Promising Futures engages D.C. middle and high school students as ambassadors and peer educators with a focus on everything from health to leadership skills.
When she was still in high school, Maranda Ward, Ed.D. ’17, wished that there was an outlet for her to meet other like-minded teens interested in engaging with their community.
It wasn’t until she started attending Spelman College that she was able to feel the power of peer education firsthand and see exactly what she had been missing. Once she had the opportunity to develop a youth program of her own, she knew peer education had to be a big part because of the benefits for the audiences as well as the peer educators. The benefits can be especially powerful for youth with marginalized identities because of the group-identity developed through these programs.
“I knew that I wanted to be part of creating that type of community for youth because I feel called to lead and serve youth,” Dr. Ward said.
Erin Flanagan, the MSSC business operations manager, is a jack-of-all trades as she regularly jumps from spreadsheets to student engagement.
As an honorary big sister to all George Washington University students who visit the Multicultural Student Services Center (MSSC), Erin Flanagan does it all.
Officially, she is the business operations manager for the MSSC, but her day-to-day involves so much more. From putting out mini-fires such as finding a missing file or fixing a malfunctioning printer, to being a personal problem solver for the students who come into the MSSC, Ms. Flanagan has greatly contributed to making the MSSC a home away from home.
“People ask me like, what is it that you do—I can’t tell you,” Ms. Flanagan said. “Each day brings something different, and I think that, for me, I like working in that kind of ambiguous grey area of what’s happening because I feel like you discover possibilities when you don’t have something that’s set.”
Lawyer, activist and documentary filmmaker Valerie Kaur gave students tools for “revolutionary love” during keynote address.
Valerie Kaur, a civil rights activist and documentary filmmaker, came to the George Washington University for the South Asian Heritage Celebration to share her message of “revolutionary love.”
The GW community celebrates the culture and history of South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma with an annual South Asian Heritage Celebration, which is sponsored by the Multicultural Student Services Center.
The theme for this year’s celebration was “Red, White & Brown: The Audacity of Equality,” which comes from comedian Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix special, “Homecoming King.” The celebration aims to combat stereotypes, create a voice of influence on political issues and applaud positive representations in the media.
During her keynote for the celebration, Ms. Kaur explained her Revolutionary Love Project, which reclaims the ethic of love as a force for justice, and aims to make love a public ethic in the United States over the next 25 years.
She explained that love must pour in three different directions for it to be revolutionary and told some of her personal stories that reflect that. For love to be revolutionary, she said, one has to have love for others, love for opponents and love for oneself.
FRONT ROYAL — The attorneys in the Clay Marshall Curtis murder trial set the scene for the week-long trial to be nothing and everything like a Quentin Tarantino film.
“This is not going to be a straightforward story,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Brian Madden said during his opening statement, apologizing to the jury for the disjointed nature of the way evidence will be presented over the next few days.
John Bell, who with his co-counsel David Hensley defended Curtis, said during his opening statement that the “movie” the prosecution will show would be different from what they think they’re showing. Bell added that the prosecution would be stretching circumstantial evidence “like it’s silly putty” to make Curtis out to be guilty.
That circumstantial evidence was enough, however, for the jury to find Curtis guilty of the December 2014 shooting death of Front Royal cab driver Simon Funk at the end of the trial without much deliberation.
Those attending Friday night’s iftar in Winchester were encouraged to try some of the Middle-Eastern food at the buffet, including chickpeas, lamb, rice, chicken and a variety of vegetables and fruit salads. Briahnna Brown/Daily
WINCHESTER — People of all faiths came together Friday night in the basement of the Grace Lutheran Church to celebrate a communal dinner on the night before the last day of Ramadan.
The Know Your Neighbor Iftar, or breaking of the Ramadan fast, was put together by Hussein Rashwan, a member of the Muslim community in Winchester, and sponsored by the Islamic Society of Winchester and the Valley Interfaith Council. Nearly 60 people came out to enjoy the meal with family, friends, neighbors and strangers, and it is a tradition that Rashwan said he hopes to continue every year.
Winchester Mayor John David Smith Jr. spoke at Friday night’s event, expressing his enthusiasm for the meal to come but also for the way the interfaith community came together to celebrate the event.
“I think in this day and time that we’re living in right now, with ISIS and some of the Christian organizations out there — with all the strife that’s going on, for something like this to happen in Winchester, it makes my heart warm,” Smith said in his speech. “I know that there are possibilities out there that we all can live together.”
ChildSafe board member Trae Vickers, counselor Monica Johns and ChildSafe Executive Director Kelly Bober stand on the porch of the new ChildSafe Center in Woodstock. Briahnna Brown/Daily
WOODSTOCK — For families in Shenandoah County, access to child abuse treatment centers has been a problem, with many unable to afford making regular trips to the ChildSafe Center in Winchester, leaving their children without the counseling they need.
The new satellite center in Woodstock aims to solve that problem.
Kelly Bober, executive director of ChildSafe, said the satellite center at 316 S. Main St. has much more of a “country cottage” look than than the urban warehouse appearance of ChildSafe’s Winchester location. She said the Woodstock location is perfect for area families and children who would be much more comfortable in it than in a building like the one in Winchester.
