New York Times—A Free Legal Clinic That Opens When Class Is Over By Paul Engleman
Soon after Dennis Kass started teaching history at a small high school in Little Village four years ago, he put his law degree to use, dispensing free legal advice to students and their families after school. That modest beginning has evolved into the Chicago Law and Education Foundation, a free clinic that has now expanded to eight additional city high schools. Read the entire article.
Wall Street Journal—Two Years After Quake, Haiti Remains in Distress By Ingrid Arnesen
Two years after an earthquake killed an untold number of Haitians, half a million people still live in squalid tent cities and rubble remains where it fell in this ruined capital. That has left many here now blaming not the quake, but a different culprit for the country's woes: the Haitian government. Read the entire article.
Today we feature the Chicago Law & Education Foundation. One of our good acquaintances is involved with this foundation. Check out this information from it’s website.
CLEF mission is to operate and provide long-term support for legal clinics and legal educational initiatives in Chicago Public Schools. CLEF's long-term goal is to establish free legal clinics and relevant education programming in all Chicago Public High Schools, with access to those programs for their respective feeder elementary schools. Read more from the organization’s website.
In the past we have blogged about how we don’t have cable, and I must admit I wished I could watch some games. Well, now, I can, and I still don't have cable. Little did we know that we can receive a bunch of ESPN games via our regular internet connection. We have watched bowl games and our home Illini team so far. Join in. You don’t need cable!
New York Times-- Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension By Sabrina Taverisa
Conflict between rich and poor now eclipses racial strain and friction between immigrants and the native-born as the greatest source of tension in American society, according to a survey released Wednesday. About two-thirds of Americans now believe there are “strong conflicts” between rich and poor in the United States, a survey by the Pew Research Center found, a sign that the message of income inequality brandished by the Occupy Wall Street movement and pressed by Democrats may be seeping into the national consciousness. Read the entire article.
New York Times—Melinda Gates Answers Your Questions By The Editors
Ms. Gates, of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, recently returned from a three-day trip to Bangladesh. She, along with Nick, agreed to answer readers’ questions about development issues focusing on that part of the world. Here is the second of three installments.
COSIMA BARLETT: My comments do not in any way detract from the profound admiration I have for you and your Foundation but a simple question: why do you not concentrate more of your efforts on American children who are so lacking in so many important areas as statistics now show?
MELINDA: When Bill and I started the foundation we decided to tackle the largest sources of inequity, both at home and abroad. Globally, the greatest disparity we saw was in health. Children in poor countries were dying of diseases like measles that were either preventable or that nobody was working to address. We felt like our resources could make a huge difference in the lives of poor families. Read more questions and answers.
Today we feature Dental Care for Children. Here is some information from its website.
There are numerous programs in the underdeveloped world that take care of basic health, education, clean water and so forth. Without doubt, they are truly needed. But there are very few organizations that take care of the other most basic need of underprivileged kids – their teeth. Pain, decay, impactions, infections… all combine to make a child’s life uncomfortable at best, unbearable at worst. Read more from its website.
Last year we were lusting over all of the places we heard people were going over the university’s spring break. What was wrong with us? Why didn’t we go somewhere? We did know though that we weren’t going anywhere because we were trying to consciously live and give. This year we show that we do not live like paupers. We saw that a hotel was running an $89 a night deal in Chicago so we decided to start out spring break with a weekend trip to Chicago. We’re taking the train including going at the cheapest times and using our AAA discount. With the cost to board the dog, our total cost for two nights out on the town (without food) is $350. A little trip and a little guilt.
New York Times-- A Poverty Solution That Starts With a Hug By Nicholas D. Kristof
PERHAPS the most widespread peril children face isn’t guns, swimming pools or speeding cars. Rather, scientists are suggesting that it may be “toxic stress” early in life, or even before birth. This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics is issuing a landmark warning that this toxic stress can harm children for life. Read the entire article.
New York Times—A Quake-Scarred Nation Tries a Rural Road to Recovery By Randal C. Archibold
For months after the earthquake that struck the capital, Manel Laurore pulled shattered bodies from his neighbors’ homes, hunkered in fetid refugee camps and scrounged for food and water. Today, his main worries are when his bean, corn and plantain crops will come in. “I will never go back to Port-au-Prince,” said Mr. Laurore, 32, a former shopkeeper who was sifting soil to plant a tomato garden, referring to the capital. “It left a strong pain inside. Here the work is hard, but you live in total peace.” Read the entire article.
Today we feature Child Find of America. Here’s some information from its website.
Child Find was founded in 1980 by the mother of a missing child in upstate New York, when there was limited law enforcement response to missing children and no laws about parental/family abduction. Little was understood about the devastation child abduction has on the child. Child Find has played a significant role in the creation of laws that now make all forms of child abduction a crime; in the establishment of a national clearinghouse to assist law enforcement in their investigations, in the establishment of May 25th as National Missing Children's Day and in the increased media attention given to missing children cases. Read more.
This past weekend we ate out and drank at home. We met our friends at a new reasonable place ($15 for two of us with tip) just down the street, and then, we invited our friends over for drinks. Good food, good fellowship, and a lot of cheap laughs...
Gazette—Illinois poverty reaches highest point in decades, study reveals By Jennifer Clary
Poverty in Illinois is higher now than it has been in decades. It grew 16% during the period from just before the recession to after the recession, according to the recent Report on Illinois Poverty released by the Social Impact Research Center at the South Loop-based Heartland Alliance. Post-recession has seen no gains for struggling families. Read the entire article.
