Harlem program singled out as model, By Robin Shulman, August 2, 2009, Washington Post: “On a recent Saturday morning in Harlem, a few dozen pregnant women in a parenting class made resolutions for life after the baby’s birth. Avoid cursing. Provide healthy foods. Develop a sleeping routine for the infant. “I want my son to be perfect,” said Naquell Williams, 22, who is unemployed and pregnant with a child whose father is in prison. This is the starting point for the Harlem Children’s Zone: the womb. Geoffrey Canada’s nonprofit has created a web of programs that begin before birth, end with college graduation and reach almost every child growing up in 97 blocks carved out of the struggling central Harlem neighborhood…”
Day: August 3, 2009
Extension and Exhaustion of Unemployment Insurance Benefits
Prolonged aid to unemployed is running out, By Erik Eckholm, August 1, 2009, New York Times: “Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution. Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid…”
Stimulus Funding and Weatherization – Indiana
Weatherization: Feds leave state out in the cold, By Mary Beth Schneider, August 2, 2009, Indianapolis Star: “Homeowners in some states, including Ohio, already are getting new furnaces and their houses insulated, thanks to federal stimulus dollars. But not in Indiana. No homeowner here has received a penny from Indiana’s $131 million share of federal weatherization funds. The federal government has only ‘conditionally’ awarded Indiana its funding — meaning none of it, including nearly $53 million this year, can be put to use…”