R ot W r« - c i- a n c e = h r . . t y o -t U n i 'J ■ Eugene, R cnu® (p n o P O re g ¿wr ’ r • • n re < 3 or1 ur 9?AO 3 . . À [S Ï BSERVER PORTLA 25<P i '¿¡ • L I •• ■ » • . -, •> u • . ,• ■ ¿ » • in ..j GO «s • - • *4.-U • - - - •V . September 18,1991 "The Eyes and Ears o f The Community" Volumn XXI, Number 38 / r c. V-.t ' V Offers Three Point Plan For Northeast Portland: Executives Loaned to United Way for Fund Raising Jobs For At-Risk Youth, Funds For Housing Renovation AndMinority Business Development Program ■ : I . ‘ • ; i ’ • '. • Linda Jones Companies from throughout the Portland/Vancouver area have loaned 75 employees to United Way o f the C olum bia-W illam ette to help raise th is year’ s campaign goal o f $20.5 m illion . Natural Gas Company, adding tnat men efforts w ill bring in more than 60 per cent o f this year’s total. Local organizations provide people to United W ay fo r 12 weeks w hile con tinuing to pay their regular salaries and expenses. This arrangement allows United W ay to keep adm inistrative and campaign costs to m inim um . In addi tion to the benefits for United Way, there arc bonuses fo r the executives and their companies as well. “ To be effective fund raisers, we provide these executives w ith training in communications and public speak ing; account, project and tim e manage ment; and negotiation and goal-setting skills.” says Ridgley. “ I t ’ s a great learning experience for the employee and a no-cost way fo r companies to further develop their executives.” u a v l U U I A U ll, u i i u v u ▼ ▼ a y u i u iv C olum bia-W illam ette; Lucious Hicks IV , Pacific Power and Lig ht; V ickie Hughes, U.S. Bancorp; Felicia M. Jackson, C ellular One; Linda Jones, T ri-M e t; V icto r L. Norris, Northwest Natural Gas company; V. Marcus O r ange, U.S. Postal Service (participat ing in the Combined Federal Campaign fo r federal employees). Donations raised in this year’ s United W ay campaign w ill help fund nearly 200 human service programs in M ultnom ah, Clackamas and W ashing ton counties in Oregon, and Clark County in Washington. These programs ad dress such needs as positive social de velopment for young people, recrea tional and medical services for the eld erly, and food and shelter fo r homeless families. N IK E , Inc. is beefing up its com m itment to fig h t gangs in Portland by com m itting ten jobs to at-risk lo w -in come youth, N IK E President Richard K. Donahue announced today. Donahue also challenged local employers to match N IK E ’s o ffe r o f jobs fo r kids as a means o f keeping them out o f gangs. A t a press conference held at N IK E ’s factory outlet store on M artin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Donahue also announced that $50,000 in profits from that store w ill be reinvested in two Northeast Portland revitalization projects. The Northeast Com m unity Development Corporation (NEC DC ) and the Oregon Association o f M in o rity Entrepreneurs (O A M E ) w ill each receive $25,000 grants from N IK E as part o f a pledge made in 1984 by the athletic footwear and apparel company to reinvest p ro f its from its store into economic devel opment programs in the Northeast neigh borhoods. Addressing the jobs-for-kids in i tiative, Donahue stated that N IK E w ill make available ten entry-level jobs for at-risk youth over the next eighteen months at the Company’ s various Ore gon facilities, and indicated he w ill seek sim ilar commitments from other iployers in the area. Donahue explained that N IK E ’ s :ision to com m it a block o f jobs to M M M at-risk youth came in response to re cent appeals from com m unity groups tackling gang problems in Northeast Portland. “ Every agency we work with tells us they can draw kids away from gangs, but the key to keeping them out is finding them job s.” he said. ‘ ‘We have to offer these kids hope, and hope means know ing that they’ ll get a chance to do something produc tive w ith their lives,’ ’ Donahue stated. “ I f ten more companies fo llo w our lead, that’ s 100 kids o ff the streets, showing the rest that there are other options besides gang life .” N IK E actively supports several youth programs such as the Portland House o f Umoja and Self-Enhance ment, Inc., and has provided funding to the Portland Organizing Project, which has held a series o f meeting recently to address the youth em ploy ment issue, according to V irgin ia Hensen, N IK E ’ s D irector o f Public A ffairs. Hensen said N IK E has al ready made youth em ploym ent a cor porate objective, hiring ten m inority interns at the Com pany’s Beaverton W orld Campus over the summer, and two students from the Portland School District’s Partnership Program. A youth from the House o f Um oja is also employed fu ll-tim e at N IK E . In addi tion, N IK E is paying the first year’ s W H A T D ID T H EY KN O W A N D W H E N D ID T H E Y K N O W IT? No, we’ re not talking