Firstly, I believe everything happens for a reason, and therefore we don’t need to regret anything, or wish to go back and change something that we have done.

Secondly, I believe we have the responsibility to contribute to the societies that we are linked to, and are obligated to do everything we can to make the world a better place.

Thirdly, I believe we should not try and fix people around us, but first change ourselves.

Fourthly, I beliebe communication is extremely vital to a person’s success, and therefore we should make use of our time to socialise and meet new people. Through this we will also learn more about ourselves and how we deal with certain social problems.

Fifthly, I believe we all have the right to make our own decisions, and no matter right or wrong, they make up to who we are.

Last but not least, we should all fight for what we want, and even though everything happens for a reason, we also need to provide a reason for the things we want to happen. I don’t think it is correct to think that since everything happens for a reason, then we don’t need to do anything.

“I want to make this club as successful as possible, from being incredibly renown, to giving the general public the realization that alt-fuels are the way to go, to just giving all of us the opportunity to have some fun with cars. That’s what I’m all about, and what I want the club to be about: Fun.”

Coverage Radius (Area)
Cruz FM Community Radio’s coverage area is 63 km radius.

Hours of broadcast:
The station broadcasts 24/7.

(CNN) — By the time Clarence Jones reached him, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was in bad shape.

He was unshaven, dirty and dejected. King had spent several days alone in solitary confinement with no mattress in a filthy dark jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.

“Take this out of here,” King whispered as he grabbed Jones’ belt and stuffed bawled-up newspapers and toilet tissue down his pants.

Jones, King’s lawyer, wondered if King was starting to lose it. He didn’t pay attention to what King had given him — it was just a mish-mash of words and arrows scribbled on bits of paper.

“Not until five days later did I actually read a mimeographed copy of the letter,” says Jones. “To be honest with you, I was more worried about bail money, not what he had written.”

Millions of people have since read what Jones first ignored. As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on Tuesday, the document has become an American epistle. It’s considered a classic defense of civil disobedience.

Were you at MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech? Share your story

But those who see King’s letter as just a tract on nonviolent resistance make the same mistake King’s lawyer made: They miss what’s special about something that’s right in front of their eyes, some King scholars say.

The letter is one of the most intimate snapshots of a King most people don’t know: An angry black man who once hated white people and, according to one scholar, was more dangerous than Malcolm X, a man King admired.

“Before everything else, (the letter) is a black man’s cry of pain, anger and defiance,” says Jonathan Rieder, author of the just-released “Gospel of Freedom,” which looks at the “furious truth teller” revealed in King’s classic letter.

King’s blackness — his fierce racial pride, his distinctively black Christian faith and his belief that most whites were “unconscious racists” — is on full display in his letter, scholars say. The anger that drove King’s letter would become more prominent in the speeches King gave until, literally, his last hours, Rieder says.

UNBELIEVABLE… Yet another atrocious act from capitalistic bullies. This time it’s all thanks to the Olympics which is just one huge economic-political game wittingly covered with sports games played for the sake of dominating other countries in any way possible. What kind of game can we blame? That kind of game that orders you to shove people around, take away their belongings and rob away all forms of hope of living in peace.

I really don’t want to write a lot about this, but this is not a topic anyone would want to sweep under the rug. I just want to shed light on one important issue: Some people’s GREED is consuming the best of us quickly, increasingly, and horrifically. We are mostly aware of this but whatever efforts we are doing are still proving to be frail. It’s obvious that the “officials” are not responding to our calls, our needs, our shout-outs, our wails, our shrieks… The more you scream, the more you lose your voice! What is the solution?

ENOUGH is ENOUGH. Time to take action with our own bare hands. Time to do some humanistic gardening. Time to uproot those nasty people who claim to “lead” us into the “future” but end up in screwing us over time and time again. Time to stop voting for them. Time to bring better people to rule us the right way. Time to change the whole system from its roots. Time to look for another system that deals with all aspects of life in a sense that is fair for everyone regardless of who they are, that helps people live decently, and that ends the misery caused by man-made enslaving rules. Time to throw away the trashy man-made systems (aka capitalism and communism), reduce and revoke chaos, reuse and revive morality, and recycle and reconstruct brains.

