New Foundations Shines at National Conference
March 30, 2006
Written by Jeannie O’Sullivan, Northeast Times
For the community-minded students at the New Foundations Charter School, not even the looming Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test was enough to keep them away from the biggest event of the year — the 17th annual National Service Learning Conference, held March 22 to 25. As most Philadelphia students got their rest before the PSSA test, scheduled for that weekend, the 17 New Foundations students focused on the service-learning workshops they’d been selected to lead at the four-day event held downtown at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
"I think Katrina and tsunami victims are the ones who need us most," eighth-grader Eddie Portley said when asked where his service-learning expertise would have the most impact.
Portley spent the four days doing usher duties, a job that was harder than it sounded since he had to do it costumed like an old-fashioned town crier. He was joined by classmates Carolyn Donnelly, the hostess for the conference’s closing activities on Saturday, and Elisha McGovern, who led the Project Clothesline workshop, a shirt-making activity focusing on child-abuse awareness.
Camera-toting eighth-graders Kevin Dobbins and Amanda Ast captured the entire conference with video equipment provided by the event’s hosting organization, the National Youth Leadership Council. The film, which they named Welcome to Philadelphia, was shown on the last day of the conference.
The National Youth Leadership Council, a 23-year-old youth and adult service training and development organization in St. Paul, Minn., convenes annually at the event, which this year featured ceremonies honoring numerous service campaigns, more than 200 service-learning workshops, an HIV/AIDS forum and addresses by service leaders who ran the gamut from Holocaust survivors and historians to environmentalists and human-rights activists.
The event draws educators, students, volunteers, legislators and leaders from youth and service organizations and councils nationwide.
The honorees for 2006 included former Pennsylvania senator (1991-1994) Harris Wofford, recipient of the William James National Service Lifetime Achievement Award, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, winner of the Alec Dickson Service Leader Award. Townsend, the eldest daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and his wife Ethel, is founder of the Maryland Student Service Alliance.
On the second night of the conference, a crowd of about 3,000 packed into the National Constitution Center to hear a particularly charismatic keynote speaker — William Jefferson Clinton, who served as the nation’s president from 1992 to 2000.
He commended Wofford for his service as Pennsylvania’s secretary of labor and industry and later as CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Clinton also acknowledged Wofford’s influence on the creation of AmeriCorps and other service programs as well as his role as a 1950s civil-rights proponent who went on to become associate director of the Peace Corps.
Clinton noted that the first of America’s 63,000 existing non-profits was started in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, who established the first volunteer fire company.
He emphasized unity as a key to effective service.
"We can’t escape each other," Clinton told the crowd. "It’s clear we have to trade this independence for an integrated group effort."
The private sector has a better chance to help now more than ever, Clinton continued, thanks in part to the work of non-profits and innovations like the Internet, which has made possible the immediate transfer of money to those who need it most, such as victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Jim Kielsmeier, president and CEO of the National Youth Leadership Conference, praised what had been Clinton’s service-heavy presidential campaign emphasizing AmeriCorps, service learning and senior service, a three-prong focus he said "raised non-military civic service to the highest level since the New Deal."
"Bill Clinton once said, ‘There is nothing wrong that can’t be fixed with what is right in America,’" Kielsmeier said. "Service by young people is what is right in America."
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell also spoke. He lauded initiatives like AmeriCorps and City Year, a nationwide youth service corps active in Philadelphia schools, and conceded that "every young person should spend two years in a service-learning project."
Over the past four years, New Foundations students have traveled to Minneapolis, Minn., Orlando, Fla., and Long Beach, Calif., to participate in the National Service Learning Conference, which is held at a different location each year. Back at home —or rather, at the Philadelphia Marriott, where they lodged for the four days — the seasoned young travelers found they really had come full circle during this year’s event.
"It’s cooler to be in Philly because it feels like we have a bigger part. I mean, you can do a park cleanup and you think you’re not helping much, but having all the people here makes you feel united," said Donnelly, the New Foundations student, whose involvement in service activities earned her a scholarship to Little Flower High School next year. In the past year, New Foundations service projects like Project HAM (Have a Meal), YODA (Youth Organized for Disaster Action) and the school’s Multicultural Youth Exchange have had students preparing meals for the hungry, assembling care packages for disaster victims and collecting recyclables to raise money for disease research and other charities. Currently, a group of students is painting a wall mural for an elementary school in Mississippi. ••
Reporter Jeannie O’Sullivan can be reached at 215-354-3038 or osullivanj@phillynews.com
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March 30, 2006
Written by Jeannie O’Sullivan, Northeast Times
For the community-minded students at the New Foundations Charter School, not even the looming Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test was enough to keep them away from the biggest event of the year — the 17th annual National Service Learning Conference, held March 22 to 25. As most Philadelphia students got their rest before the PSSA test, scheduled for that weekend, the 17 New Foundations students focused on the service-learning workshops they’d been selected to lead at the four-day event held downtown at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
"I think Katrina and tsunami victims are the ones who need us most," eighth-grader Eddie Portley said when asked where his service-learning expertise would have the most impact.
