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ILI Weekly Updates - July/Aug '06 |
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Back to Weekly Updates
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From ILI Project Coordinator Bob Kovar |
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July
14, 2006 |
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Here’s what’s been going on this week in ILI-
§ We’re back and getting ready for the beginning of our 9th school year! Hope you all had a good summer and are ready for school to be starting again soon.
§ On Monday we met with LUHS administration to discuss a number of items. The first was Freshman Orientation day coming up Friday Sept.1. For the second year, ILI will be involved for part of the day helping as students and their homeroom teachers revisit the school forest where we started their Transition last May as 8th graders. We will also be leading a “scavenger hunt” around the high school in the morning helping students find different parts of the building and surrounds through a fun activity. We talked about logistics and other details. The second item on our agenda was the After School ILI Wednesday program and our efforts to put a syllabus together so students can receive credit for attending. We’re not quite there yet but LUHS said that if we have something to them by their Sept. 27 curriculum committee meeting that we might be able to get it approved by end of semester and possibly have the credits be retroactive to the beginning of this school year. We agreed that it would be no problem for us to have this in writing for them by that time. We’re very excited about this possibility! The third item on our agenda was the After School learning Center (tutoring) that Craig has been facilitating the last few years. We’re hoping to recruit more teachers and open the Center on Monday-Thursday afterschool from 3:45-5:45. We discussed having all subjects available on each day if possible. This is a great partnership between ILI and LUHS with the outcome being an improved effort at increasing academics for students, but also the opportunity for teachers to work one-on-one with students, something we are always working to find more ways to encourage. There are some new teachers at LUHS this year who seem interested in helping so we’re very excited about this as well. The next item we discussed was ILI staff working with the Extended Resources West program in Lac du Flambeau. There are two new teachers who will be leading this year and we’re hoping to connect with them to provide some value-added curriculum, primarily piloting a “tribal track” program for students that would teach students about history, tribal government, law, management and other skills and understanding to be leaders in their communities. The idea is to make it relevant-and we will work on curriculum that can address the standards as well as bring a living breathing curriculum to these students that is hands-on and relevant. We will work with the new teachers to try and pilot this with them on some scale beginning this fall. Finally we talked about the Wednesday activity period ILI sessions-we will once again be doing these each Wednesday alternating freshman/sophomore one week with junior/senior the next week.
§ ILI staff worked this week on the curriculum for the After School program for credit as well as finalizing plans for Freshman Orientation day. We’re making great progress!
§ Bob went to Hayward on Thursday to attend a focus group discussion with David Wilson, chancellor of UW Colleges and Extension. He is trying to see if they are adequately serving diverse audiences across the state. It was a very good discussion and there was quite a bit of advocating going on for our “up north” voices to be heard and for resources to shift our way. The discussion was far ranging but we all left feeling like we had been heard and that he was very willing to work with us in the future. Lots of possibilities here!
§ We received a denial letter from the Norman Foundation in New York.
§ We received $2000 this week from the HJ Hagge Foundation in Wausau-thank you to them for generosity and willingness to continue supporting ILI. They have supported us for some years now and have actually increased their donation as our program has grown-something we really appreciate, Thank you!
§ We completed our final report to the Wisconsin Community Fund-they have supported us for quite a few years as well. We will probably try and re-apply again to them this fall.
§ We worked on and completed our 2005-06 Annual Evaluation Report-this is a 67 page report on all of our evaluations from last year: student, teacher and parent annual attitudinal surveys, student and teacher session evals, comments from parents, teachers and students, pictures and more! We will be using this document to help show folks in the community what ILI accomplishes-its impressive and very positive! We’ll try and get it up on the website soon in the future.
§ ILI In the Media: Nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
§ None for now…whew!
§ ILI/LUHS Transition:
§ Next Transition Day is the first day of school for LUHS freshman.
§ ILI Volunteers:
§ Thanks everyone for helping out!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: If any of you would like to join “Friends of ILI” just let us know and we’ll send you the materials!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: We are currently in the process of building our 2006-08 budget.
§ FOR MORE INFORMATION!! Please check the ILI website at www.ilileadership.org. The calendar can be viewed at http://www.ilileadership.org/calendars/main_calendar.html.
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Here’s what’s been going on this week in ILI-
§ Things are finally slowing down for the first time all summer! We are back to working on the upcoming school year and closing out our last fiscal year, as well as budget work. This will be the last weekly update for the next 2 weeks as vacation time is finally here! ILI staff will be working on Transition Day (Freshman orientation on September 1) as well as scope and sequence of 2006-07 LUHS ILI program over the next few weeks.
