Each year, ten national winners each receive $2,500 to support their service work or higher education.

For more information click here

Their remaining time is spent initiating new projects and partnerships and researching areas for thought leadership, documenting past leadership experiences and lessons learned.

In 2010, MSC will be looking for Senior Fellows who as a cohort bring the following capacities and interests to strengthen what is currently on the team:

* Alliance building facilitation or leadership background with social justice organizing groups.
* Curriculum development and training expertise.
* Capacity building and coaching with organizations and alliances, particularly in the areas of strategy, collaboration and sustainability.
* Deep experience in one or more of the following racial justice movements: education justice, environmental justice, gender and reproductive justice, LGBT movement building, immigrant rights, media justice, land justice (housing, gentrification, development), worker justice, criminal justice.

If you or someone you know is a candidate for the MSC Senior Fellowship, please email rachel@movementstrategy.org

When:
(Note: There are two different campuses holding this event on different dates – feel free to volunteer at one or the other or both)

Friday March 19th (Parkside Campus) 8:30am-12pm at UDC
or
Friday March 26th (Capitol Hill Campus) 8:30am-12pm at Capitol Hill Campus

Where:
Parkside Campus –UDC Campus (Van Ness Metro, Red Line)
Capitol Hill Campus – 709 12th Street SE WDC (Eastern Market Metro, Orange Line)

For more information please contact Julie Harris at julie.harris@chavezschools.org

Councilman Brown:

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this hearing. My name is Mazi Mutafa, and I am the Executive Director of a hip-hop non-profit called Words Beats & Life. We are a grantee of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and have been one for five of the eight-years we have existed.

I am not here today not to advocate for a particular position on the budget, because to be honest, it is complex enough and removed enough from my day-to-day life that I don’t think I can offer a professional judgment. I am one of the Districts employers still focused on trying to make payroll every two weeks. I understand without knowing the details, that less funding for the Commission means that task is more difficult for me. We are in fact one of the grantees that this year is already dealing with the reduction in funding, or depending on how you look at the budget, the increase in applications from other arts based non-profits. I am here to tell you how the budget of the Commission impact the work that my agency is able to do and how the dollars impact youth, artists, families and businesses in our community.

Words Beats & Life is a small business, which at its peak had six full time staff with 12 part time staff serving 300 DC youth and families annually. Today we are slightly smaller, with a full time staff of four, with seven part-time and 10 volunteer staff. These lean economic times have unfortunately required some shifts in priorities. This is not just true for our agency but for many of our peers and organizations that are far larger than us.

To put my comments into a context, the DC Commission is our second largest funder. We have received multiple grants from the Commission over the years. They include the Festival DC Grant, Grants in Aid, The Upstart Grant, Travel Grant and the Hip-Hop Grant. We have produced mural as part of Murals DC, provided youth DJ’s for Arts Eve, and worked in partnership with the Mayors Office to create a mural at the 14th and Girard St Park. WBL was also a finalist in the Mayors Arts Award last year in the category of Arts Education, and in the same year we honored the Commission as government agency of the year at our Remix Award. I am telling you all this to make it clear that the Commission is one of our greatest resources for relationships and information, and it acts as a staunch advocate for the kind of work we do, engaging disconnected youth, programming for non traditional arts audiences, and provide employment opportunities for DC youth in the creative economy.

The Commission is frankly one of the city’s most misunderstood and under resourced departments. I make this suggestion not because of what has been cut here or there from the budget, but because it seems that the city government has not learned the lessons of the federal government. The arts are not just for the elite. They are the means by which peace can be brokered, and communities can be healed. They can address the challenges of displacement, gentrification, and an over active police presence. At the same time, the arts can light a spark in the imaginations of the next generation of elected officials, engineers, scientists and teachers. I am here not to defend a budget but to challenge this body to think about the Commission and its potential in a new way. It can be the department that allows for a different kind of police presence in a community. It can be the foundation upon with new arts businesses can be created. It is one of the best departments for investment, because for every dollar of investment that it makes in an individual, an agency or a community the return is 7 to 8 fold.

