| Community's list of needs never stops growing
Affords enrichment for participants and respite for caregiver. Needs: Volunteers are needed to conduct programs in arts and crafts, music or adult education. Extra hands are needed to assist with activities. Groups or individuals are encouraged. Household supplies: laundry detergent, Clorox wipes, dishwashing liquid, hand sanitizer, liquid hand soap, tissues and paper towels. Food: cereal, saltine crackers, graham crackers, Cheeze Nips, sugar-free cookies and jelly, peanut butter, canned fruit and sandwich bread. Office supplies: copy paper, legal pads, manila folders, postage stamps. Craft supplies: glue sticks, scissors, wax paper. Bingo prizes: Socks, lipstick, costume jewelry, Dollar Store items, handkerchiefs, scarves, lotion, healthcare, Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, vinyl gloves.
Struggling to Keep Black Students
I think we're going to see change with these creative scholarships and matching grants," Carroll said. Gordon Chavis, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions at the University of Central Florida and a member of the governor's Access and Diversity Commission, said that “our foundation people" have been very positive about the matching grants program. Chavis said that people usually donate to a general scholarship fund, so getting donations specifically for first generation students might require new fund raising tactics. But he added that universities could use the opportunity to court donors who want to know exactly how their money will be used. Rosenberg added that the matching grants are part of “a culture of incentives within the system that we'd like to preserve." In California, the number of black students has declined since the voter-approved Proposition 209 outlawed using race in admissions in 1996.
A long-kept Md. secret: interest-free college loans
Undergraduate and graduate students are eligible. There's no age limit. Recipients range from age 17 to 61. To qualify for a loan, you must apply for federal financial aid. You need to have a grade-point average of at least 2.0 on a scale of 4. And you must have a co-signer for the loan so that if you don't repay it, the co-signer would be on the hook. Central Scholarship will begin accepting applications for the 2008-2009 academic year in January. The deadline is May 31. For more details check out the nonprofit's Web site at www.centralsb.org. .
Candidates work the strip for voter jackpot
On Friday, the young mother answered the door in her working-class neighborhood and was startled to find the speaker of the California Assembly, Fabian Nez, with a horde of reporters in his wake. The powerful Democratic Latino leader was clutching an "America con Hillary" bumper sticker and a lawn sign, working the city's vast Latino neighborhoods on behalf of the campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. "Hillary has experience," he told her earnestly in Spanish. "She can help us ... on issues like immigration reform." Nez said he understood that the powerful Culinary Workers Union, to which many Latinos such as Reyes belong, had endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. But "people are saying they want to vote for who we think is best," he said.
Bucking the Tide on Private Loans
As the scandals and debates over private lending have grown in recent months, conventional wisdom has held that private loans are a necessary evil. Sure, students and their families are taking on debt that is typically more expensive and more risky than federally backed loans. But as long as families feel that college costs are otherwise beyond their reach, private loans will continue to become more popular. .
Disputed Accord in Student Loan Case
Department officials portrayed the settlement reached with the Nebraska Education Loan Network, or Nelnet, as a defeat for the for-profit company. They noted that they were declining to pay an estimated $882 million in additional reimbursement requests that the company has pending under the same loophole, and ending future payments on such loans to other lenders as well unless the lenders can prove, through audits, that they qualify for the funds. Nelnet officials themselves, too, took issue with the department’s finding but said they had settled the case to allow the company to move on. But Congressional and other critics accused the department of going soft on Nelnet and other lenders. They blasted administration officials for failing to fully follow the recommendation of the department’s inspector general, who contended in a September audit report that Nelnet should be forced to repay all funds earned through the loophole, though which lenders were paid a 9.5 percent government subsidy on a certain class of student loans.
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