§ We received $3000 this week from the Association of American Indian Affairs to help offset our expenses for the UW La Crosse Camp we just held. We were one of 9 organizations nationally to receive these funds this year and we are extremely appreciative-thanks to these folks who actually successfully worked to increase their budget so they could fund us at this level after receiving our application-a nice honor!
§ We received our last payment from Wisconsin Positive Youth Development (Alliance for Wisconsin Youth) for $2500 this week. This was part of a $10,000 grant we received last year. Thanks to this group for their continued support of ILI!
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Here’s what’s been going on this week in ILI-
§ This week was our ILI/UW La Crosse Summer Camp-and by all accounts it was a great success! Some of the highlights: We had a really diverse group of 39 campers middle school-high school aged students (Hmong, American Indian, Hispanic, African American, Muslim, European), 12 similarly diverse college aged counselors, 3 UW LaCrosse staff and 5 ILI staff. We started on Monday by welcoming the group at the LdF school gym where we did a brief orientation and some introductory ILI group activities to set the stage for the week. We had puzzle pieces that formed pictures of the family leaders for the week and each student had one piece-they had to work together to find out who their leaders were. The group then set up camp in the LdF Powwow grounds for the next two nights. On Monday night we had a traditional Ojibwe feast in the LdF multi-purpose building that was cooked by Bertha King and her family-it was outstanding, everyone loved it! After dinner Grandma Marge Greene and Tinker Schuman honored the group with a beautiful song of thanks that was followed by an evening of stories and teachings by Robin Carufel and Ernie. Robin does an incredible job of blending knowledge, humor, facts, humor, sharing his family histories, did we say humor-he really had this group of young people totally engaged. He and Ernie then used a drum and demonstrated songs (with the help of students from Mole Lake) and different dances that the group all participated in- everyone participated with enthusiasm and that room was incredibly full of life, learning and smiles. On Tuesday after a great breakfast at the Casino, we went to the LUHS school forest for a traditional ILI session-the groups worked ion their “families” on different elements in the forest as well as some large group activities led by Ernie. ILI volunteers came by to help serve lunch to the group and after lunch we caravanned to Trout Lake and Cathedral Pines for an afternoon of swimming-it was incredibly hot and wonderful to be in the lake! Tuesday night we ate again in the multi-purpose building where Ernie led the students in some wonderful traditional games after dinner. With lightening and thunder all around that evening, everyone was completely engaged once again playing, laughing and having a great time learning and playing these games. Wednesday morning we left for the Presque Isle River on Lake Superior for the day. We spent the day hiking, playing, exploring the river and shoreline of the Lake. None of these students had ever seen Lake Superior-it helped that the weather was absolutely perfect and the water temps were incredibly warm! Wednesday night evening we drove to Lake of the Clouds area of the Porkies, set up camp, swam some more and then had an evening hike to the top of the Lake of the Clouds overlook-where we tried calling wolves-we weren’t sure if we were answered by distant campers or real wolves-but we had fun nonetheless. Thursday morning we were once again on the overlook waiting for the sun to rise and then spent the rest of the morning swimming, breaking camp and our final closure led by Ernie on the beach next to an incredibly calm Lake Superior. Of course much more happened than we can write about here-especially some great interactions between people-lots of cultural sharing, new stories, languages-all very powerful experiences. Ernie, Lori, Stef and Alice did an amazing job-thanks to them for sharing their great skills and passion with this group-it was really wonderful.
§ We received $4500 from the Lake of the Torches Charity Golf Classic that was held in June-a huge thanks to them for their continued support of ILI-they are great advocates for many charities in the community and we are truly fortunate to benefit from their generous philanthropy.
§ ILI In the Media: Nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
§ None for now…whew!
§ ILI/LUHS Transition:
§ Next Transition Day is the first day of school for LUHS freshman.
§ ILI Volunteers:
§ Thanks everyone for helping out!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: If any of you would like to join “Friends of ILI” just let us know and we’ll send you the materials!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: We are currently in the process of building our 2006-08 budget.
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Here’s what’s been going on this week in ILI-
§ We are now pretty much done with all of the planning and logistics for the upcoming UW La Crosse/ILI Summer Camp which starts on Monday-a lot of hard work has gone into all the little details and we’re ready for a fantastic few days next week and a new chapter in ILI programming. A big thanks to our community partners who are helping make this possible including the Lac du Flambeau Tribe for the use of the powwow grounds for two nights of camping, the Lac du Flambeau Grade School for so graciously allowing us the use of their gym and cafeteria and Lakeland Union High School for allowing us the use of the school forest for a day. Also, a huge thanks to ILI staff who have put many hours and heart into designing the curriculum, activities and making to many of the arrangements-it should be great!
§ We found out today that our grant application to the Association of American Indian Affairs for support of our upcoming UW-La Crosse camp was accepted and they are funding us with $3000 to help cover all of our planning costs-they didn’t think they had any money left but they really liked our application and found some extra-thank you to them!
