and it was apparent that starting with middle school would have a greater benefit and impact for local kids and families. 

3. So at this open house tomorrow, what can we expect to see?

All of the classrooms and facilities will be open, visitors will also be able to talk to the principal Dr. Nellie Cantu, school staff about the curriculum and approach, and hear from Southwest Key CEO, Dr. Juan Sánchez, about our future plans to expand quality education alternatives in East Austin.  

(Editor’s note: I heare there will also be food and drinks….)

4. I want to support your work with this middle school/academy. What are some ways I can get involved?

We always need advocates and supporters for our approach, which is simply providing an alternative quality education for children in East Austin.

Volunteers are welcome for the many after-school and other support programs, (the Boys and Girls Club is also housed here), offering to host field trips for the students service projects, and donations of school supplies are most welcome too! 

For more information, please contact Victoria Gutierrez at vgutierrez@swkey or 512-583-2567.

ABOUT THE EVENT:  

Open House
Thursday, November 5, 2009
4:30-7:00pm

6002 Jain LaneAustin, TX 78721

MAP TO EVENT

Appetizers, wine and hors d’oeuvres, performance, and more!

 

You could almost stop worrying about the future of Austin philanthropy thanks to Linda Brucker and the team that created A Legacy of Giving.

Since 2007, the program has exposed almost 6,000 students in the Austin, Eanes, and Round Rock school districts, plus a couple of private schools, to the concept of philanthropy. The program is more than a video or a field trip to the food bank; the lessons in giving are actually weaved into the curriculum.

“What we do is engage the students – from financially secure to low-income – to make sure they realize that being a philanthropist isn’t just about money,” says Brucker, “We tell them that every single one of them has time and talent to share.”

For example, one of the program’s early projects introduced students to the problems of hunger and poverty, first describing it at the global level, then describing the problems closer to home. “When we told them that 41,000 children in Travis County have food insecurity, there was this pause,” says Brucker. For the next lesson, a representative from Capital Area Food Bank came in and introduced them to idea of the food bank … and what a nonprofit is. And then for the next lesson, a storage unit arrived on campus. Students got inside, walked around, used math to figure the dimensions, and decided it would be a great place to store food. Fourteen schools and 3,600 students participated in the project they called ‘pack the pod,” raising 32,000 pounds of food in two weeks.

Program administrators train more than 125 teachers on how to use a Web-based platform hosting downloadable lessons and how to bring in resources from the community to make the lessons come to life. Aside from the poverty project, teachers could also choose a project based on Earth Day, which was coordinated with Keep Austin Beautiful. Another project revolved around financial literacy.

“It’s remarkable how these projects are having such an immediate impact on their lives,” says Brucker. One of the schools that took on the Earth Day project started recycling plastic and aluminum – at the students’ request. And students who participated in the financial literacy project reported talking to their parents about the family’s debt.

“We think we’re changing the conversation so that students feel like they’re part of the solution.”

LINDA BRUCKER’S FAVORITE MOMENT

“I was at Paredes Middle School, in the middle of the courtyard, and we were using meat scales to weigh some of the food that the students had collected. One of the students came up to me and said, ‘Are you Mrs. Brucker? Would that be okay if I talked to you?’

So I said, ‘Absolutely!’ Then she got very quiet and very close and said, ‘This is the coolest program we’ve ever had at my school.’

She took two steps back and said, ‘Mrs. Brucker, I’ve always been the one who had to get the food, and this is the first time I got to be the giver.’”

A $4000 donation to Heart House via GiveRealty.

This is genius.

We’re obviously fans of GiveRealty’s business model; the real estate broker donates 25 percent of its commission to the charity of the seller/buyer’s choice, in their name. But using the new website RecognizeGood- also born and raised in Austin – GiveRealty was able to double that donation.

A recent home sale through GiveRealty resulted in a $4000 donation to Heart House, a free afterschool program that provides over 200 low-income and at-risk children in Austin with access to caring adult mentors, homework assistance, art enrichment, computer learning, health and safety education, and literacy programs.
 
Because the gift to Heart House was channeled through RecognizeGood, an Austin-based philanthropic website, and doubled through a matching gift program generously supported by RecognizeGood’s corporate sponsors TyRex Group and ABC Home and Commercial Services.
 
“The generosity of TyRex Group and ABC Home and Commercial Services significantly increased the impact of our donation to Heart House”, said Loew. “By providing a forum where Central Texans can recognize and reward acts of kindness, RecognizeGood is encouraging philanthropy in a very innovative way.”

All this from a home sale. Think about how many home sales there are in Austin. Think about a25 percent of all that real estate commission, double it, and picture that going to a local charity.

For three years, Shelley Seale would travel to the orphanages of India, bags loaded with treats and toys to share with the children who had made such an enormous impact on her. After all, these were the same children who inspired the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Each time she got to know the children’s stories a little more, which compelled this Austin writer to compose a new book called, “The Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India.”

