CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Poverty and its influence on children, schools and the Champaign-Urbana community – and finding new strategies to address it – will be the topic of a two-part forum on Feb. 10 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The Saturday event will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a keynote talk, panel discussion and community forum at the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois St., Urbana. The featured speaker will be Nancy K. Cauthen, deputy director of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University.
Joining Cauthen for the panel discussion will be Maneesha Date, a policy analyst for Voices for Illinois Children; Jane Quinlan, from the Champaign-Ford regional office of education; and representatives from the Champaign and Urbana school districts.
From 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., there will be a seminar for educators, policymakers, and human services, health care and child welfare professionals, as well as interested community members. The focus of the seminar at Levis will be a community workshop program called “Bridges Out of Poverty,” developed in part from the ideas of Ruby Payne, the founder and president of aha! Process Inc.
The goal in both sessions will be to not only discuss poverty-related concerns, but also to seek new ways to work together and to more effectively address the concerns, said Robert Henderson, a professor emeritus of special education at Illinois and one of the organizers.
The morning session is free and open to the public, with a continental breakfast available before the event, starting at 8. The seminar that follows requires advance registration by Feb. 5 and a $25 fee to cover lunch and materials used in the session.
The forum is the latest in a series initiated in the fall of 2005 to promote discussion on education and other related topics, with a focus on the local schools and community. The series is sponsored by the university’s College of Education and organized by the university’s chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, a professional association for educators.
Co-sponsors for the Feb. 10 forum include the Champaign and Urbana school districts, the Illinois North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement, and Parkland College.
To register for the “Bridges Out of Poverty” seminar, call the Illinois North Central Association at 217-333-1120 or e-mail smorriso@uillinois.edu. Teachers and school personnel can earn CEU and CPDU credits by attending.
Additional information about the “Bridges” program can be found on the aha! Process Inc. Web site.
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