Since it’s so obvious that capitalism is not working at all, and communism already proved to be a failure, the only remaining system is the Islamic Khilafah. Seriously speaking and based on overwhelming evidence that cannot be overseen, it’s a holistic system looking at life as a whole, and has a solution for every problem without going against human nature or human instincts. On the contrary to communism, religion is not avoided thus granting people that spiritual comfort they have been looking for since ever. Also, it doesn’t deny people their right of owning property, which goes well with their nature of wanting to claim something of their own. On the contrary to capitalism, money is not the driving force of development as money can squash people’s lives (and souls) for the sake of building materialistic fortunes. Money is one of the many means, not the sole particular end. Also, human dignity is not postponed to a date yet to be determined for the sake of materialistic prosperity such as women don’t need to reveal their physical beauty to sell a pair of glasses (what’s the connection anyway?). The Khilafah is not limited to religion, as it targets all aspects of life and it aims to solve the ails of society from rape to deviated sexual behavior, crimes to embezzlement, family dynamics to work ethics, education to training for real life, empowerment of thinking to usage of proper knowledge for positive and constructive changes in life. The Khilafah is a system based on rules and regulations bestowed from Allah to all human beings (Muslims and non-Muslims). Allah, The Almighty Creator, Who has created us all, knows us better than we know ourselves, knows the past, present and future, shown us the ONLY way which can bring back justice to the world. The ONLY way to do that is to abide by His rules and regulations which He has placed for the betterment of human beings; no matter how you view them, these rules can set things straight.

Islam calls you to something that will bring back light to the darkness that man-made systems have made us live in for so long. “O you who have believed, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life…” Quran 8:24

Watch our video to learn more about what The Good Jobs can do for your company!

►

This makes 25 to 54 year olds (working age voting population) more than a third of the Clifton population.  This group has become increasingly diverse over the years and are the voters, workers, tax payers and future leaders of our city.

Who are we?.

Complete report

Major Finding: One participant described AISD District 3 as the Ellis Island of Austin. Not surprisingly, then, navigating language and cultural diversity was cited as the greatest challenge of these schools.

Other Findings:
• Improve communication with parents. Many need face-to-face communication; others need social media. Word about what children/schools are doing well needs to reach parents, businesses, chambers of commerce, media, and the whole community.
• Provide support for parents. Some need parenting classes or parent encouragement programs. Parents need to be enlisted to help other parents. The family resource centers and parent support specialists were cited as important in helping meet parents’ needs.
• Decrease the turnover of teachers and principals. These children, many of whom are navigating a new world, need stability of sustained leadership in schools.
• Unleash the creativity of the campuses by decreasing control from the central office. Encourage professionalism by giving more responsibility to campuses to meet diverse needs.
• Give more emotional support to children and provide alternatives to jail and suspension for treating truancy that includes cultural sensitivity and prevention of bullying.

Major Finding: Businesses, faith organizations, social/cultural organizations, city recreational entities, and family comprise the community. These community resources need to be strengthened to support children and young people for success in school and in life.

Other Findings:
• Housing issues were a grave community concern. Many children are left unattended in unsafe apartments. Apartments need to be forced to be up to code and encouraged to provide afterschool programs. Safe, affordable housing is needed in District 3.
• More community resources need to be provided for after-school recreational opportunities, especially for middle and high school students.
• Campus advisory committees (CAC) are the school’s linkage to the community, but many schools do not have strong CAC’s. The effectiveness of CAC’s needs to be improved.