“I hope that people will see that even though this topic is serious and the stories often heartbreaking, it is not a depressing book or subject!” says Seale. “The kids’ hope and resilience amazed me time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired me. The issues are tough, what has happened to a lot of these kids makes you want to cry – but the bottom line of their stories is a very strong, hopeful voice.“

I interviewed Shlley to find out what compelled her to travel, return, and make the children of India such a big part of her life.

What prompted you to travel in India and get to know these children?

In early 2004, I read an article in Tribeza magazine about Caroline Boudreaux, who had visited India three years earlier. She had happened upon an orphanage full of children living in incomprehensible conditions and had returned  home and started The Miracle Foundation, a nonprofit which raises money and recruits sponsors to help support the home. I began volunteering for the organization and sponsored a child, and Caroline invited me to go to India with a volunteer group. My first visit was in March 2005.

Was the situation what you expected?

Yes and no. When I arrived that first time, I assumed all the kids there were orphans in the true sense of the word – their parents had died. Instead I was shocked by how many of them had been “orphaned” by poverty; their parents had left them at the Miracle Foundation home because they were too poor to feed them, which in some ways seemed an even greater tragedy. I wondered when each of them had stopped wanting to go back home, or if they ever had. Afterward, there was simply no way to go on with my life afterwards as if they did not exist.

I had gone expecting it to be a sad place, an emotionally wrenching experience with these parentless young people. But those expectations had been turned on their head. Yes, there were stories behind each one of these children – many of them painful and tragic. Yet the man who ran the orphanage, and the house mothers, had made the kids their own in a community of sharing and acceptance. They were poor in wealth but not in spirit; limited in resources but not in joy and laughter. They gave me a complete unconditional love, for nothing more than showing up.

This kind of journey isn’t for everybody… is it?

Probably not. The specific type of trip I took with The Miracle Foundation, the volunteer trip to the children’s homes, is not the same as a sight-seeing vacation.

India is definitely a complete culture shock for someone who’s never been there, especially if you haven’t traveled in a developing country before. The poverty and hardship is stark and in your face. At times, quite honestly, I just wanted to look away and say I’d had enough. But the suffering remains whether we choose to look or not. They do not go away simply because we decide that to be a witness to them, to say I care about your story, is too difficult for us.

But still, like I said before, the moment you meet these kids, that all goes away. I have been on four different trips with all kinds of different people, some of whom love India and some who barely tolerate it, yet every single one of them fell in love with these kids and had the time of their life.  It’s amazing how this experience hooks you – I sometimes tease Caroline Boudreaux about putting something in the water. But the truth is, we go thinking about giving something back, and in the end it’s us who end up getting something amazing out of it. We are the ones who get rescued.

I guess sometimes it seems hopeless. There are so many children who need help. What do you think?

The truth is, each person can create incredible impact with even small actions. It’s a ripple effect, and I have seen it happen over and over, so many times I can’t even count them. Most of us could never sell all our belongings and go work in the trenches in India, but that doesn’t mean we should think, then, that we can’t do anything at all.

If you can change the course of the life of ONE person – still, that one person’s life is different and better because you impacted it.  I think that’s worth it. Don’t focus on the big picture, just focus on what you are passionate about, what you want to do. For me, I can’t constantly think about the 25 million kids in India who live in orphanages or on the streets – I can only think about the one who is in front of me at that moment.

What do you hope to accomplish with the book?

My sole purpose in writing the book was to give these millions of children a voice that could be heard by others in the world who, I was convinced, would be as moved by their plights as I was. And so, the main thing I hope to accomplish is awareness – followed by action. Some kind of action. I think the key is to discover what you are passionate about, what you have genuine feelings and caring about – and then do something about that issue. But just do something.

To learn more about the book, go to Seale’s website or purchase one from The Miracle Foundation. Note that for all books purchased through The Miracle Foundation, all proceeds are donated to them.

As far as I know, there is no parade for mothers. Fine.

But this Sunday there will be a parade for dads… and grandfathers and uncles, too. The River City Youth Foundation will host its 9th Annual Father’s Parade and Festival this Sunday, with the parade started at Mendez Middle School and ending at River City Youth Foundation where the other festivities will take place.

This is such a cute idea. There’ll be son/daughter/father competitions with prizes (top prize is $500); free barbeque, free snowcones, a writing contest for the kids, and a ”mom’s beauty area.” (This last one intrigues me.)

Here’s the info:

11:15 Line up for parade. Anyone can join.

12:00 Parade starts

12:30 BBQ and Festival begin (shuttle provided from RCYF to Mendez parking lot)

4:00 Event ends

Register by email to RCYFPadres@gmail.com or call 512-440-1111.

###

River City Youth Foundation is a home-grown nonprofit that serves what is probably the poorest neighborhood in Austin, Dove Springs. The statistics about Dove Springs are sobering, and you can only guess what it’s doing to the kids in that neighborhood.