about the Watergate burglars and the Nixon Adm inistra tion. The reference is to the talented and gifted m inority engineering train ees shown above. Such an inquiry should embrace their parents as w ell and, cer tainly, their teachers. This is a very serious matter, for i f you can’ t recognize or identify ta le n t- or even i f you can, you have no effec tive vehicle to nurture and develop it - - then, we arc back to that terrible indictment; “ A mind is a terrible thing to waste. ’ ’ However, it may be d iffic u lt : T H EM SELVE S...” Few o f us have the inform ation retrieval facilities necessary to collect, process, correlate and evaluate the flood o f education-relevant data that over whelms our systems. Consequently, we all tend to depend upon selected (and . • * " 7 ■ ■ ... .* ‘ 4. 4 4 i 4 , ‘ 4 j - * , A t the press conference, Donahue also reiterated the Com pany’s 1984 pledge to reinvest a percentage o f the net profits from its factory outlet store in Northeast Portland economic devel opment programs. Northeast Portland C om m unity Development Corporation, which has received a total o f more than $50,000 in N IK E store profits over the past tw o years, received another grant o f $25,000. The funds w ill go to offset general operating expenses at NECDC. The agency is currently embarking on an “ A d o p t-A -B lo ck” program, in which corporations are being solicited to “ adopt” an entire Northeast neighbor hood block and lead clean-up and res toration efforts fo r all the homes lo cated on i t The Oregon Association o f M in o r ity Entrepreneurs (O AM E) also received a $25,000 grant from N IK E . Part o f those funds w ill go to general operating expenses, and part w ill be used to de velop a short term loan program fo r m inority businesses. O A M E offers business planning and networking re sources to m inority businesses, and has recently published a directory o f local minority and women-owned businesses. Conclusion by P r o f . M c K in l e y B u r t trusted) publications, commentators, reporters, advisors, organizations, per sonal investigations or, even friends and neighbors. N ow , why may this not be enough? Just consider the interac tions I had w ith parents the past week. “ H ow do I balance this “ glad tid ings’ ’ advisory on S A T scores from the Superintendent against this Oregonian reporter’s desultory evaluation? - W ith the state, county and c ity all promising further cuts and fallouts from Proposi tion 5 , 1 can’ t plan or budget anything for my k id ’ s college education. So what i f the ‘ Historic Black Colleges’ are the best bet, I can ’ t even send them as far as said. M Parents Face School to “ see the forest fo r the trees." O r as I like to say, “ to see the dance fo r the dancers” -- and their numbers are overwhelm ing as they sw irl about this academic stage. That is why the title fo r this series, “ Parents Face School Daze.” And why in last week’ s article I gave that example o f initia tive, “ m i nority parents have O R G A N IZ E D salary o f a professional employment recruiter at the Urban League, Hensen Beaverton - Are those ‘ Voucher Plans’ going to further the weakening o f local school bases? And what about all the attacks on the Baseline Essays and other m ulti-cultu ra l materials including m i nority history. Isn’ t this going to make it a ll but impossible to pursue m otiva tion and im age-building in any mean ing fu l manner?” A fte r that round w ith one group o f parents at a neighborhood community center, the very next day I was w ay la id " by several friends whose daugh ters teach in the local district. (Some patience here, please, I am making the cast ‘ hat parents, w ith a little planning and organization on their own, can bring order out o f a perceived chaos). Now, this latter group saw an international significance to “ all what's coming down man. ” A t home one neighbor was hear ing that “ critical funds and resources arc being diverted from ‘black’ pro grams to support other m inorities — not only an increasing number o f Hispan ics whose disabilities need addressing but the same fo r new RUSSIAN IM M I G R AN TS.” (See 9/13 Oregonian ar ticle, “ Public Schools Reflect More Ethnic D iversity” ). The other friend, a former teacher whose considerable talents were con sistently underutilized, had critical com ments about “ the great rush to im port or superimpose Asian or European edu cational systems on a faltering and d is abled American basket case.” He quoted from a recent article o f mine -- a p o lem ic where I had made some rather acid comments about those who w ould ignore the successful efforts o f some Americans to create “ Schools o f E x cellence” under some o f the most adverse o f conditions. Though many o f the advocates for a “ Free Trade Educa tion Z o n e " are sincere, i f naive, about restoring the system to excellence by continued on page 7 ■>