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News and Upcoming Events
THE RESULTS ARE IN
Durham’s youth have spoken, and results of Kids Voting 2007 Elections show they tend to favor the same leaders as our community’s adult voters. Read the full press release.
YOUTH ACTION TRAINING A SUCCESS!
Kids Voting Durham and Durham CAN hosted a Youth Action Training on August 3rd at El Centro Hispano. The event was featured on the front page of the Herald Sun (see below).
KV-D WINS TRIANGLE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION GRANT
Kids Voting Durham is pleased to announce that KV-D, along with KV-Wake, has received a grant from the Triangle Community Foundation’s Community Grantmaking Program to support in-school voting and civic education programs this November.
Support for this project has been provided by the Goodmon Fund of Triangle Community Foundation; the Peoples Security Insurance Endowment Fund of Triangle Community Foundation; the Central Carolina Bank Fund of Triangle Community Foundation; and Alice F. Eure Charitable Endowment Fund of Triangle Community Foundation.
Founded in 1983, Triangle Community Foundation connects philanthropic resources with community needs, creates opportunity for enlightened change and encourages philanthropy as a way of life. The Foundation manages nearly 600 funds, ranging in size from $10,000 to $10 million, primarily for the benefit of Wake, Durham, Orange and Chatham counties in North Carolina. With $120 million in assets, Triangle Community Foundation gave more than $11.3 million in grants to nonprofits, schools and community efforts last year, raising the total value of grants made since the Foundation’s inception to nearly $100 million. Additional information about Triangle Community Foundation and can be found at www.trianglecf.org.
Youths ready to effect change
By Carolyn Rickard, The Herald-Sun
August 3, 2007 11:14 pm
When 12-year-old William Lopez and his mom walked into El Centro Hispano on Friday, all they intended to do was register William for school.
But William ended up staying at the center all day -- and came out knowing precisely how to be a community activist.
He was one of about 50 young people attending Youth Action Training, an afternoon-long workshop on creating change in the community.
"I said right away when I heard about it I'd go," William said. "I wanted to get some experience before I go to school."
Sponsored by Durham Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods, or CAN, and Kids Voting Durham, the training gathered students from various churches and youth groups, of all races and from various schools.
After an introduction, they gathered in groups of five or six, working with a facilitator to study various community problems.
Bob Pleasants sat with a group of five teens. They talked about teens in Los Angeles who successfully persuaded school district officials to build a new high school to ease overcrowding.
"The more you talk about an issue and raise awareness, the more people you might get to support you," Pleasants said. "If you have a problem in the community, the best thing you can do is let people know about it..."
Organizers hope the event seeds a group of local youths to work with CAN, said Nadeen Bir, director of the Youth in Action program at El Centro.
While CAN -- a local offshoot of a national movement -- draws many adults to work on issues that affect them, few teens are involved, she said.
"We really hope to get some kids fired up about issues in the community," Bir said. "We need more youth involvement."
Earlier, Bir had facilitated a group of participants as they discussed students in Oakland, Calif., who worked on ending racism in their school. They surveyed students and found that 16 percent experienced racism in the Oakland schools. Nearly half of all black students experienced racism.
"They weren't surprised," Bir noted to her group. "They had experienced the racism. They had seen the police officers in their schools."
While Friday's event was the first such training, organizers said they hoped to make it an ongoing event.
Charquita Parker said she chose to attend after learning about the training through YO: Durham, a program for at-risk teens she is involved in. She said she initially came hoping to meet new people, but ended up learning a lot.
"Working with a group will get something done," Parker, 15, said. "It works better than working alone."
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-870503.cfm
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