§ We continue to work on our fiscal year-end numbers, we had to dip into our ILI Emergency Reserve Fund this year to the tune of about $15,500 to cover the shortfall between our expenses and income. We have been working on building this fund up over the past 8 years to give us the cushion we need in years like this when we come up short on income at the end. ILI is still a very difficult kind of program to find funding for, we work very hard at it and we are also very creative about how we go about funding our staff and programs. There is only one staff person funded full time through ILI (the curriculum coordinator position) and the rest of the full-time staff are funded about ½ through other grants and programs that we are associated with-so even though we have 4 full-time staff its still the financial equivalent of 2.5 FTE that actually comes out of ILI funds. We served an awful lot of students this past year (over 700!) and had a big impact on the community, with most of our funding going to directly providing programs for youth. Our 2006-07 year is off to a great start financially and we have plans to work in new ways to find more resources so we can continue what we are doing. If any of you would like to see our financial records they are of course open for review and they will be published in our annual Friends of ILI Newsletter that we hope to have out in early September this year.
§ Speaking of new ways to help ILI, Alice has found a new internet search engine that will actually benefit ILI each time you use it! Its called GoodSearch and each time you search the web using this search engine it will generate approximately $0.01 for ILI. Thus a charity or school with 1,000 supporters searching twice a day would receive approximately $7,300 per year. A smaller organization with 100 supporters searching twice a day would earn an estimated $730. The sky is the limit, though – the more people search, the more ILI will earn! We encourage everyone interested to download the GoodSearch toolbar at http://www.goodsearch.com/toolbar/ Check it out!!
§ ILI In the Media: Nothing to report this week.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
§ Monday July 24-Thursday July 27: UW-LaCrosse ILI Camp
§ ILI/LUHS Transition:
§ Next Transition Day is the first day of school for LUHS freshman.
§ ILI Volunteers:
§ Thanks everyone for helping out!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: If any of you would like to join “Friends of ILI” just let us know and we’ll send you the materials!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: We are currently in the process of building our 2006-08 budget.
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative
Here’s what’s been going on this week in ILI-
§ We’ve been mainly working on the planning, curriculum and logistics for the upcoming UW-La Crosse/ILI Summer Camp. A lot of work has gone into this and it really should be an excellent event. It will be taking place on July 24-27. We will be spending the first 2 night camping at the LdF powwow grounds and the third night camping up in the Porkies. On Monday, we will be having a traditional feast provided by Bertha King and also a presentation by Robin Carufel-both of which should be fantastic! We have activities planned in the LUHS school forest on Tuesday and on Wednesday we will be up along the shores of Lake Superior. On Thursday ILI staff went down to La Crosse to meet with their staff as a pre-planning activity. We spent the day getting acquainted and going over our schedule. This is a terrific group of college students (and staff!) and we’re really looking forward to what is going to be a great few days up here!
§ We completed work on a grant application to the Association of American Indian Affairs for support of our upcoming UW-La Crosse camp-we’re still waiting to hear if we will receive any funding.
§ We received $300 two weeks ago from UW Madison for the interns we had here during the month of May. We really enjoy this partnership-we both seem to really get a lot out of this arrangement-thanks UW Waisman Center!
§ We received our first dollars for our new fiscal year which started July 1: $20,000 from LUHS school. We will continue to provide programming during the wednesday activity sessions, as well as after school ILI sessions, after school tutoring and transition activities. Craig and Ernie will continue to be housed in the school and are available to help students on an individual basis as well as staff. We’re very excited about the new school year and thank LUHS for their continued support and faith in our program!
§ On Tuesday Bob met with the LdF Tribal Council to review our request for funding for the upcoming school year. The meeting went very well and our request amount was approved unanimously-the next step is for it to be approved through a final vote in their budget process, so we should know in the near future. Our thanks to the LdF Tribal Council for their great support over the years, we greatly appreciate it-chi miigwetch!
§ ILI In the Media: There were two articles regarding the grant ILI recently gave to LUHS for the after school learning center: one in today’s :ake;and Times and one in this weeks FYI Newspaper out of Presque Isle.
§ Upcoming ILI sessions and events:
§ Monday July 24-Thursday July 27: UW-LaCrosse ILI Camp
§ ILI/LUHS Transition:
§ Next Transition Day is the first day of school for LUHS freshman.
§ ILI Volunteers:
§ Thanks everyone for helping out!
§ The “Friends of ILI” membership drive: If any of you would like to join “Friends of ILI” just let us know and we’ll send you the materials!
§ ILI Annual Fundraising: We are currently in the process of building our 2006-08 budget.
Bob Kovar, Project Director
Intercultural Leadership Initiative