Through the many people that have shared its vision, River City Youth Foundation has been able to give low-income, high-risk youth the opportunities and infrastructure to break the mindset of poverty, illiteracy and crime in their communities.

By attending the Father’s event this Sunday, you’ll show RCYF some support and learn a little more about the challenges of living in Dove Springs.

I grew up in the shadow of that big American Indian chief statue on NW Loop 410 in San Antonio, the one that sits on the Red McCombs car dealership, so I’ve known the name Red McCombs all my life. For a while, I thought he was an Indian chief.

I was able to meet him this past weekend (he is not, BTW, and Indian chief) and the emotional and inspiring YMBL Sunshine Camps grand opening celebration. McCombs donated about $1 million toward that project, which opens next week to about 70 at-risk Austin kids with high leadership potential.

(There’s a concert tonight to benefit the camp tonight at Umlauf Sculpture Gardens. Tickets $10 for teens, and $25-$75 for adults. Kids under 12 are FREE. It’s from 6 -9 pm. Great place to take kids, see sculpture, have some wine/beer/appetizers… consider.)

ANYWAY, doing what it is that I do, I interviewed him. He’s got such a great voice and presence (he was one of the best car salesman in the country, remember?) that video was the best medium.

And he did not disappoint:

It seems like there are opportunities to support local charities in just about everything you do. Here’s another example.

Anyone like tequila? From May 4-8, Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant on San Jacinto is donating a percentage of the day’s bar profits to five selected charities (one each night).

Monday, May 4: A Legacy of Giving, 5-7:30pm
Tuesday, May 5: Austin Sunshine Camps, 5-7:30pm
Wednesday, May 6: Lance Armstrong Foundation, 5-7:30pm
Thursday, May 7: The Austin Theatre Alliance, 5-7:30pm
Friday, May 8: Red Cross of Central Texas, 5-7:30pm

Wow. Great cross-section of local charities there. So let me get this straight:

Q. Is this the first time Rio Grande’s done someting like this?
A. Yes, this is the first annual Rio Grande Philanthropy Week.

Q. It’s a nice mix – kids, health, basic needs… how were the charities selected?
A. Rio Grande wanted support a mix of organizations that do so much for the Austin community.

Q. How much does Rio Grande hope to raise in total for all charities this week?
A. The amount they raise will really depend on how many people come out each night to support the charities. Groups like the Austin Theatre Alliance are pushing out to their members of more than 20,000. So it goes without saying, the more visibility we raise for this event, the more Rio Grande will be able to contribute.

You heard ‘em, folks. It’s reason enough for me to make Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant Mother’s Day Date Night Headquarters. And I GUESS I’ll have to have A DRINK or two. It’s for a good cause, right?

I don’t know if this is how she was supposed to do it, if it was planned this way, or if she just decided to send a quick and casual email to about 60 people asking for help. But I’m telling you, it made me click on the “donate” link and send them $20. And I’m broke.

Here’s what I got:

As a supporter of the The Cipher program in the past, thank you!!! I’m emailing to encourage you to help provide the teens in the program a good, hot evening meal. They meet twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays through May and the meal gets their meetings off to a good, energetic start. My job is to help Shannon by coordinating the donation and delivery of meals on those days.

We have MANY dates open in April and May and I would encourage you to either provide the food for an evening or make a donation to The Cipher so that we can continue to provide them with a hot, nutrious meal. For several of the kids, these are about the only good, healthy meals they’ll get all week.

To make a donation, go here: http://www.thecipheratx.org/donate.asp

To provide & deliver food for a specific date…I have the following dates open. Please choose one and I’ll contact you with details.
APRIL 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 30
MAY 5, 7, 12. 14. 19, 21, 26, 28

Thank you in advance for considering this!

What is it about this email that made me click through?

First, it comes off as very personal – opens with a thanks, multiple exclamation points… (usually, I’m not a fan of the multiple exclamation points but they just work in this context, I think.)

Second, in the email she’s asking for something specific. “We need meals.” Not only that, she adds that sometimes it’s the only nutritious meal these kids get during the week. Wow.

Third, it’s short. Man, I can’t tell you how long those donation requests emails and letters can get. I’m a writer, folks, and I’m telling you: People don’t read. They read the New Yorker, they don’t read your emails, I don’t care who you are. It’s all scanning. Don’t take it personally; I don’t -  you’re not even reading this right now!!!!

Sure, it’s missing details. I’d like to know how many kids I might be feeding or where I might be delivering the meals and at what time. But after this email, that all seems like trivial information. This woman has asked me to help get these kids fed. I immediately think, “I’m a mom, that’s what I do. What do you need?”

It helps that I’ve seen The Cipher in action and that we’ve interviewed its founder in the magazine. But even if this weren’t the case, I’d probably donate or at least forward the email to friends. I know not every nonprofit can make requests on this small scale, not for the amount of donations they need to fulfill their missions. But making this donation was just too easy, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.