Posts tagged support
Help needy to have a good holiday season
Nov 13th
Boulder County, Colo. – With the holidays approaching, Boulder County programs that work with low-income families are once again reaching out to local residents and businesses in hopes of making the holidays a little brighter for families in need.
These programs are greatly appreciated by the people who participate in them, and Boulder County encourages members of the community to join in the effort to brighten the lives of individuals and families who would otherwise do without over the holiday season.
The following programs help provide basic needs such as groceries and household items for families, seniors and people with disabilities in our community, as well as clothing, toys and games for children:
· The Family-To-Family (F2F) Holiday Program, in its 39th year, serves the county’s low-income and basic needs families and individuals who are clients of the Child Protection, Adolescent, and Adult Protection (elderly and disabled adults) programs. Last year F2F served over 450 families (totaling more than 1,400 individuals).
As the program prepares to turn 40 next year, Family-To-Family is seeking more opportunities to give families the primary voice in decisions affecting their lives. Recognizing that many parents relish the opportunity to purchase presents for their own children, and teens and disabled or elderly adults clients have long preferred the chance to shop for themselves, F2F is asking donors beginning this year to support clients who would prefer to receive gift cards and do the holiday shopping themselves. The program typically seeks a contribution of $75 per participating individual or family member, and donors can use that figure to determine the number of individuals they wish to support. For more information, call 303-441-1050 or email Debbie at dramirez@bouldercounty.org or Lou at lcrnkovich@bouldercounty.org.
· Family Self-Sufficiency’s (FSS) Holiday Gift Sponsor program serves Boulder County families in the Family Self-Sufficiency program who are working to gain education and skills to help them achieve higher wage jobs and better living situations for their families. For the holidays, the highest-need FSS families submit a “wish list” that sponsors can shop from. Donors spend a minimum of $30 and a maximum of $100 for each person in the family. Sponsors purchase items on the list – or, for donors who find that a full family sponsorship is more than they can take on, the program also gratefully accepts cash donations or gift cards (e.g., grocery stores, Target, Wal-Mart) to help with groceries and basic household needs, as well as cash donations to assist with basic needs for FSS families throughout the year. To sponsor or make a donation for an FSS family, contact Katie Frye at 303-441-3923 or kfrye@bouldercounty.org.
· Boulder County Housing Authority Senior Services assists low-income seniors. Many of these seniors have expensive medications and other high medical costs, and buying groceries and other basic needs can be difficult. Gift cards to local grocery or discount retail stores go a long way in helping a senior make ends meet during the holidays. For more information, contact Kris at kdurso@bouldercounty.org at 303-519-7152.
· The Casa de la Esperanza Learning Center provides academic support and enrichment opportunities for over 30 families on-site plus another dozen families in a nearby neighborhood of south Longmont. These families are seasonal farm workers employed in the local dairies, farms and greenhouses. As the growing season comes to a close in the cold months just before the holidays, the Casa de la Esperanza families face economic difficulties and must endure winter on a very tight budget. Donations of school supplies, winter clothing, grocery gift cards, and presents for children are greatly appreciated. If you can help in any way, please contact Carlota Loya-Hernandez, Program Coordinator at 303-678-6220 or cloya@bouldercounty.org.
Annual donors to these worthwhile holiday giving programs include individuals, families, sports teams, clubs and hobbyist groups, faith-based organizations and local corporations and businesses. Donations are tax deductible, and contributions of any size are gratefully welcomed.
7 CU engineering students among the Big Brains
Nov 13th
among 20 national engineering leaders
Seven University of Colorado Boulder aerospace engineering students are among 20 top students who will be recognized Nov. 14 with a new national award honoring tomorrow’s engineering leaders sponsored by Penton’s Aviation Week in partnership with Raytheon.
The “Twenty20s” awards honor the academic achievements and leadership of top engineering, math, science and technology students.
The CU-Boulder award winners are doctoral candidates Paul Anderson, Brad Cheetham, Jake Gamsky, Erin Griggs and Dan Lubey, and B.S./M.S. students Kirstyn Johnson and Mike Lotto. The awards will be presented during Aviation Week’s annual Aerospace & Defense Programs Conference in Phoenix.
“I am delighted with the national recognition our outstanding aerospace undergraduate and graduate students are receiving from Aviation Week,” said Penina Axelrad, chair of CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. “All of them bring incredible passion and impressive technical skills to their classwork and to an extensive portfolio of professional and extracurricular activities. Each is on a fast track to making remarkable contributions in fields like space exploration and satellite-based Earth observations.”
The high-profile projects and research portfolios of the seven students cover a wide range of critical issues facing the field of aerospace engineering today.
Working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration, Cheetham has been developing and co-teaching graduate-level courses on commercial spaceflight, while Gamsky is helping to design the Dream Chaser commercial spacecraft as an intern at Sierra Nevada Corp. and conducting research on human spaceflight life-support technology.
Griggs is developing a next-generation Global Positioning System receiver for spacecraft. Anderson is working to model geostationary space debris and Lubey is studying space situational awareness to detect and model satellite maneuvers.
