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In a recent U.S. Dept. of Education report, an estimated 13% of Travis County residents are illiterate. http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/index.aspx This appalling finding is another reason United Way is collaborating with E3 and others in our region, to ensure that children have the opportunity to start school healthy, happy and ready to learn with our Success By 6 program. If we don’t get involved to turn these findings around, Central Texas will not maintain its prosperity, companies will move away and find the educated, literate workforce elsewhere. Get involved with our efforts around education, Give, Advocate or Volunteer. Be part of the solution. Be a part of the change you want to see.Live United!

Check out this short clip on the News 8 Austin website about how youth in Central Texas are learning valuable skills and growing garden goods at the same time. Youth Launch, the agency that sponsors the program, is one of our funded agencies and Gifts In Kind partners. Click here to watch the video. Do you have a van in good condition you were thinking about donating? YouthLaunch is seeking a 15 passenger van for use in their Urban Roots program. They are in need of a van to transport youth to and from our organic farm and produce to and from farmers’ markets and hunger relief agencies. Click here to contact them (choose “Vehicles” to see the entire Gifts In Kind ad).

As mentioned before, education really is one of the main ways anyone can get out, or stay out of poverty. Check out this graphic from the U.S. Department of Labor. It really sums it all up. Basically the more educated you are, the greater your earnings potential and income over your lifetime will be and the less likely you will be unemployed. Note: Data are 2007 annual averages for persons age 25 and over. Earnings are for full-time wage and salary workers. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey.

I was able to get a second interview with a blast from the past, my friend Enrique Romo who works at UT’s Diversity & Community Engagement Dept & is a current participant in the HAL program. Here’s what he had to say….

Okay, sorry for the delay. I promise I wasn’t sleeping. I was eating and had some meetings. Yeah, can you believe it? I get no breaks around here! So how do people slip into the darkness aka poverty? What causes poverty? A major reason is wages have not kept pace with the rising cost of housing, healthcare, childcare, and education in our area. Consequently, many hardworking families struggle to earn enough income to support themselves and their families. United Way is a member of The Basic Needs Coalition of Central Texas. They produce a great fact sheet outlining these causes, I’ve summarized a few here; Low wages – In Travis County, almost 22% of households make less than $25,000 per year. Much of employment is in service jobs that pay low wages and have few, if any, benefits. Education opportunities – Employment and income earning potential are directly related to education attainment. A high school diploma increases a person’s lifetime earnings potential by $1 million; a college degree increases that to $2 million. Illness and Healthcare Costs – A 2005 Harvard study concluded that illness and medical bills caused half of the 1.45 million personal bankruptcies in 2001. Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More that ¾’s were insured at the start of the bankrupting process. A common procedure such as an appendectomy and associated hospital bills, can easily cost in excess of $30,000. Remember, Texas also has the highest rate of uninsured in the whole […]

Target recently presented a grant to United Way Capital Area at its Night of Giving. The grant will help United Way Capital Area’s Success By 6 Books to Partners project provide age-appropriate books to children aged 0 – 6 being served by the agencies that are part of the Home Visitation Collaboration. L to R: Ramiro Munoz (Target), Marchele Lee (United Way Capital Area), Chondra Barton (Target), Robert Werner (Target) The Success By 6 Home Visitation Collaboration is a group of organizations targeting high-risk families with infants and toddlers who are overburdened due to health, social, and /or economic conditions, and who do not have access to other effective early childhood interventions such as Early Head Start or high-quality child care.

Early Childhood Advocacy Update–while the event below has passed, there are still plenty of opportunities to get involved with Early Childhood Advocacy in Central Texas: Attend Advocacy 101, A Lunch with Mark Strama Learn more about the United Way Success By 6 Program here. Get “hands on” with a Child Care Facilities Improvement Project here. Here is a great opportunity to become an Advocate in our community for Early Childhood education. United Way’s Sue Carpenter, Director, Success By 6, will present Incredible Years, a presentation on Early Childhood best practices. The Mayor’s Mental Health Task Force Monitoring Committee (MMHTFMC) is hosting a public forum, “A Mentally Healthy Community Starts with its Children,” focusing on Early Childhood Interventions (ECI) and its preventative impact on mental health disorders. The forum will be held Oct. 3, 2008 from 10 a.m. until noon at Austin City Hall’s City Council Chambers, with a welcoming address from Council Member Lee Lefingwell, followed by guest speaker Libby Doggett, Ph.D., Executive Director of Pre-K Now.

A big thank you to Mark Curry and Wells Fargo for helping spread the word about our early childhood education program, Success By 6 . With their generosity, they have underwritten the cost to run a new Success By 6 TV advertisement on KVUE, the ABC affiliate, from mid August through mid September. Check out Mark in the spot below or catch it yourself around the Ellen, Oprah, News at 5/6 and other prime time shows. Many thanks again Mark and Wells Fargo!!

“Good Morning Breakthrough” rang the cheers of 90 middle school students at 8:40 in the morning in Calhoun Auditorium on the University of Texas campus. While most students spend their summer at a camp, in the park or in front of the television set, these students are attending a summer enrichment program to help keep them on track to college. Staff from United Way Capital Area attended Breakthrough Austin’s Visitors’ Day today, and got to witness firsthand their amazing work. Breakthrough Austin is the providing agency for three of our Youth Education programs, Project Connect, School Success and Summer Bridge. Each day, the students meet at Littlefield Fountain on the UT campus for breakfast, then walk over to Calhoun Hall for attendance. Attendance is not just a mundane activity requiring minimal participation, it as an opportunity for students to be acknowledged and affirmed with a special place in their community acknowledged and affirmed with a special place in their community. This year marked an important milestone for Breakthrough Austin, their first group of sixth graders graduated from high school and they received acceptances to 44 colleges and universities. For Breakthrough students, the process of determining how to get to college is a difficult one, as most of their parents have never been to college. All of the students apply to be in Breakthrough’s summer program, so they come ready and excited to have a unique learning experience that will prepare them for college. For many Austin area students, graduating from […]

We’re midway through our 6 month “Tools for Community Change” workshops and this month we want to inform you how we want to change community conditions through the areas of Education, Financial Stability and Health as well as how we’re going to engage 100,000 people in this change. Interested? Come check it out… Community Innovation Workshops – Presented by the University of Texas, United Way Capital Area and Hands On Central Texas. Changing Community Conditions United Way’s purpose is to engage and unite the community to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to succeed and advance the common good. Come find out how United Way plans to change community conditions through the areas of education, health and financial stability, and to create opportunities for individuals, families and neighborhoods to succeed. Thursday, July 24, 2008 6:00-7:30pm United Way Offices: 2000 E. MLK Jr. Blvd, Austin, TX 78702 To register for this session, go to http://www.handsoncentraltexas.org/ Thanks, Mando Director, Hands On Central Texas