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Around Town: December 15-16

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Have a good mid-December weekend, Greater Washington! And consider spending some time with a local nonprofit:

We Are Family Senior Outreach Network (at Kelsey Apartments, 3322 14th Street NW)

On Saturday from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM, volunteers will help assemble and deliver grocery bags to low-income seniors in Columbia Heights; cars are not required, but are certainly helpful. Learn more here.

Dance Place (3225 8th Street NE)

Usher in the holiday season with Dance Place’s annual Kwanzaa Celebration on Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday at 4:00 PM. Gather family and friends and join Coyaba Academy, Coyaba Dance Theater, and special guests.

Joy of Motion Dance Center (5207 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC)

Don’t miss the fall Studio to Stage Performance Class Showcase, featuring choreography by Joy Of Motion’s talented faculty, on Saturday at 8:00 PM and Sunday at 7:00 PM. Tickets this way!

The Child and Family Network Centers (at The Morrison House, 116 South Alfred Street, Alexandria, VA) *To Be Rescheduled.

Come to the Morrison House in Old Town Alexandria for Tea with Santa, as well as children’s activities and photos, and suppor the Child and Family Network Centers at the same time.

DC Youth Orchestra Program (at Eastern High School Auditorium, 1700 E. Capitol Street NE)

DC Youth Orchestra Program’s top two orchestras — the Youth Orchestra and Junior Orchestra — perform holiday favorites, including selections from the “Nutcracker Suite” and Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Learn more right here.

Writing to Dream

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by Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator

Some students grow up dreaming to write; others use writing as a way to express their dreams, desires, and inner most thoughts.

The young authors of Young Playwrights’ Theater perhaps do both, and now have a new platform from which to share their words with the world. This winter, Young Playwrights’ Theater published its first book, Write to Dream — a collection of plays written by YPT students, as well as information on YPT’s arts education program and curriculum.

The plays written by YPT students represent an artistic achievement worthy of publication in and of themselves, but the additional information on curriculum and assessment adds an additional level of justification and value to YPT’s work. Plays range in topic from satires on capitalism (written by a fifth grader!) to magnetic superheroes, inter-racial romance and gang violence.

Continue reading →

In The News …

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Amid change, affordable housing revitalizes parts of Ward 5 (Greater Greater Washington): “As development along Rhode Island Avenue and New York Avenue take shape over the next few years, much of DC’s Ward 5 will see major changes. But can these changes draw new residents without displacing existing ones? A key element will be to preserve and expand the availability of affordable housing.” This past week, Housing For All Campaign hosted a town hall meeting focused on the options, both small and extensive, for accessible housing in Ward 5. “Ward 5 will continue to benefit from the investments in affordable housing that build vibrant spaces for current and future District residents.”

Online Giving Streak Continues With 13% Rise Last Week (Chronicle of Philanthropy): “Online giving to 8,700 charities rose 13.3 percent last week when compared with the same days last year, according to Network for Good [...] What’s more, the number of donations grew nearly 7 percent.” The week of Thanksgiving, online giving actually rose an impressive 61 percent; and after Thanksgiving, giving rose by 42 percent — primarily as a result of Giving Tuesday. The Chronicle has created an interactive graphic that compares 2012 giving with 2011 giving on a day-by-day basis; check it out here.

Obesity in Young Is Seen as Falling in Several Cities (New York Times: Health): “After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines. The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Nebraska.” While the the drops are small (5 percent or less in Philadelphia and Los Angeles), experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.” However, others point out that “the current declines, concentrated among higher income, mostly white populations, are still not benefiting many minority children.”

Essential Parts

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From “Under new principal, Savoy Elementary shows what art can teach” in this weekend’s Washington Post:

“ Ma and Damian Woetzel, a former principal with the New York City Ballet, spent more than an hour in a classroom with students, dancing, playing music and rehearsing pieces that they later performed on stage for the whole school.

It was one small part of Principal Patrick Pope’s broader effort to use the arts to transform Savoy, where poverty is pervasive and fewer than one-fifth of students are proficient in math and reading.