In February 2009 Indy Sahota, Founder and President of A Thousand Metres Above (ATMA), who was completing his Master of Science degree in physiology at the time, was selected to join an international team of physicians and scientists on a field research expedition to Ethiopia. Their purpose was to travel to the highlands of Ethiopia and determine how natives in the region had adapted so well to the dangerously low oxygen levels at their resident altitudes. During this expedition Indy and the rest of the research team camped out near villages in the remote East African Mountains while conducting their studies. It was here that Indy saw, firsthand, how lack of development, and subsequent lack of healthcare provision, education, etc, plagued people in these remote, “forgotten places” of the developing world. It was here in the villages of East Africa that the seeds of ATMA were planted.

It was here that Indy saw, firsthand, how lack of development, and subsequent lack of healthcare provision, education, etc, plagued people in these remote, “forgotten places” of the developing world.

The following year Indy travelled to Nepal and, like Ethiopia, he noticed that rural villages and townships, especially the most remote villages deep in the Himalayas where he spent most of his time, were lacking even the most basic infrastructure. After this trip Indy more seriously started to draft ideas about how he could help support people in these remote communities in a sustainable fashion.

A two and a half month visit to India in 2012 would be the final trip that sealed the fate for ATMA’s creation. After completing his graduate studies, and having seen the issues facing people in Ethiopia and Nepal, Indy decided to travel to the Indian Himalayas to conduct research on access to healthcare. If he was to create an organization to help people in these communities he knew that it would have to be well-informed and, crucially, research-based. The data from India would make that happen. For two and a half months he travelled throughout the backcountry of the north Indian Himalayan states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir; visiting some of the most isolated villages in India, and perhaps the world. Here he conducted his research and with every person he surveyed it became increasingly clear what the best way to help would be. He needed to create a non-profit international development fund and research institute. ATMA was born, at least in theory, and its focus was going to be on aid + research.

For two and a half months he travelled throughout the backcountry of the north Indian Himalayan states… Here he conducted his research and with every person he surveyed it became increasingly clear what the best way to help would be. He needed to create a non-profit international development fund and research institute.

ATMA would collect donations and raise money which would then, through a pre-determined process, allocate grant funding to local organizations already working within these remote communities. Sending people from developed countries to oversee projects in the developing world was not a good use of resources. After all, we want to help people help themselves, and the thousands of dollars that would be spent on travelling between countries would go significantly further in the hands of the local community. ATMA researchers would examine development reports and local studies to determine what sectors are in most urgent need of funding; be it health, education, transportation infrastructure, environmental awareness, etc. The research team would also create a process to appraise organizations (known as our regional partners) seeking grant funding from ATMA and conduct interim analyses and studies alongside these partners to ensure that donated  money was being used as effectively as possible. ATMA would work in total collaboration with our regional partners right from the beginning: from reviewing projects and determining which ones to fund, collecting donations, raising awareness about the issues these communities face, funding the projects and, finally, conducting research studies with these organization to evaluate exactly how effective these projects were. It was time to move away from a development model that told people in the developing world what to do. It was time for a more collaborative approach to international development.

It was time to move away from a development model that told people in the developing world what to do. It was time for a more collaborative approach to international development.

The paperwork for incorporation as a non-profit organization was submitted in October 2012 and approved in January 2013. A Board of Directors was formed which, in addition to Indy, included Nidhi Panwar, MA, Sunny Randhawa, JD, Harpreet Grewal, BBA, and Parvinder Sahota, RN; respected colleagues and friends from the fields of international development, law, finance and nursing, respectively. Since then the entire ATMA team (all of whom are volunteers) have been working tirelessly to help the “forgotten people” of the most remote communities in the developing world.

Donate today and become a part of our story.

‘Cause at the end of the day, all we have is who we are…

Be awesome ♥

Why volunteer with Behind the Book? We’ll let some of our seasoned volunteers do the talking:

“Thank you for the opportunity to spend a really rewarding hour with those lovely students. I was paired with Mohamed who told me right away, “I don’t think I can do this.” But we persevered, and at the end of the hour, Mohamed had written his OWN (short!) biography of Michael Jordan.

