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Despite being one of the dance capitals of the world, with 73 public and private colleges and universities offer dance majors, for decades there hasn’t been a single-subject teaching credential in dance for the California public school system.
Azia Banagan, a 10-year-old Richmond resident, was the recipient of a $1,000 community improvement project grant. She will use the money towards free art workshops she will lead herself.
For more than four decades, five Richmond friends have come together to create collaborate art. Meeting weekly, the Gang of Five shares stories, art supplies and drawings.
After the great recession of 2008, inequality widened along racial lines as people lost their homes, often their only major asset. Earlier this month the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C. think tank, reported in “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of US,” that the average white family today has net assets of $141,900, compared with the $11,000 for African American families. This hollowing out of the African American family asset base is a nationwide phenomenon that can be explained by the shrinking African American middle class. It’s even more a factor in “strong market” regions like the Bay Area, where housing costs are soaring.
This past weekend De Anza High School’s Information Technology Academy hosted its first “Free Fix Day” of the school year in De Anza’s school cafeteria. IT Academies are one way schools in West Contra Costa are trying to bridge the digital divide.
This year is the driest in recorded history in California. This has forced the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) to declare a stage 4 drought, the highest stage ever announced in the area, although even higher stages can apply if the drought gets worse. EBMUD is asking East Bay citizens to cut down their water usage. Water is a vital resource to survive. But most of the water on Earth is salt water and not directly usable for humans. Only about…
The concept is simple: a handful of books in a wooden box, mounted in a public space. The books are free. Peruse the selection. Take a book if you’d like. Leave a book in its place if you can. Enjoy. Called the Little Free Library, these informal neighborhood lending libraries have popped up in front of schools, homes, parks, bike paths and cafes in all 50 states and more than 70 countries since a man named Todd Bol installed the…
Sixth grader Clemon Brown loves reading books, but he has a hard time finding books outside of school. “Two weeks ago, I was sitting in my room [and] I want to read a book,” Brown said. He said he wanted to visit a library, but his mom’s car wasn’t working at the time. Brown lives in North Richmond, almost three miles away from the nearest Richmond public library. “That’s really the difficulty,” Richmond Public Library Director Katy Curl said. “[We’re]…
Two years ago, Jake Anderson took three friends from India to an NBA basketball game. To his surprise, his friends weren’t very impressed with what they saw. “We thought basketball games were fast and entertaining. This was the opposite,” one of them said. That was when Anderson realized he had to do something to save the sport he loved. One year later he created a community-based league called “The Run and Only.” “We take players that are terrifically talented and…