Two leading advocates for renewable energy use presented sobering statistics about the environmental impact of America’s unquenchable appetite for fuel to an audience of over 50 during Mount Wachusett Community College’s first annual Project Earth event on April 10. Efforts to conserve energy and harness more power from renewable sources such as wind and agricultural products could lessen the severity of the impact, but only with greater support nationally and within homes and businesses, they said.
U.S. Congressman John Olver, co-chair of the House’s Climate Change Caucus, and energy analyst Alan Nogee of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Energy Program, explained the damaging effect America’s dependence on fossil fuels such as coal and oil are having on the earth, including global warming that is the result of unprecedented amounts of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere.
Olver said that one of the greatest challenges is changing attitudes and habits about energy consumption. Energy consumption in the U.S. accounts for one-quarter of the entire world’s usage, yet the U.S. represents just five percent of the world’s population, he said. We also release the highest amount of carbon dioxide emissions per person - 20 tons. Western Europe, by contrast, at eight percent of the world’s population, accounts for 18 percent of the world’s energy consumption and produces eight tons of CO2 per person. China, representing 20 percent of the world’s population, accounts for 11 percent of the world’s energy consumption and produces less than 3 tons of CO2 emissions per person.
The Union of Concerned Scientists and others advocate increasing the country’s renewable energy use to 20 percent by 2020, which would reduce the country’s reliance on foreign energy sources, create twice as many jobs as the fossil fuel industry, and significantly reduce pollutants into the atmosphere.
There is much the average citizen can do to make a difference, the speakers said, including buying energy efficient appliances when it comes time to replace their old ones. Simply replacing standard incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs will save 75 percent electricity. “If every U.S. household made that switch, it would save the same amount of energy that 30 conventional power plants produce,” Nogee said.
In addition, utility companies such as National Grid allow customers to select “green energy” sources for their electricity, and two websites, cleanenergychoice.org and green-e.org, provide additional information about electricity options.
Citizens also can log on to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ website at ucsusa.org for more information and to sign up for “Energy Net,” which sends alerts and updates about pending state and national legislation.
The presentation, part of MWCC’s What’s Next Speaker Series, launched the college’s first annual Project Earth event in recognition of Earth Day 2006. Earlier in the day, 20 children from the Boys and Girls Club of North Central Mass., Fitchburg Clubhouse, visited the campus to learn about energy conservation.
Organizers behind a growing movement to create a position of National Nurse to improve the health of Americans brought their message to students, educators and public officials this week as part of Mount Wachusett Community College’s 2006 What’s Next Speaker Series.
In introducing the speakers, MWCC President Daniel M. Asquino emphasized that improving the country’s health care system and delivery to residents should be a top national priority. “We have so many uninsured individuals. That is a tragedy, not only here in Massachusetts, but throughout the country. It is crucial to have the community colleges at the forefront of this effort because it is the community colleges that educate 60 percent of our country’s nurses,” he said.
“The country needs an office of National Nurse to focus on providing every American with preventive health care resources,” said Teri Mills, RN, MS, ANP, a nursing program coordinator at Portland Community College in Oregon and a nurse practitioner for two counties in Washington state. Mills and Alisa Schneider, RN, MSN, CNE, a nurse educator at Portland Community College and a registered nurse for 16 years, urged an audience of approximately 200 to get involved in the effort to lobby congress to create the post.
“America needs health care. What we have is sick care,” Schneider said. Not only are 46 million Americans uninsured, but millions more are underinsured to meet their health needs, she explained. “Eventually, they end up in the emergency room, the most costly type of primary care, and children are receiving their primary care in the emergency room." Even many of those who do have health insurance often do not understand their illnesses or how to take proactive measures to improve their condition. By advocating preventive care, the Office of the National Nurse would help address some of the leading causes of disease, such as obesity, smoking, and diabetes.
The Office of the National Nurse would reinforce the message of prevention to communities across the country by involving citizens in preventive health practices, complement health services already in place, focus national attention on the nursing profession, and establish volunteer National Nurse teams to deliver health education to the public and assist in emergency situations in their own communities.
In May, 2005, Mills’ opinion piece in The New York Times sparked national interest in the movement. A bill to create the position was introduced in Congress in March by U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, D-California, who is also a nurse. To date, five additional lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors. Mills and Schneider are seeking a companion bill in the Senate and are lobbying U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, as a lead sponsor.
New Hampshire State Rep. Marcia Moody, D-Newmarket, and Roxanne Fulcher, director of Health Professions for the American Association of Community Colleges were also among the featured speakers.
The American Association of Community Colleges endorses the effort Fulcher said, “because it would bring RNs from all education levels together to promote health and prevent disease and reach out in communities to make American healthier.”