This little story is just one of the many reasons I am so proud to support the great work Behind the Book does, and so grateful for the chance to be a part of it for a day. ” – Casey Cornelius

Casey volunteered in a 3rd grade program where students learned to write biographies with author Andrea Pinkney (they also went on an awesome field trip). Read more about our volunteer program here and be sure to check out the upcoming dates!

~~~~~~

I’m Alexis. I’m the Shore. I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia with my husband and our two lazy (but goofy and friendly) rescue greyhounds. Like Sarah, I felt an urge to travel, which is how I became a student at Bloomsburg University in 2005 (and how I met Sarah). Then, I transferred to middle Tennessee. There I met my husband (a fine Canadian). We moved to Halifax in 2011; and we’ll live here for a couple more years. I work with kids, music, folklore, and natural history. I’m borderline vegetarian, I run barefoot, and I write a lot. I love language, music, and the outdoors… and apples. Cheers from the east coast!

(CNN) – At 7, Analouisa Valencia was crowned Palmetto Princess in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She relished it — and like a lot of little girls, she dreamed of becoming Miss America  one day.

In a few months, Valencia, now 19, will take the stage for the Miss South Carolina contest, hoping for victory and a chance to compete for the coveted national title.

But she’s no ordinary contestant. She will mark a first in her conservative home state.

Valencia’s father is from Mexico; her mother, an African-American. Valencia came out as a lesbian when she was in the ninth grade and took her girlfriend Tamyra Bell to her high school prom.

She was already shredding stereotypes of beauty pageants because she’s biracial. But a lesbian beauty pageant contestant from South Carolina?

“I just really wanted to be an advocate for equality for everyone this year,” she says on the phone before heading off to classes at Spartanburg Community College. She eventually wants to earn a business degree at the University of South Carolina.

Her participation in the Miss South Carolina contest is in part a human rights campaign: she is promoting rights for people with special needs (she coaches Special Olympics gymnasts), for racial minorities, for gay people.

She has already thought about her answers if the judges question her on this score. She will be perfectly open and honest about who she is, about their opinions.

“I want to show the judges who I really am,” she says. “I want to show them how passionate I am about my platform, how passionate I am for being an advocate for equality.”

South Carolina ranks low nationally on LGBT rights. It bans same-sex marriage, does not afford employment, housing or hate-crime protections for LGBT people and has unconstitutional sodomy laws still on the books.

For Valencia to make a run for Miss South Carolina is “courageous,” says Ryan Wilson, the executive director of the South Carolina Equality Coalition, a statewide LGBT civil rights group.

“I think it takes a lot of courage for any young person to live openly and authentically. We are extremely proud of Analouisa,” Wilson says.

He says beauty pageant contestants can be stereotyped, but they can often afford young women a chance to show leadership.

“She can be a role model for LGBT youth,” Wilson says.

There hasn’t been negative feedback, Valencia says. So far.

But she’s prepared to cope with ugliness if it surfaces. For the time being, she’s enjoying her title of Miss Lyman, her hometown just a few miles from Spartanburg.

She’s been taking voice lessons every Friday. At the Miss South Carolina pageant in July, she will sing Leona Lewis’ “Footprints in the Sand.” She’s confident she will make an impression.

Peter ran the Dublin marathon last year, this year he will conquer Belfast.

Peter (our Director) will run the Belfast Marathon to raise valuable funds for a mental health charity.

Peter will run the 26 mile course on the 6^th May to raise awareness and money for Belfast based charity New Life Counselling.

“New Life Counselling are delighted that The Signature Works Director, Peter McConvey is running the Belfast Marathon for us this year.  Funds raised will provide counselling to support people of all ages with issues relating to stress, relationship breakdown, anxiety, depression, so the more raised the more people we can support” – Karen Collins, CEO, New Life Counselling.

“New Life Counselling offers a very valuable service to the local community at a time when it is really needed. I am delighted to be able to help by running the marathon and giving the charity a bit more exposure to those who may not know there’s help available.” – Peter McConvey, Director, The Signature Works.

You can support the work of New Life Counselling or contribute to Peter’s fundraising efforts in any of the following ways.

