Busy, busy weekend at CFP nonprofits. So … what interests you?

Volunteering!

All day Saturday, the Literacy Council of Northern Virginia will be training teaching volunteers for the ESOL Learning Centers or Family Learning Program; email volunteers@lcnv.org to sign up. Or from 10:00 AM to noon, join the “Weeding Divas” of Earth Sangha for a round of invasive plant removal at Marie Butler Leven Preserve; a team from George Mason University’s Circle K International will also be working away at Rutherford Park in Fairfax.

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(We’re doubling up on the news-front this week. Comment away with any additions.)

Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’ (New York Times): “Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year [...] and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it [...] Joblessness was the main culprit pushing more Americans into poverty, economists said. Last year, about 48 million people ages 18 to 64 did not work even one week out of the year, up from 45 million in 2009.” And when it comes to the jobs bill, could these bleak figures make a case for or against it? Read all »

Obama’s Jobs Bill: Ready to Take a Chance Again? (Nonprofit Quarterly): Wondering “which parts of the president’s plan are most relevant to nonprofits, and what effect are they likely to have on the sector?” NPQ’s intricate piece walks through both the President’s “track record on nonprofits” and six points of interest to nonprofits in the jobs bill (#4: “Are there any parts of the American Jobs Act that appear to take advantage of the unique skill sets and missions of nonprofits?”), and concludes that “the American Jobs Act must do a better job than ARRA did in involving and including nonprofits of all stripes in its implementation.”

How do we make cities greener? Start by growing smarter?(Greater Greater Washington): Continuing on the green cities theme of yesterday’s article, check out this post on GGW: “a fixed set of people is more sustainable the fewer acres they collectively use. At one point, some viewed the ideal sustainable lifestyle as one where a small bubble of trees and grass surrounds each household. But instead, that just means a lot of heating and cooling energy is wasted to that bubble, and we spend far more energy moving among them [...] The way we grow in the future is likely to be the most significant factor in how sustainable a region we have for generations to come.”

Washington economy grows 3.6% (Washington Business Journal): “Washington’s gross domestic product grew 3.6 percent in 2010, reaching $425.2 billion, the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the nation. Washington also ranks as the third-fastest growing metropolitan economy” behind Boston and New York. For some additional positive news, metropolitan economies across the country grew in size by 2.5% in the past year, whereas they declined by that same percentage in the previous year.

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “How To Build A Greener City” by Michael Totty:

Urban populations around the world are expected to soar in the next 20 years, to five billion from more than three billion today. If the current rate of urbanization holds steady, cities will account for nearly three-quarters of the world’s energy demand by 2030 [...] So, cities aren’t going to have be made a little greener; they’re going to have to be rethought.

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The people rest on land and weather, on time and the changing winds.
The people have come far and can look back and say,
‘We will go farther yet.’ [...]

The people, yes.
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas. [...]

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:
‘Where to? what next?’

– Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes, 1936

DC Youth Orchestra (at Eastern Senior High School, 1700 East Capitol Street NE)

A full day of rehearsals, masterclasses, and sectionals for advanced students on Saturday at 8:30 AM. You can sign up right here. Musicians will perform a free concert for the public at 7:00 PM the same day.

New to music? From 9:00 to noon, visit the Open House & Petting Zoo — meet the instruments and try them out.

The Posse Foundation (at Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, 701 Mississippi Avenue SE)

The Posse Foundation identifies, recruits, and trains incredible young leaders from urban public high schools and sends them in “posses” to top colleges. Volunteer to help out with Posse’s first stage of Dynamic Assessment Process (DAP) and identify young people who have outstanding leadership qualities on Saturday at 8:30 AM. Call Andres Maldonado at (202 ) 347-7071 x221 for more info.

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CFP welcomes … Marti Worshtil, Executive Director of Prince George’s Child Resource Center, which offers a wide variety of services that foster stable child care programs, help working families, and nurture home environments where children can thrive. The Family Support Center is the hub, where family-friendly programs reach over 18,000 people a year.

1. What was your most interesting recent project, initiative, partnership, or event?

The Resource Center celebrated our 20th anniversary with a Family Festival at FedEx field. Even with torrential rain and thunder one hour before the event and horrendous heat and humidity after the storm … we had a blast! Almost 1,300 attend and danced the Cha Cha slide with the County Executive, climbed Calleva’s rock wall, skated, painted, broadcast news on CTV and learned all about County services.

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How Sept. 11 changed charity in America (CNN Money): “Americans donated a record-breaking $2.8 billion to help the victims of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy [...] Four years later, after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans and the Deep South, Americans pulled out their checkbooks once again. Donations to help the survivors of Katrina outpaced September 11 charity by 90%.” According to Dr. Una Osili, director of research for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, an incredible 66% of households in the US donated to survivors of Katrina and September 11. Is this a truly new phenomenon? Or have the developments in technology in this decade simply enabled more Americans to act upon their desires to give?

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Let’s catch a glimpse into this past summer at … The Reading Connection, which opens up the world of books to at-risk families by bringing literacy services and programs into emergency shelters, domestic violence safe houses, long-term shelters, and transitional housing.

TRC’s We Are Readers aims to conquer “summer slump,” the well documented phenomenon wherein low-income children lose as much as 2.6 months of reading skill over the summer. High school soccer players, a zookeeper from the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, author Mary Quattlebaum, firefighters, a chef and police officers all visited during the summer and read aloud with the kids.

The awesome results? 46 children read a total of 13,775 minutes, or about 300 minutes per child. Check it out!

The history of the United States is in vital respects the history of labor. Free men and women, working for a better life for themselves and their children, settled a continent, built a society, and created and diffused an abundance hitherto unknown to history. Free men and women, affirming their dignity as individuals and asserting their rights as human beings, developed a philosophy of democratic liberty which holds out hope for oppressed peoples across the world.

Yet our achievements, notable as they are, must not distract us from the things we have yet to achieve. If satisfaction with the status quo had been the American way, we would still be 13 small colonies straggling along the Atlantic coast. I urge all Americans, on this Labor Day, to consider what we can do as individuals and as a nation to move speedily ahead [...]

– President John F. Kennedy, Labor Day Statement, September 2, 1963

All American workers, brain workers and manual workers alike, and all the rest of us whose well-being depends on theirs, know that our needs are one in building an orderly economic democracy in which all can profit and in which all can be secure [...] There is no cleavage between white collar workers and manual workers, between artists and artisans, musicians and mechanics, lawyers and accountants and architects and miners.

Tomorrow, Labor Day, belongs to all of us. [...] The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom — a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.

– President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, September 6, 1936