Portley spent the four days doing usher duties, a job that was harder than it sounded since he had to do it costumed like an old-fashioned town crier. He was joined by classmates Carolyn Donnelly, the hostess for the conference’s closing activities on Saturday, and Elisha McGovern, who led the Project Clothesline workshop, a shirt-making activity focusing on child-abuse awareness.
Camera-toting eighth-graders Kevin Dobbins and Amanda Ast captured the entire conference with video equipment provided by the event’s hosting organization, the National Youth Leadership Council. The film, which they named Welcome to Philadelphia, was shown on the last day of the conference.
The National Youth Leadership Council, a 23-year-old youth and adult service training and development organization in St. Paul, Minn., convenes annually at the event, which this year featured ceremonies honoring numerous service campaigns, more than 200 service-learning workshops, an HIV/AIDS forum and addresses by service leaders who ran the gamut from Holocaust survivors and historians to environmentalists and human-rights activists.
The event draws educators, students, volunteers, legislators and leaders from youth and service organizations and councils nationwide.
The honorees for 2006 included former Pennsylvania senator (1991-1994) Harris Wofford, recipient of the William James National Service Lifetime Achievement Award, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, winner of the Alec Dickson Service Leader Award. Townsend, the eldest daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and his wife Ethel, is founder of the Maryland Student Service Alliance.
On the second night of the conference, a crowd of about 3,000 packed into the National Constitution Center to hear a particularly charismatic keynote speaker — William Jefferson Clinton, who served as the nation’s president from 1992 to 2000.
He commended Wofford for his service as Pennsylvania’s secretary of labor and industry and later as CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Clinton also acknowledged Wofford’s influence on the creation of AmeriCorps and other service programs as well as his role as a 1950s civil-rights proponent who went on to become associate director of the Peace Corps.
Clinton noted that the first of America’s 63,000 existing non-profits was started in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin, who established the first volunteer fire company.
He emphasized unity as a key to effective service.
"We can’t escape each other," Clinton told the crowd. "It’s clear we have to trade this independence for an integrated group effort."
The private sector has a better chance to help now more than ever, Clinton continued, thanks in part to the work of non-profits and innovations like the Internet, which has made possible the immediate transfer of money to those who need it most, such as victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Jim Kielsmeier, president and CEO of the National Youth Leadership Conference, praised what had been Clinton’s service-heavy presidential campaign emphasizing AmeriCorps, service learning and senior service, a three-prong focus he said "raised non-military civic service to the highest level since the New Deal."
"Bill Clinton once said, ‘There is nothing wrong that can’t be fixed with what is right in America,’" Kielsmeier said. "Service by young people is what is right in America."
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell also spoke. He lauded initiatives like AmeriCorps and City Year, a nationwide youth service corps active in Philadelphia schools, and conceded that "every young person should spend two years in a service-learning project."
Over the past four years, New Foundations students have traveled to Minneapolis, Minn., Orlando, Fla., and Long Beach, Calif., to participate in the National Service Learning Conference, which is held at a different location each year. Back at home —or rather, at the Philadelphia Marriott, where they lodged for the four days — the seasoned young travelers found they really had come full circle during this year’s event.
"It’s cooler to be in Philly because it feels like we have a bigger part. I mean, you can do a park cleanup and you think you’re not helping much, but having all the people here makes you feel united," said Donnelly, the New Foundations student, whose involvement in service activities earned her a scholarship to Little Flower High School next year. In the past year, New Foundations service projects like Project HAM (Have a Meal), YODA (Youth Organized for Disaster Action) and the school’s Multicultural Youth Exchange have had students preparing meals for the hungry, assembling care packages for disaster victims and collecting recyclables to raise money for disease research and other charities. Currently, a group of students is painting a wall mural for an elementary school in Mississippi. ••
Reporter Jeannie O’Sullivan can be reached at 215-354-3038 or osullivanj@phillynews.com
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