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team xbot is a nationally recognized robotics team that recruits inner city students from Franklin H.S. and surrounding sister schools in Seattle, WA. Volunteer mentors car pool 30+ students to team xbot’s robot build lab in Redmond, WA. Students and mentors meet Tues/thurs evengings (6-9pm) and Saturdays 10 am – 4pm building robots, creating 3D animation clips, fund raising and creating marketing/promotional items. team xbot is a year around robots team as requested by the students.
How would your group use the award money?
“team xbot Programming with LabView Workshop” – The grant will provide funding for
a. Robotic curriculum development and publication (pod casts, online training, and workshops).
b. Offer a project- based, hands on workshop for the programming (NI LabView) aspects of a 120 lb 5’ tall robot designed, built and programmed in six and half short weeks.
c. The team must train new members as our students matriculate every three years – therefore the importance of a published curriculum (teacher resources such as instructor guides, podcasts or online training).
d. Offer the curriculum and workshop to the FIRST Robotics community that is now 55 teams strong in the PNW. There are over 2000 teams worldwide that compete at the FIRST events.
e. Funding request:
i. Practice chassis material (aluminum, gears, motors, sprockets, etc) $1,500
ii. National Instruments cRio robot brain $1,500 (embedded platform for academia provides deterministic, reconfigurable hardware and software for students and researchers focusing on embedded systems).
iii. The robot operator interface (Classmate Netbook) $1,000
iv. Curriculum production/publication $1,000 team web site posting, offer workshops at local FIRST events, summer workshops and local schools)
Mela (means solutions in Amharic, Ethiopian) Group is a non-profit (applying for 501c) organization composed of twelve dedicated Ethiopian professionals in the Seattle area with a common desire to make a positive impact on our local community as well as provide assistance to the underprivileged in Ethiopia. With a motto of “Serve and Live,” Mela strongly believes in the merit of helping those in need.
Our mission is to provide charitable services to distressed and underprivileged Ethiopians through the support of philanthropic causes and compassionate volunteerism.
Mela strives to advance its mission by collaborating with other nonprofit organizations locally and internationally. We believe that “the whole is greater than the sum of the individual part”. As such, we create strategic synergies with other organizations to advance a common goal.
How would your group use the award money?
Mela Group would use the award to organize a resource day for low-income Ethiopian single parents. These parents are facing serious difficulties in achieving self-sufficiency for their families because of lack of information, language and cultural barriers. They are overwhelmed with twelve-hour workdays. Exhausted and stressed, they lose out on parenting time with their children which creates parent-child disconnect that often results in child behavioral issues.
Our goal is to have a workshop for these parents, to provide them with expert information and to let them know that there are resources available to help alleviate some of their stresses. We want to help bridge the communication gap between parents and their children; we will also develop an information packet to be available at community centers and online.
In order to accomplish our goals, we will partner with established non-profit organizations and governments that provide essential services in education, health care, social services, financial services, translators, nutrition and low-income housing.
The resource day will encompass:
Organized workshop – Assemble various resources for single parents. Invite social workers, health care professional, non-profit organizations that aid single parents, educational support, finance specialists, translators, nutritionists and volunteers.
Resource packet – Compile list of resources available for single parents and create a binder and hand it out to attendees and community centers. Our goal is to make the information very simple and easy to understand. We will have this information available online to all in need by posting it on our website as well as linking it to other websites that are easily accessible.
Communication – Help bridge the communication gap between the single parent and child who have differences as a result of language, education and culture barriers. Provide information to the single parents about mentoring and parenting tools, translators, creating communication with their child’s school, knowledge of resource centers; knowledge of government and non-profit healthcare, financial, education, and social support.
The resource that we come together to share is our dance form that celebrates the beauty and strength of the feminine spirit.
We are a group of professional dancers that have dedicated ourselves to a unique style of bellydance that utilizes a language of the body to create improvisational performances. We blend the movement and music of many different cultures with the purpose of empowering women across the globe. Through workshops, performances, classes and our annual festival, we strive to promote positive body image to women of all sizes, ages and cultures.
In addition we have donated our performances to fundraisers to benefit breast cancer research, the Seattle Children’s Hospital, and local educational fund drives. In 2005 we hosted a fundraiser to benefit survivors of Hurricane Katrina and in January 2010 we will be hosting a night of dance to benefit the Women for Women International foundation.
How would your group use the award money?
In an effort to share the therapeutic benefit of bellydance we would create an outreach program to reach at risk teenagers, women of lower income and women who would not otherwise be exposed to our art.
Specifically the money would be applied to travel expenses for the troupe to reach communities that have no access to our art form, as well as offer on-going free classes and workshops to women of lower income and at risk teens.
ReWA is a non-profit, multi-ethnic organization that promotes inclusion, independence, personal leadership, and strong communities by providing refugee and immigrant women and families with culturally and linguistically appropriate services. ReWA advocates for social justice, public policy changes, and equal access to services while respecting cultural values and the right to self-determination. To advance our mission, ReWA collaborates with agencies from across Washington state to implement the annual Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day. Beginning in 2006, ReWA organized the first-ever Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day to bring together refugees and immigrants to rally at the State Capitol in Olympia, and present policy recommendations on key issues impacting newcomers.
In preparation for the event, ReWA works with the Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Planning Committee to identify key policy concerns, develop policy recommendations, strategize about recruitment, and implement recruitment strategies. The Committee includes social service agencies, colleges and Mutual Assistance Associations serving refugee and immigrant communities from across the globe.
By bridging the gap that exists between different ethnic communities and addressing issues affecting newcomers as a whole, ReWA was able to bring the collective voices of more than 1,500 constituents to the State Capitol in 2009.
How would your group use the award money?
The funding from the Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union will be contributed to the 2010 Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day, which will be held in February. ReWA is the sole fundraising agency to implement and manage the Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day. As the lead agency in this effort, ReWA identifies and brings together key partners from across Washington state to join the Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Planning Committee. These partners are critical in coordinating the event in their locality and networking with participants to bring over 1,500 refugees and immigrants to Olympia. ReWA also provides buses for participants to transport to Olympia so that they could directly present the position papers to the State Legislators. With funds awarded from the Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union, ReWA will enhance its support of the Refugee and Immigrant Legislative Day, allowing more than 1,500 refugees and immigrants to participate.