Foundation Journal

A recently concluded Digital Inclusion Summit in Kansas City highlighted the disadvantage residents face not having home broadband Internet access, especially school-age kids and job-seeking adults. As many as 25% of Kansas Citians and 70% of KCMO public school youth don't have home access , and it's good to know a digital inclusion coalition is emerging from the summit to fix this gap. Another fact from the summit shared during a presentation is that the uneven KC broadband landscape is common to other large metroplitan areas, like a report last week showing "some 800,000 New Jersey households with income of $35,000 or less, only 54 percent had broadband Internet access and 45 percent had no connection at all." So large projects to address the digital divide are needed. One such project by the Obama administration [possible NY Times registration required] proposes a solution to a problem "with fewer than half of American public schools connected to high-speed...

Will Allen with Milwaukee-based Growing Power described an astonishing collection of the group's food projects during the "Abolish Food Deserts" presentation at the Anita Gorman Conservation Discovery Center on August 27, 2011. Some have called the efforts of this organization a "good food revolution." Taking the pulse of participants of the event indicate there are a number of food growers and advocates willing to join the movement or re-double efforts here in Kansas City. "Abolish Food Deserts" event in Kansas City on August 27, 2011 (from left): Sasteh Mosley with Green Acres Urban Farm and Research Project, Will Allen with Growing Power, and Ernest Bradley with Lincoln University--St. Louis Urban Impact Center. Local growers, farmers, and advocates could barely contain their enthusiasm after the presentation, asking practical questions about the array of methods and practices described by Allen. Local growers asked about worms, composti...

Murder Factory, a 2010 film by Avila University student Mike Rollen, loosely follows a Kansas City Star newspaper series documenting crime and violence in the 64130 zip code . While the Star series largely focused on the perpertators of crime, the gave voice to the people as victims affected by the homicides. The film shares stories by dozens of community activists, poets, artists, youth, local government officials, and social service agency representatives. Gentlemen of the Roundtable, the group highlighted the most in the film, works to engage former prisoners in job skills training and counseling. Filmmaker Mike Rollen answered questions after the film, stating the standing-room-only screening at the Glenwood Arts Theatre in Overland Park was the premiere showing. There were around 20 people in the theatre who appeared in the film. Rollen appeared on Donna Wolfe's "Urban Connections" show on October 2, 2010 on KKFI-FM 90.1. Rollen gave props to...

One of the most shocking messages of the film "Waiting for Superman" is that poorly-performing schools cause poverty in inner-city neighborhoods, and not the other way around. This stands on end the idea promoted by most social service and government agencies that poverty in inner-city (and rural areas) leads to poor performance at schools. By extension, if  bad schools cause poverty, then "Waiting for Superman" suggests that bad schools are also the cause of high levels of violence, increased levels of hunger and homelessness, and sending jobs overseas. The film concludes that declining performance by students in math and science leads  firms like Microsoft to fill vacant jobs with overseas workers. In other words, US companies have no choice because there are not enough qualified candidates here. US firms apply to fill job openings here in the states through the H1B program. However, a much larger pool of non-US workers are employed through offshore service cont...

The Kansas City Food Policy coalition met today to discuss distribution and production policy as a committee of the group. As meeting facilitator Katherine Kelly with the KC Center for Urban Agriculture indicated in her email announcement, the meeting focused "on policy issues that affect the production, distribution, and access of healthy, local food...which will be taking the lead on figuring out what city/state/federal policy initiatives we could create or get involved in that would help strengthen the local farming and distribution community." As a newcomer to the group interested in their direction and progress, I noted there was a good collection of representatives from many different types of organizations: local growers, CSA distributors, government health educators, financial foundation sponsors, environmental groups, and university agriculture programs. Several individuals addressed jobs for urban core youth and economic development for the same area. The food...