Welcome to Wednesday, Greater Washington! What’s new this week?
Venture Philanthropy Partners invests $1.4M in youth programs — the Washington Business Journal reported on Monday that the philanthropic investment organization “will invest a total of $1.4 million over two years in two Washington area youth programs.” And those two youth programs also happen to be … Catalogue non-profits! According to the VPP press release, Metro TeenAIDS and Urban Alliance are now partners “in youthCONNECT, an integrated effort to address the multifaceted challenges facing low-income youth, ages 14-24, in the National Capital Region … a goal of expanding to provide 20,000 at-risk youth over the next five years.” Very exciting!
DC backsliding in efforts to fight AIDS, study finds — the Washington Post highlighted some deeply troubling news yesterday: “For the first time in several years, the District is falling behind in its efforts to combat AIDS.” Among priorities for the new administration is “ensuring that the District strengthens HIV and sexual education within public schools and charter schools;” Catalogue non-profit DC Appleseed “pointed to a lack of leadership by former mayor Adrian M. Fenty at the end of his term and said the city’s grades declined in three other areas: gathering and tracking data on the illness, managing grants to groups that help people with the disease, and its needle exchange program.” (Click here to learn more about Catalogue’s Health & Human Services non-profits in the District)
Arts Ed: An opportunity for arts nonprofits to create shared value? — in her artsJournalblog, Jumper, Diane Ragsdale consider the sometimes-thorny creation of education programs at performing arts non-profits: “I often hear organizations protest that arts education is the role of government, not arts non-profits. Perhaps, but nonprofits were created to fill societal needs that government either cannot fill, or chooses not to fill. Who better than nonprofit arts groups to step in and invest in developing quality resources to meet the societal need to potentially strengthen themselves while doing so?” What do you think? How could (or should) an arts organization approach education when that is not its central mission?
The Crisis in A Nutshell: Teachers Battle the Budget – yesterday, this Week in Education linked to the New Yorker’s intriguing train of quotations, all centered on the struggle over funding for public education. While that struggle can hardly be captured in sound bites, the quotations do cover many sides and make for an intriguing read. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s words were certainly apt: “There is a right way and wrong way to cut spending, and the most important guiding principle I can offer is to minimize the negative impact on students.” Which one jumps out to you and why?
DC Water Town Hall Tour Begins — as DCist posted yesterday evening, the question of water “affects everyone in town, and plenty of residents probably have good questions about what’s going on with the water supply. And the good news is that DC Water is embarking on a ward-by-ward tour answer such questions: the first installment of a city-wide town hall series in which General Manager George S. Hawkins and DC Water reps will share information about water quality, construction projects and customer service will take place in Ward 3.” You can check when the tour will stop in your Ward here; looks like mine is up next!
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