Text: You can text your donation using the code TSWM01 followed by the amount you wish to donate £2/£5/£10 to 70070 thanks to Just Giving and Vodafone.

Online: You can donate online by clicking www.justgiving.com/Peter-McConvey 

You can also leave donations in the collection boxes in The Signature Works reception area.  Every donation helps us provide counselling services to those who need our help and support, so please give what you can!

FredericksburgNightOut.com

How often do you find yourself asking, ‘What is there to do in town?’ Well, that is the exact question that www.fredericksburgnightout.com is answering through its search engine, smart phone apps & website.  With new franchise-owners right here in the heart of FredericksburgVA, the sky is the limit! 

Fredericksburg Night Out is MORE than an online directory.  It is a high-powered SEARCH ENGINE full of everything happening in & around the FredericksburgVA area. Bars, bands, local events, entertainment, drink & food specials and more are waiting to be discovered.  If there is a business serving it up, we aim to have it on our site for the world to see. We are proud to say that we are part of a company with over 400 locations, and even offer a free smart phone app, called MyNightOut.

By downloading the MyNightOut app, you are able to tap into the vast selection of all that the area has to offer while out and about.  This makes finding “things to do” easier for you, not only in our own hometown of Fredericksburg, but nationally & internationally, as well.

While organizing such an extensive catalogue of Fredericksburg locations and happenings is a big task, we at Fredericksburg Night Out are excited to take it on!

With the revitalization of the Fredericksburg HUB and all of the steps the city is taking to refresh and renew the community, we want to do our part. Not only is this a much needed service, but it  assists in getting the economy moving again by encouraging people in & around the city to get out & participate in some of the many awesome venues around town.

www.fredericksburgnightout.com also gives business-owners the opportunity to get the word out about their businesses, events & specials, by providing very reasonably-priced advertising space.

Believe it or not….http://www.fredericksburgnightout.com even offers FREE placement of your basic business information~ Feel free to call or check out the website for more details!

There’s currently a lot of “buzz” going on around town about Fredericksburg Night Out, so keep your eyes & ears peeled…We are sure that you will be hearing positive feedback from locals & visitors in our area about Fredericksburg Night Out!

Although traditional advertising is losing its impact, the internet is an arena that is moving forward with high intensity. Youth, young-adults, mid-age-range adults, as well as seniors are turning to the internet as a vital source & portal for information and the Fredericksburg Night Out team is capitalizing on just that.

As many of you are aware, we do also offer a monthly email newsletter.  Sign up on the website at www.fredericksburgnightout.com.  Additionally, we also have a sister-site: www.dayinfredericksburg.com as a source & guide for what to do during day-time hours in & around the Fredericksburg area. Topics of interest on the Day In Fredericksburg site include, but are not limited to: Shopping, Community, Business, Recreation and Food & Drink Specials.

We offer FREE Directory Placement on both of our sites for ALL Churches, Charities & Non-Profit Organizations~ This is one of the many ways that we give back to our community.

Our staff & our families live & work in & around our local community. We have a vested interest in seeing other local businesses succeed. We’re here to build awareness of exciting, fun & important things to do in our local area….And We CARE!

Check us out at:

www.fredericksburgnightout.com & www.dayinfredericksburg.com.

Additionally, you can check us out on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fredericksburg-Night-Out/305109322873978?ref=hl

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Day-In-Fredericksburg/107991949323070?ref=hl

We are faith people who are also spiritual seekers and sometimes doubters. We are straight, glbtq, people of divers races and backgrounds. We are lovers and doers of justice as we are called be and do. We are musicians, artists, scientists, students, single people and families, young and old.

We come together to break bread together, worship, pray, do works of justice, and participate in the society at large with all of who we are.  We come together to know and love God in Christ and be God’s image, as we are created for God and one another in a community.

We hope to meet you and be a part of a community we long for in Christ.

be fed. be whole.

photo credit: Tita Valeriano