I am living proof of how the Commissions initial investment can make the difference in an organization’s ability to launch, grow and thrive. Thanks to the investment of the DC Commission we have transitioned in just four years from being a one man shop to at our peak employing six DC residents, providing opportunities for skill set master for youth, employment readiness for young adults and the tools for the pursuit of a post secondary education to more than 300 of our cities youth. These are not small accomplishments, but I am happy to say that we are not unique among their grantees in our effort or our outcomes.

I bring this message to you today because we all know that in a tough economy, there are fewer resources to be divided up, between what are determined to be essential and non-essential services. I am here to tell you that investing in the Commission is reducing the number of people on the cities unemployment rolls. Investing in the Commission is promoting academic excellence. Investing in the Commission is crime prevention and community beatification. It is not only investing in the future through our youth, but also investing in our past with our elders and our present.

I would love to talk with you about the need for an increase in the Commissions budget, but I would also like to encourage the various governmental department heads for all those services deemed essential to think about setting aside portions of their budgets for dedicated arts funding.

I am hear to advocate that as we all talk about arts in the District, we see it as a mural on U street, and the Kennedy Center, and the Shakespeare theater. But that we also see arts as Go-Go music, marching bands in public schools, the local recording studio, and DCTV. That we see the arts as the things that have a direct connection to how we work, live and play. I am hear to ask that when you think about the dedicated arts funding, you think about the fact that investing in the work of the Commission support the development of emerging entrepreneurs, in diverse communities of arts producers and consumers. The Commissions budget is the very best investment that this body can make from two perspectives; revenue generated for the city in the form of taxes and from a social good point of view. I do hope that you will strongly consider the true value and benefit of investing in the DC Commission, because it has the power to truly transform our city.

While participation is mandatory, a number of populations – such as persons with limited English proficiency, new immigrant communities, the elderly; those with disabilities, the homeless, disconnected youth, and neighborhoods/buildings with high concentrations of low-income residents — traditionally have been undercounted, often due to isolation and concerns about privacy. As a result, the jurisdictions they live in often don’t receive the full benefit of federal representation and funding available to them.

Recently, The Community Foundation awarded a $35,000 grant to the Census Project, which supports outreach and public awareness activities that will help ensure a complete and thorough census count across the Washington, DC metropolitan region. The Project awards “mini grants” ranging in size from $1,500 to $3,000 to nonprofit organizations that will work in timely and culturally sensitive ways to make sure that “hard to count” residents complete and return their Census forms.

For more information, contact Angela Jones Hackley, Vice President, Community Investment, at (202) 263-4766 or ajoneshackley@cfncr.org.

via (Hypebeast)

The network of hip hop artists throughout the country is quite expansive. The real strength of their unity lies in the fact that they rap in their own dialect even though English is widely spoken and taught. If given proper access to local media the impact they have on their community could be incredible.

In the future, hopefully with some help from our funders, we hope to assists the Bavubuka Foundation with everything from marketing to school supplies. Our friends from Nomadic Wax, Metro Teen AIDS, Unitees, Albus Cavus and Urban Artistry are already on board having expressed their interest to help us with this initiative in any way possible.

The search committee is very interested in receiving nominations and applications. The committee is also seeking input from all members of the university community about the challenges facing the next president, and the essential qualities and qualifications that would be desirable in the university’s next president. This input will be particularly critical to the search committee because considerations of candidate confidentiality will preclude extensive community participation in the latter stages of the search process. Our goal is to create multiple opportunities for all members of the community to share their ideas.

For those of you who live in the area, UMD has scheduled a listening session so that they may hear directly from all of you who wish to contribute to the process. The session for the entire community will be held on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, from 2:30 to 4:00 p.m., in the Atrium, first floor, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland.

Yahsmin, co-founder and executive editor of Illume Magazine is a music journalist with published works in ILLUME, Words Beats Life Global Journal of Hip Hop Culture and Platform Magazine (United Kingdom). Though her focus is print journalism, she has authored works online for dozens of sites and organizations, covering a broad range of cultural, sociological, racial and political phenomenon. Yahsmin also speaks on panels and facilitates workshops throughout the country, educating participants about creative leadership, youth engagement, new media and hip-hop.

Be sure to check more of her work out on her blog: She So
Writeous.

Check all the photos here