The March 31 talk was co-sponsored by the MWCC Center for Democracy and Humanity, the Molly Bish Institute for Child Health and Safety, and the MWCC School of Health Sciences.
Friday, February 17 - 11:30 am - 1:00 pm - MWCC auditorium
Free and open to the public
Tim Wise has presented over 80,000 lectures in 47 states and on 350-plus college campuses. He is the author of the 2004 book “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son”, copies of which will be for sale beginning at 11:00 am.on February 17th. Read about Tim Wise’s last speaking event in Fitchburg
Download the flyer for the event.
Are you and/or your organization stuck in a rut, searching for direction and hungry for a new way of approaching your work, innovation and community involvement? Then we strongly encourage you to hear renowned economist Dr. C. Otto Scharmer explain a unique approach to enabling transformational change Friday, June 10 from 12 to 2 p.m. at Four Points by Sheraton on Erdman Way in Leominster.
Affiliated with MIT, the Center for Innovation and Knowledge Research at the Helsinki School of Economics and Fujitsu Global Knowledge Institute in Tokyo, Scharmer has consulted with multinational firms and international institutions in the United States, Europe and Asia. Scharmer, known as an “international action researcher,” is also a cofounder of the Society for Organizational Learning and cofounder of the Project ELIAS (Emerging Leaders for Innovations Across Systems) at MIT. He co-authored with Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers the book “Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future” and expands on their presencing theory in his upcoming book “Theory U: Leading from the Emerging Future.”
What is presencing? It’s a thought process that requires people to set aside their fears, anxieties and habitual reactions to change in order to reach a “deeper level of learning” that increases awareness of the big picture and develops actions that produce long-lasting change. It’s often used intuitively by business and social entrepreneurs. To learn more about this theory and how it’s being used in business and nonprofit organizations around the world before June 10, visit http://www.solonline.org/.
Bringing Scharmer to the area is a community effort. The co-sponsors are the Twin Cities Latino Coalition, the MWCC Entrepreneurial Resource Center, the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce and Community Builders, a partnership between MWCC and the United Way of North Central Massachusetts.
What’s Next Speaker Series lecturer Tim Wise offered a different view of affirmative action during his speech at Fitchburg Public Library Wednesday, April 20—whites were the first, often sole, beneficiaries of this kind of government policy. That laid the groundwork for whites to continue to benefit from what Wise deems “white privilege.”
“Unless we talk about these things, we will miss the degree we are implicated in the system,” Wise said to the white people in the mixed race audience of about 60 gathered in the library’s auditorium.
The Naturalization Act of 1790, which allowed only free, white people to become citizens of the United States, was the first act of affirmative action, Wise said. Less than 100 years later, the Homestead Act of 1862 only gave government protection to white landowners who took advantage of the law to settle west of the Mississippi. When whites forced blacks of their homesteads, they had no recourse to get their land back, he pointed out.
Another example, Wise said, was the early Federal Housing Administration loan regulations. The FHA was vital to creating a middle class, he said. Because it prohibited lenders from giving loans to people of color, “that middle class was almost entirely, if not exclusively, a white middle class.”
“This is a hard-core, working class city,” Wise said about Fitchburg. “The white people here aren’t very affluent. It’s important to recognize that less affluent whites do receive privilege, that this privilege comes at a very high cost.”
He outlined four main costs:
Wise’s case for institutionalized white privilege also touched on education as well as the job market, drug use and trafficking and racial profiling.
MWCC Trustee Sergio Paez, who emceed the event, asked Wise how people of color can engage white people to talk about race when they’re working together to find solutions to community problems.
“White people have a lot of experience with race. It’s why I wrote ‘White Like Me,’ ” Wise said. “When white people…step out of that comfort zone…we have a power, a sick power, that can and does move other people into this dialog.”
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“More of a small-town, hometown approach for a kid who needs help” is how Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley described the model truancy prevention program START (School Tardiness Attendance Review Team) when she addressed a crowd of over 100 at the Four Points by Sheraton in Leominster in February.
Not only does the Middlesex County program, working with 12 local schools, keep kids in class, it’s a cost-effective approach to one of society’s biggest challenges. “We can spend $40,000 a year to house a criminal in Cedar Junction. But in the end, if we looked a little bit earlier…a stitch in time saves nine,” said Coakley, whose appearance was co-sponsored by the Molly Bish Institute for Child Health and Safety. (MCI-Cedar Junction is a state maximum-security prison for male offenders.)
The program, which is voluntary, puts START teams in touch with parents of students with unexcused absences to identify the source of the problem and help families find a solution. Many times the solutions are easily addressed, explained Coakley. Often, she explained, female students are kept home for school to care for a sick younger sibling so mom or dad can report to work. In rare cases, the program would uncover a student who was a victim of abuse and/or neglect. Coakley pointed out that typically these cases would not be discovered this early.