As Pope sees it, song, dance, theater and visual arts aren’t tacked-on extras — they’re essential parts of creating a school where students and teachers thrive. Students agree.”

Students in grades three through five now have “twice as much art and music time” as they did previously. But Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, explains, “We are having a national conversation about how to fix our schools, and the arts were not in that conversation.”

Needless to say, the prevailing question is: how can we expand that conversation?

Learn more about Catalogue’s Performing, Literary, and Visual Arts nonprofits, many of which work directly with our schools, right here.

Around Town: December 8-9

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Loop a local nonprofit into your weekend plans …

We Are Family Senior Outreach Network (Metropolitan Comm. Church, 474 Ridge Street NW)

Volunteer in pairs or groups to visit isolated, low-income seniors in their homes. Meet up at 10:00 AM on Saturday for a brief orientation before the visits begin.

Joseph’s House (1730 Lanier Place NW)

Take a one-hour “walk-and-talk” breakfast tour of Joseph’s House, which offers compassionate end-of-life care for homeless individuals with AIDS and cancer, on Saturday at 10:30 AM.

Computer CORE (3846 King Street, Alexandria, VA)

In this 4-hour workshop on Saturday at noon, students will learn the capabilities of , plus try their hand at being a business user and building basic applications.

Continue reading →

Inspiration to Action

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By Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator

On Monday night, the Catalogue celebrated its 10th anniversary (or birthday, as many like to call it). Surrounded by a crowd of nearly 600 friends, family, nonprofits, supporters, and other advocates of the Catalogue initiative, we celebrated the work of the 325 nonprofits that are part of the Catalogue community.

Thank you to all who attended, volunteered, and participated. From the Catalogue Ambassadors, who mixed and mingled with the reception crowd, to the nonprofits who choreographed incredible performances for the stage, to the community supporters who offered their voices in testimonials throughout the performance, we appreciate your support of our work.

To the Catalogue guests and supporters who attended our benefit dinner following those performances, we thank you for your continued commitment to the Catalogue’s movement — and hope that you?ll continue making our dreams a reality for many years to come. We are particularly grateful for the continued support of the Harman Family Foundation and Jane Harman for going above and beyond to inspire others to become a part of our cause.

In The News …

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Commentary: DC Council Should Support Grandparent Caregiver Program (WAMU): “The proposal before the DC Council is a small, but important, change to the Grandparent Caregiver Program, a program that provides financial support to low-income grandparents who are raising their grandchildren,” says Judith Sandalow, the executive director of the Children’s Law Center. At present, the subsidy starts starts only after the child has lived with their grandparents for six months; the proposal would permit the city to waive that requirement and “children who are being removed from their parents and are at risk of entering foster care could immediately go to live with their grandparents.”

Ward 8 parents, teachers challenge DC school closure plan (Washington Post: Schools Insider): “A standing-room only crowd of parents, teachers and activists gathered Tuesday evening at Savoy Elementary School in Southeast Washington to critique and challenge Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s plan to close 20 under-enrolled schools.” Principal concerns included the quality of transitions for students from one school to another and the reinvestment goals for the money saved from closures. “The community meeting was the first of four scheduled over the next week;” the meeting for Wards 1-4 and 6 is coming up tomorrow.

The Risks of Limiting Charitable Deductions (Nonprofit Quarterly): “In his Urban Institute blog, The Government We Deserve, the Tax Policy Center’s Gene Steuerle looks to the past to auger the future of charitable deductions reiterates the argument that limiting charitable deductions will dampen giving, which threatens nonprofit coffers and ultimately hurts those who benefit from programs and services provided by the sector [...] The Wall Street Journal reports that “there is no specific plan to eliminate deductions for charitable giving” in the ongoing haggling over the fiscal cliff. There are, however, proposals to cap overall deductions.” What do you think about a possible cap, and does the amount or the mere existence of it matter more? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

First and Final

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“A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights: no matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.

– Ai Weiwei

Thank you to all those who came to celebrate with us yesterday — and congratulations and welcome to the new Catalogue honorees!