Archive for December, 2009

Great People, doing great things!

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Subjects covering music, social media tools and the entertainment business is usually what can be seen on the Cashmere blog.  However, after viewing this 60 Minutes segment, we find it very hard to ignore.

For years the education system has been under major scrutiny – Not enough pay for the educators, tenure to those subpar instructors, elevated teacher-to-student ratio, instructor’s lesson plans too dreary and repetitive…I mean the complaints just go on.  But despite the abominable education most kids are receiving in the United States, Geoffrey Canada, Founder of Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy Charter Schools, has put into action an approach that solves the overly extended education problem by creating a school program for children in New York’s inner city.

“For years, educators have tried and failed to get poor kids from the inner city to do just as well in school as kids from America’s more affluent suburbs. Black kids still routinely score well below white kids on national standardized tests.
But a man named Geoffrey Canada may have figured out a way to close that racial achievement gap. What he’s doing has been called one of the most ambitious social experiments to alleviate poverty of our lifetime. His laboratory is a 97-block neighborhood in Harlem, which he has flooded with a wide array of social, medical and educational services available for free to the 10,000 children who live there. It is called the “Harlem Children’s Zone.”

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The difference between “affluent” kids and “inner-city” kids is this:  While most “affluent” kids have the option to worry about grades, standardized testing and graduation, EVERY “inner-city” child has to fear his/or her life.  On a daily basis, these “inner-city” kids worry about getting shot, raped, jumped, putting food in their mouths and having a roof over their heads…at the end of the day “survival” is the only thing on their minds, which in turn, does not leave much time to focus on their studies.

“So you’re trying to level the playing field between kids here in Harlem and middle class kids in a suburb?” Anderson Cooper asked.

“That’s exactly what we think we have to do,” Canada said. “You know, if you grow up in a community where your schools are inferior, where the sounds of gunshots are a common thing, where you spend your time and energy not thinking about algebra or geometry, but about how not to get beat up, or not to get shot, or not to get raped, when you grow up like that, you don’t have the same opportunity as other children growing up. And we’re trying to change those odds.

According to 60 Minutes, he [Canada] is trying to change those odds on a scale never before attempted. His goal: to break the cycle of poverty in an entire neighborhood by making sure all the kids who live there go to college.  Education opportunities such as Harlem Children’s Zone are few and far between, but it should be these institutions that are celebrated and spotlighted.  This is why we at Cashmere have recognized this of importance and will continue to report on tremendous initiatives like this one.  For more information on Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Academy Charter School, please visit www.hczpromiseacademy.org or www.cbsnews.com

For donation inquiries, please visit: www.hczpromiseacademy.org

Snoop Puts The ‘G’ In GPS

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Media Conglomerate Coming to a Television Near You

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Today, it was announced that Comcast is in talks to take over the entertainment sector at NBC Universal. According to Yahoo Tech!, “The Philly- based company plans to purchase a majority stake in NBC Universal for $13.75 billion, giving the nation’s largest cable TV operator control of the Peacock network, an array of cable channels and a major movie studio.” The channels that Comcast would add to the roster include USA, Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi), Bravo and Spanish-language Telemundo.  Comcast will also be gaining full control of the NBC broadcast network, Universal Pictures and theme parks.

To everyday viewers and connoisseurs of cable television and programming, the deal simply means Universal Pictures’ movies could get to cable faster.  TV shows could appear on mobile phones and other devices faster as viewers will be able to watch programs wherever they want.

For more information on how Comcast’s catapult from company to conglomerate will affect you at home, visit this article http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091203/ap_on_hi_te/us_comcast_nbc