Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has come to Seward and Moose Pass. Each month the Dollywood Foundation mails a brand new, age appropriate book, at no charge, to every child from birth to age 5 who is enrolled.

This program is made possible by the Seward PTSA, grants from the Seward Community Foundation, the City of Seward, Best Beginnings, Rasmuson Foundation, ConocoPhillips, and generous donations made by local businesses and individuals.

Love Elementary is known for educating students in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade, but what isn't as widely known is the school also houses a small group of adult learners throughout the school year.

The Parents and Children Together program, a partnership between Jamestown Public Schools and the Jamestown Community Learning Council, provides parents an opportunity to attend school alongside their pre-kindergarten children. In the process, the parents receive adult education, strengthened parenting skills and other opportunities - while at the same time acting as a model for their young children to show them education is something to take seriously.

''The parents in the program have done a really good job this year,'' Debbie Yahn, PACT parent coordinator, said. ''They've been very committed to the program, and they've shown their children that they value education by coming here.''

COMMUNITY SUPPORT THROUGH FUNDING

The list of local foundations supporting the PACT program at Love School includes the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation, the Darrah Foundation, the Holmberg Foundation, the Johnson Foundation, the Lenna Foundation and the Sheldon Foundation. Funding also comes from the AM and PM Rotary Clubs and First Presbyterian Church.

An advisory committee board made up of representatives from various Bristol Bay communities spent three days in Anchorage last month to decide who would be the recipients of the first round of Pebble Fund grants.

Alaska Community Foundation, which administers the grants funded by the Pebble Partnership, announced April 1 that 33 nonprofit groups, schools, villages and tribal councils serving the Bristol Bay area were awarded $1 million in grants from the Pebble Fund.

At a news conference held at the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne this morning, Lilly Endowment Inc. announced that it will provide a $20 million grant to accelerate the development of northeast Indiana’s workforce and talent resources.

The grant will be administered via a program, entitled Talent Opportunity Success (TOpS) 2015, which will develop education, training and talent initiatives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. TOpS 2015 -- an unprecedented collaboration in northeast Indiana -- will better prepare the region’s workforce to capture the high- quality job opportunities available in the near term and those of the future.

The grant will be made to an affiliate of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne, Community Partnerships, Inc. (CPI), which will govern and provide oversight for the program. CPI is a supporting organization of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne.

As Ozarks high school students prepare to begin college, many will have help from the Community Foundation of the Ozarks' scholarship program.

Earlier this month, CFO awarded $482,056 in individual scholarships, including renewals from nearly 200 scholarship funds. CFO manages more than $12.8 million in assets dedicated to scholarships, according to a news release.

As a companion list to The Best Sites For K-12 Beginning English Language Learners, I thought I’d put together a short list of my similar choices for Intermediate English Language Learners. I’ll also be creating lists focusing on older ELL’s, too.

I thought that lists like these might make it a little easier for teachers, particularly newer ones — newer to teaching or newer to using technology in their teaching. Then, at their leisure, they can explore all the other more specialized “The Best…” lists.

The Everyday Life Project is number two. It’s sponsored by the Goodwill Community Foundation in North Carolina, and it has extraordinary interactive exercises for Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Its activities on food, money, work, shopping and maps are excellent.

The Aspen Institute Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group YES GROUP, chaired by the President of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, and The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship NFTE launched the 'I Said Yes' campaign and released the nation’s first policymaker action guide on youth entrepreneurship education.

The guide was unveiled on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 during a Global Entrepreneurship Week YES GROUP Policy Briefing event at the Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC. The event, entitled We Say YES To Youth Entrepreneurship Education in America's Schools: What Policymakers Can Do to Prepare Youth for the Market Economy, focused on bringing about change in how youth are educated and empowered.

HandsNet: Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group Publishes Action Guide for Policymakers.

The Northern New York Community Foundation has awarded $625,832 in scholarships to 333 students for the 2008-2009 academic year. 

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Poudre School District Foundation Board is moving its charitable funds to the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado.

The move allows the foundation to decrease operating costs and increase its efforts on building relationships with donors.

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Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes President Randi Hewit, alongside Carl Hayden, chairman of the Chemung County School Readiness Council, has been invited to speak at the fourth annual Equity Symposium on Nov. 17 at Columbia University in New York City.

The symposium brings together some of the nation’s leading experts to review current research and examine the experiences of pilot projects. Hewit will be participating in the Promising Delivery Models Roundtable and will be talking specifically about the Chemung County School Readiness Project; the ground-breaking early childhood system designed to help more of Chemung County’s children start kindergarten with a solid foundation for learning.

Community Foundation president to speak at NYC symposium | stargazette.com | Star-Gazette.