In their senior year of the undergraduate portion of their concurrent B.S./M.S. degrees, Lotto and Johnson both hold perfect 4.0 grade-point averages and have completed internship or co-op experiences with NASA. They are working together as part of a capstone senior project design team that is developing a dust impact monitor capable of measuring the size of tiny cosmic dust particles near the surface of the sun.
In addition to their outstanding academic achievements, the students were selected for their leadership and civic involvement outside of the classroom. All are active in professional and student societies and volunteer their time to help others. From encouraging K-12 outreach to volunteering with Habitat for Humanity to mentoring and tutoring fellow classmates, the seven students all make service a priority.
“For most of us this is more than a career, it’s a passion,” said Cheetham, who three years ago launched the “We Want Our Future” educational initiative to inspire American youth and strengthen their interest in math and science.
Anderson, who mentors undergraduates and participates in outreach to younger students, agreed. “We’re fostering the next generation of engineers here,” he said. “We want to inspire them to continue the great things we’re doing in aerospace.”
Six of the seven students will attend the awards ceremony in Phoenix along with former NASA astronaut and aerospace engineering sciences faculty member Joe Tanner.
Tanner and Axelrad said the Twenty20s winners are representative of the high caliber of many of the students in CU-Boulder’s aerospace program, which is considered one of the best in the nation.
“Our department is proud to count these seven among our students and we look forward to watching their careers take flight,” says Axelrad. “We will continue to create opportunities for students like these to learn from our exceptional faculty, collaborate in hands-on projects with talented peers and industry partners, and engage in cutting-edge aerospace research.”
For more information on CU-Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences visit http://www.colorado.edu/aerospace/.
-CU-
ESA: So much accomplished, so much to do
Nov 13th
BC1 news editor
The federal Endangered Species turns 40 years old this year. It was signed into law by Richard (“I am not a crook”) Nixon, in 1973, likely as a desperation move to garner public support for his collapsing presidency. The significance of this law is that, for the first time in history federal law recognized there are limits to economic development —i.e. when a species would be driven to extinction as a result of the activities. That, my friends, is a Line in the Sand.
The ESA has been incredibly effective, thanks almost entirely to the Center for Biological Diversity, which was instrumental in protecting more than 1,400 species and 200 million acres of critical habitat in the U.S. alone. Ninety nine percent of species protected by the ESA have been saved from extinction. The CBD uses law and science to make its case, bucking the trend of most major environmental groups, which rarely sue any longer for any reason. This happened because BIG OIL has undue influence in the environmental community by having representatives on the environmental groups’ board of directors and by funding these groups with the tacit understanding that the groups won’t oppose projects beneficial to oil and gas profits. Nevertheless, current trends are threatening to reverse the situation. Global climate change could be the most damaging threat in history, with profound implications for both animals and human beings. There are others.
To honor the ESA, Boulder Channel 1 will run a series of articles about the most serious of these threats.
By the Center for Biological Diversity
FRACKING THREATENS AMERICA’S AIR, WATER AND CLIMATE It poisons our water, contaminates our air and emits massive greenhouse gas pollution. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves blasting huge volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals and sand deep into the earth to fracture rock formations and release oil and natural gas. This extreme form of energy production endangers our health and wildlands.
A fracking boom can transform an area almost overnight, creating massive new environmental and social problems. Fracking development is intensifying in Pennsylvania, Texas and North Dakota and moving into new areas, like California and Nevada. Will your state be fracked next? But as fracking spreads across America, communities are fighting back — and the Center for Biological Diversity is working to ban this growing threat. POLLUTING AIR AND WATER, KILLING WILDLIFE
About 25 percent of fracking chemicals could cause cancer, scientists say. Others harm the skin or reproductive system. Evidence is mounting throughout the country that these chemicals — as well as methane released by fracking — are making their way into aquifers and drinking water. Fracking can release dangerous petroleum hydrocarbons, including benzene and xylene. It also increases ground-level ozone levels, raising people’s risk of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Wildlife is also in danger. Fish die when fracking fluid contaminates streams and rivers. Birds are poisoned by chemicals in wastewater ponds. And the intense industrial development accompanying fracking pushes imperiled animals out of wild areas they need to survive. In California, for example, more than 100 endangered and threatened species live in the counties where fracking is set to expand. DISRUPTING
OUR CLIMATE Fracking releases large amounts of methane, a dangerously potent greenhouse gas. Fracked shale gas wells, for example, may have methane leakage rates as high as 7.9 percent, which would make such natural gas worse for the climate than coal. But fracking also threatens our climate in another way. To prevent catastrophic climate change, we must leave about 80 percent of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Fracking takes us in the opposite direction, opening up vast new deposits of fossil fuels. If the fracking boom continues, oil and gas companies will light the fuse on a carbon bomb that will shatter efforts to avert climate chaos. BAN FRACKING NOW To protect our environment from fracking, we must prohibit this inherently dangerous technique. That’s why the Center supports fracking bans and moratoriums at the local, state and national levels. Learn about fracking and please take action against it today.