Just sharing. Your comments welcome!

On this blog we often highlight author visits or new student books, but today we’d like to take a closer look at a vital part of our programs which often flies under the radar: writing mentors. After the students have produced their first drafts, we bring in volunteers to work with small groups on improving those drafts and producing a final project; an incredibly valuable experience, especially since large classes are increasingly the norm in the high-need schools with whom we partner.

Writing mentors provide students with an opportunity to be reflective on their own work while they polish their pieces in preparation for publishing. As some of you already know, all of our programs are common core aligned, and both reflection and revision are required by the common core ELA standards across grade levels. More fundamentally, though, we believe these skills are an essential part of the writing process, plain and simple. We Were Here author Matt de la Pena confessed to revising his first novel over 100 times before it was finished! (If you’re looking for tips to get started, check out Matt’s 5 rules for revision.)

Being a writing mentor is a unique opportunity to help a student discover the possibilities of their own language. Last week, this blogger had a chance to volunteer at the Community Health Academy of the Heights, where several of our programs are ongoing; I worked with three tenth grade boys on honing their short personal narratives.

At first I was nervous, but with the students in front of me my worries disappeared. They were eager to share their stories and hungry to make them better. We joked about mistakes, discussed the possibilities of metaphors, and examined a book to puzzle out the rules of punctuating dialogue. I gave them time to sit and write, to elaborate on an anecdote or tighten up a conclusion, and then the boys proudly read what they had written; we could all see their stories taking shape. It was only an hour of my time, but the instant gratification of seeing their writing improve made it an intensely rewarding personal experience.

This year, take part in our mission to empower students’ creativity and enhance their literacy skills by volunteering as a BtB writing mentor during National Volunteer Week, April 21-27. Click here for more details on how to join us in creating readers for life!

At NIST, we have tried each year to make the staging as simple as possible. We ask students to try and use only one form of presentation to attract the attention of people and get conversations going. We expect our students to be able to speak knowledgably, passionately and thoughtfully to as many people as possible. This is where they reveal their understanding, where they tell the story of their Exhibition journey, where they reveal the processes they’ve been through and where they discuss next steps.

All of this comes out of their mouths! It is not printed on endless bits of paper. If their Exhibition really comes from the heart, the words will flow very naturally.

Here is a little video to illustrate the point.

We all probably think of ourselves as those who look to the Lord. We have given our lives to him and we are seeking to make him the priority in our lives, but if we are honest we would all say that there are times when we are aware that we are looking to him but also times when we are aware that we do not. We can probably look back on great chunks of the day when we had no awareness of him at all. However it is quite likely that in those times when we deliberately focus upon his love for us and what he has done for us, then we find a certain inner peace and a rest from the pressing effects of the situations that crowd around us.

The truth is that he is in us all the time, whether or not we are aware of him and whether we consciously call out to him or not. Because of the presence of God within us through his Spirit, we are radiant with him.

This should encourage us so much. He is never far from us and simply uttering the name of ‘Jesus’ is enough to bring that consciousness of his nearness to us, for we are not speaking his name to one who is far away and hidden from us but instead to one who is already so close to us.

Rather than feel guilty about the times when we do not look to him, let’s see this as an invitation to keep looking towards him – and it is as simple as letting the name of Jesus be on our lips.

Nostalgic tones together with some massive, anthemic hooks wrap up some life wisdom from Verses into the song ‘Who We Are’. Fair enough, this song is such a huge bolt of energy, that the punch left by it will be a long-lasting one: you a) won’t be able to get the track out of your head for the following couple of weeks and b) will start taking your life a bit easier.

‘Who We Are’ is taken off the band’s forthcoming EP ‘Come To Life’(out 6 May).