Coakley said the program addressed other societal problems as well. According to the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children, drop-outs have fewer job prospects, lower salaries, are more likely to be involved in substance abuse and are more likely to be involved with criminal activity.
The success of START has been impressive. Students exposed to intervention had a 50 percent decrease in days absent and a 40 percent decrease in days tardy. Participating schools saw an overall decrease of 40 percent in the number of chronically absent students and of 45 percent in the cases of chronically tardy students.
“They (children) are the future of our society,” said John Bish, who along with his wife, Magi, co-chairs the Molly Bish Institute for Child Health and Safety with MWCC President Daniel M. Asquino. John and Magi Bish’s daughter Molly was abducted and murdered while serving as a lifeguard in Warren. “We held fast to our faith. We never lost hope. Our hope now is for all the children,” John Bish said.
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Charlotte Kahn, director of the Community Building Network at The Boston Foundation, arrived at the Four Points by Sheraton in Leominster in January expecting to educate area civic and community leaders about the award-winning Boston Indicators Project. Over the course of a half-hour lunch, she learned interest is strong in the tri-city area to partner with her group on a similar project to address a myriad of community issues.
More than 80 people from around the area attended Kahn’s lunchtime presentation. Her appearance was co-sponsored by MWCC, the Twin Cities Latino Coalition and the United Way of North Central Massachusetts.
“Now I realize, after talking with you, that we can work together,” Kahn said.
The Boston Indicators Project, managed by The Boston Foundation in conjunction with the City of Boston/Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, has identified 10 indicators of systematic change: civic health, cultural life and the arts, economy, education, environment, housing, public health, public safety, technology and transportation. “We had one of the most comprehensive indicator projects in the world,” Kahn said. The foundation publishes biannual reports that provide a narrative of the data project researchers collect.
“It’s to help people have a long view,” Kahn explained. “We want people to think big and to think long term.”
To make that happen, project researchers drill through sources like the census to find trends that relate to the 10 indicators. “Our point of view is we want to get the data down to the smallest geographical aggregate,” Kahn said. Then researchers and civic leaders can compare neighborhoods to define the big picture. “Sometimes it just isn’t a block or a city or a state,” Kahn said about community issues.
As an example, Kahn showed a slide of the percentage of households in the Fitchburg-Leominster area with incomes of less than $25,000. There is a high concentration of these households in the downtowns of both cities as well as the Route 12 corridor north of Route 2.
The Boston Indicators Project has demonstrated that Boston’s problems “are now state problems,” Kahn said.
Another slide backed up anecdotes often cited by civic leaders: The children of Boston-area families are moving further west because they cannot afford homes in their native cities or towns. Some municipalities in and around Boston experienced a population loss between 1990 and 2000, while many greater Boston suburbs saw their population grow 20 percent or more.
“This is just census data, but being able to have it in front of you is helpful,” Kahn said. However, Fitchburg Police Chief Edward Cronin later commented that he doesn’t think the census data reflects the rapid immigrant population growth he thinks is happening in the city.
A participant asked what discovery generated the most interest and action by Boston organizations. The impact of young people on Boston’s economy and the realization that high housing costs cause them to leave, Kahn responded.
In addition, the research highlights the need to focus on an influx of immigrants, she said. The state is losing native-born residents but is gaining immigrants. These new residents need educational services, especially English language classes, she said. “In order to help yourself, you need to be able to speak English first, so we can make it easy for people to reach for that first ladder and pull themselves up,” Kahn said. “Community colleges have an incredibly important role in that ladder.”
The issue was raised that no one is tracking the affects of the state’s parochial local government, and that it may be a good issue to include in an indicator project.
“I think there are a lot of good things happening in municipalities, but we need to look at what’s happening statewide,” Kahn said.
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| Dr. Margarita Alegria’s “Community Alliances” presentation (PowerPoint) |
Harvard Medical School Psychology Professor and Director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research Dr. Margarita Alegria told a group of more than 50 community and educational leaders that there are great disparities in mental health care for minority populations and also suggested possible solutions at a lecture at MWCC’s Gardner campus in January. The presentation was part of the college’s What’s Next Speaker Series and co-sponsored by the Twin Cities Latino Coalition.
“Latinos have less access to mental health services, have a higher risk of being misdiagnosed, are less likely to receive care and are more likely to receive poor quality care when they are served,” stated Alegria.
There are many cultural reasons. According to Alegria, young Latino men do not think they have a mental health problem until the problem is very serious, and their strong sense of self-reliance is a strong barrier to seeking care. In addition, Latino and African American parents are less likely than white parents to label their children’s behavior as a mental health problem. “There is some evidence that the threshold for what is considered dysfunctional may vary across cultures,” she said.