“When a family and a child comes, it feels like a home and it doesn’t feel like an investigative agency,” Bober said. “We want it to feel welcoming.”
Romanieo Jr. plays piano for his parents. He enjoys the drums also, and spoke of his favorite musician. “Max Roach, of course, because he’s the best drummer I’ve heard of.” Photo via Howard Magazine
Howard University has produced some of the greatest names in STEM, many of them the first African Americans to achieve these feats. From the famed Kenneth Clark (B.A. ’35; M.A. ’36) and Mamie Clark (B.S. ’38; M.A. ’39)to Patricia Bath (M.D. ’68), the first Black female doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention, the list goes on and on.
Another such great in the STEM field, Harley Flack Sr., worked his way to become the founding dean and professor at the College of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences. One of his sons, Christopher Flack (B.A., ’95)worked in D.C. government and had a hand in converting the Ecology building on Howard’s campus to what is now the Howard University Middle School of Math and Science, more commonly known as (MS)2. Christopher Flack’s son, Malachi, recently finished 8th grade at the middle school, and his family expects “great things” from the third-generation Flack.
“I always love the fact that, when they came up with the concept of the charter school, math and science were put out front as key to their curriculum,” Christopher Flack said. “Of course, when it came time for Malachi to complete 8th grade, we sent him to the charter school. I guess the legacy had come full circle from my father to Malachi.”
Howard alumni around the world are creating lineages of brilliant minds, and in a world where careers in STEM fields are increasingly in demand, industry leaders and policymakers have been calling for improvements in K-12 math and science education as well as an increase in production of STEM undergrads over the last few years.
Cheri Philip (B.S. ’00) and Romaneio Golphin Sr., who attended Howard University for a year, have gone above and beyond in answering that call in their own way. They posted a video that went viral a few years back that showed their 2-year-old son, Romanieo Jr., answering questions about chemistry and physics while eating his Cheerios. The video was created in part to demonstrate some of the learning tools they’ve utilized to cultivate the nurturing learning environment that viewers saw Romanieo Jr. flourishing in at such a young age.
“We early on saw that he was very curious about the world around him, as every child is,” Philip said. “It’s not so much that Romanieo Jr. is so unique and exceptional as many have often asked or said of him, it’s really about the amount of time we put into understanding where he is and where he can go because of his interests.”
Discrimination against Black Airbnb users has been brought to light recently with people taking to social media with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack to tell personal stories where they were denied a room with Airbnb, the online platform where people can list and rent places to stay. As the stories generally go: a white host declined a black user’s request but accepts a (real or fake) white user’s request for the same dates.
Rohan Gilkes, 40, was one of those telling his story, as he wrote on Medium about how he was denied a place to stay on Airbnb. After posting his story, there was an outpour of other people telling similar stories which prompted him and co-founder Zakiyyah Myers, 40, to create an alternative platform. So, Noirebnb was born.
Gilkes, who was born in Barbados and lives in Tampa, Fla., is no stranger to tech start-ups as he has been helping to build million-dollar tech companies for the last five years. Since the soft launch of Noirebnb on Monday, he’s been getting a lot of attention and praise on social media.
“It just went crazy!” Gilkes said. “I don’t think I’ve slept.”
Volunteers pose for a photo in front of the event’s registration table. (Photos by Erika R. Whitehead)
WASHINGTON – For Shante Miller, stigma is “an ugly word” that came into her life and stole away her grandmother.
“My grandmother passed due to AIDS-related complications in 1996 when I was in ninth grade,” Miller, a consultant for HIV/AIDS in Philadelphia told a crowd that had gathered to talk about the impact of the shame associated with the disease, “and it was because of stigma.”
Her grandmother found out she was HIV positive and never told anyone, she said. One day, Miller and family members came home and found her grandmother was sick.
“She was so sick,” she said. “”We didn’t know what was going on. We took her to the doctor and came home without her.
“My grandmother would not go to the doctor, and she would not tell us what was going on with her.”
Miller is one of the millions whose lives have been affected by the shame, the stigma, associated with HIV and AIDS.
Many HBCU football teams faced lopsided losses in the first two weeks under the “guaranteed games” system that pays smaller schools to play major athletic programs. Courtesy photo.
WASHINGTON – Like many teams at historically black colleges and universities across the nation, Howard University’s football team lost its first two games of the season by embarrassingly large margins; for Howard, a combined score of 118 to 0.
The second trouncing, a 76-0 loss to Boston College, made national news when referees shortened the game to avoid injuries and further embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Morgan State, a perennial MEAC powerhouse, lost 63 to 7 in its first game and 67 to 14 a week later. Other HBCU teams posted similar results. In all, they lost by combined scores of 492 to 92 in the first week.
These HBCUs, as well as predominately white small college teams take those beatings annually because they need the money. The teams are paid millions and millions of dollars to play games they are expected to lose against big name football programs like Air Force, Georgia, Boston College, Michigan, Alabama and others.
The football teams are being paid to play in “guaranteed games,” as experts called them. In these football and basketball games, schools with much larger athletic programs pay schools with small athletic programs large sums to play early-season games at the larger-budgeted school’s stadium for what they consider an easy win.
Just recently, Southern University collected a $650,000 check to play the University of Georgia in Athens. It lost 48 to 6.
Briahnna M. Brown 