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March 2005
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CAMPUS NEWS |
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| Eagle Endowment Provides New Grant to Help Improve Local Elementary School Well known for their community activism, AU students are up to their usual good deeds. A group comprised mostly of grad students has been selected to receive this year's Martin Luther King grant from the Eagle Endowment for Public and Community Service. “We give a grant every Martin Luther King day for a project that furthers the ideas of Martin Luther King and his mission of building a whole and more inclusive society,” says Emily Cook, CAS/Sociology ’07, an advisory board member for the Eagle Endowment, and the person who oversees their alumni relations and development efforts. This year’s grant winners, led by International Peace and Conflict Resolution major Paul Glick, SIS/MA ’06, were selected from among four other groups competing for the grant. They received $1,000 for their plan to partner with teachers and administrators at the Ruth B. Webb Elementary School in Northeast D.C., and to help provide more library resources, booklists, and curriculum materials for the classroom, says Cook. An underfunded school, Webb has more than 500 students from pre-K through 6th grade. “It’s in a disadvantaged neighborhood...their library’s not open because they don’t have the funding for a librarian,” says Glick, who used to live near the school and thought it would make a great community service project for the Graduate Student Council. “I wanted to get involved. I thought they could use some assistance.” Currently eight or nine AU students volunteer during the day in the classrooms, assisting the teachers with reading or whatever the teachers decide they want them to do, helping the kids with lessons, walking around and offering input during group activities, “and hopefully also being positive role models to the kids,” says Glick, who’s always looking for more volunteers. The Eagle Endowment was established in 2001 to assist student groups in completing community service projects. The classes of 2002, 2003 and 2004 all donated a portion of their senior class gifts to it. Cook is trying to develop a group of alumni, who were involved in service at AU, to make new ties with the Eagle Endowment so current students can partner with them, such as partnering alums who are lawyers with students who want to start a nonprofit. To volunteer, contact Glick at 703-470-1703, or e-mail: glickpaul@hotmail.com. |