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Living Together The United Way Enlists and Enables Americans to Help One Another
T
he United Way recently celebrated its 125th anniversary – determined to remain at the forefront of charitable giving nationwide. For more than a century its stated mission has been to enlist and enable Americans to help one another overcome hardship and despair. With more than 1,400 local chapters across the country, the largely volunteer organization was the first to establish procedural
standards for coordinating fundraising activities, the collection of contributions and the disbursement of those funds to the 45,000plus humanitarian groups it now assists. Despite a management fundraising scandal in 1992 that besieged the organization for years, UW has endeavored to maintain its place as the nation’s pre-eminent services agency.
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A woman philanthropist, in cooperation with a priest, two ministers and a rabbi, established United Way’s roots in Denver in 1887, amid a period of local corruption in government and crime bosses. Striving to address Denver’s dire welfare problems, they created an organization to serve as an agent to collect funds for local charities, coordinate relief services, counsel and refer those in need to cooperating agencies and directly issue emergency assistance grants to anyone who could not be referred. They raised a sizable amount of money to fund the precursor organization of the United Way. Today, the UW’s mission is to conquer need on all levels of society through a multitude of partnerships, ranging from government agencies to faith-based communities, financial institutions to health care organizations and organized labor to schools, all of which must go through an accreditation process to qualify as a UW Partner Agency. The Jewish Family Services Agency and the Jewish Federation, both of Las Vegas, are accredited partner agencies. Specific issues, however, are determined and prioritized at the local level, to best address the diversity and demands of each community’s needs, according to UW. “The community-based agenda of the United Way of Southern Nevada focuses on the three building blocks for a good life – health, income and education,” said UWSN President Cass Palmer. “In order to conquer poverty and its manifold tribulations,” Palmer says, “children need a quality education that will lead to a stable job with sufficient income to eventually support a family through retirement and sustained good health.” Founded in Southern Nevada in 2003, UWSN’s Success By 6 program provides preschool age children access to the services and opportunities they need to enter elementary school with self-confidence and awareness.
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“Insuring healthy early childhood development prevents serious behavioral problems in later years,” said Tammy Gates, director of the Hill and Dale Child Development Center on Tropicana, near Pecos, where she has worked for 15 years. Stacy Burrell’s son attends the Variety Early Learning Center, on D Street between Jefferson and Washington avenues. When her child began there a year ago, she says, “he was quiet and unsure of himself. Now he interacts socially with the other kids. He’s reading — he loves to read, and brings us a stack of books each night to read with him — and he has this real thirst for wanting to learn and to know more about the world around him.” Diane Anagnostopoulos is co-director with Marisa Lacroix of the Shenker Academy for Early Childhood Education, in Summerlin. “Studies have shown that children who attend an accredited preschool program enter kindergarten developmentally on track regarding literacy, and with greater social, emotional and intellectual skills than their counterparts who do not,” Anagnostopoulos says. “And as those children are tracked through their young adult years, those who began in preschool overwhelmingly pursue higher education, resulting in careers, financial stability and ultimately making a positive contribution to society,” she adds. Each of the early childhood development centers, along with some 30 others in and around the Las Vegas valley, provide high quality school readiness programs and educational resources for families that want and value this kind of preschool education for their children. The centers have joined forces with the United Way to accept qualified children from families in need and eligible for Tuition Assistance Preschool Scholarships, known as TAPS.
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“TAPS enables children to attend a vital preschool program they otherwise could not afford. As a result, their chance for success in life is significantly improved through grade-level literacy, on-time graduation and more, resulting in a better community,” says Palmer, the chief executive officer at UWSN. “Through TAPS we get closer to realizing the UW worldwide goal of increasing the graduation rate in Clark County (by) 50 percent by 2018.” Shenker Academy, established in 1998, recently won accreditation from the National Association of Education for Young People. In September 2011, Shenker signed on with the COR (for Child Observation Record) Reporting Assessment Program. “COR is internationally respected as an authentic, research-validated, observation-based assessment tool,” Anagnostopoulos says. “They do a full assessment from birth to 6 years of age. That data is then processed through the High Scope Perry Education Foundation, which tracks each child through high school and records their choices from there – college, trade school, married, jail, etc. “Utilizing the data, they publish statistics regarding the benefits or not of attending a preschool program prior to entering the school system. Thus
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far the statistics are hands-down in favor of the benefits of attending.” High Scope is also an educational research foundation that develops curricula and trains staff and faculty in “active participatory learning” in the classroom. “Since High Scope receives funding from the UW,” Anagnostopoulos says, “and utilizing COR as a preschool assessment tool is one of the criteria in becoming a partner with the UW, the UW approached us about partnering with them to accept TAPS families: to enhance our program and faculty aptitude through free High Scope educator training; and to offer to TAPS families another UW-funded program called Family Engagement Resource Centers, which meets regularly with TAPS parents to guide, empower and support their efforts to be a better parent, to partner with their children in learning and to discuss other child-related needs. “We said yes for two reasons. We certainly want to be a part of helping the community and the United Way partner agencies provide outstanding benefits. “Our already exceptional early childhood programs and teachers are now elevated even more. Our classroom environment now fosters enhanced independent learning and engagement within the context of classroom rules and boundaries that students learn are important to respect. In brief, what we ultimately see coming from these little 3and 4-year-olds is not to be believed,” Anagnostopoulos says. “And while our TAPS families attend school in strict confidence regarding their financial status, the level of volunteerism from our parents has increased substantially,” she adds. United Way believes in finding the best way to help the most people. Its “Live United” campaign “means it takes everyone working together to create a brighter future,” Palmer says. “What a wonderful achievement it will be to find that the product of our investment in this vision for education is the collective prosperity, happiness, safety and all-around wellbeing of a society. That’s what this United Way program is all about.” — Lynn Wexler-Margolies
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grill Stethoscopes & Microphones Dr Daliah Wachs is taking patients on AM 720 KDAWN She packs a mean stethoscope in one hand and a radio mic in the other. She’s Daliah Wachs, the dynamic doc of the medical airwaves, dispensing straight talk health advice to Las Vegas listeners on AM 720 KDAWN; on the Internet’s TalkSuperstation.com; XM Satellite Channel 166; and more than a dozen radio stations from California to Kentucky. Her educational, candid and entertaining perspectives on a variety of health concerns have placed her on the broadcast fast track. She was in syndication within a year on the air; named within two years to The Top 250 Radio Talk Show Hosts by Talker Magazine; and has one of the fastest expanding radio programs in the country. But it doesn’t end there. Dr. Daliah practices integrative family medicine in offices here in Las Vegas that she shares with her chiropractor husband. She’s a mom. She teaches at Touro University and UNLV’s School of Medicine; was nominated Woman of the Year by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society; and donates her time to Children’s Miracle Network and St. Judes for Children. DAVID barely caught up with this medical tour de force as she and her family took a much needed break in Alaska. DAVID: Whatever possessed you to combine medicine with radio showbiz? DR. DALIAH: Well, I was exposed to radio as a child. In the ‘60s, my grandfather told stories on the radio. At 3 years of age I would run around imitating him with a toy microphone. Curiously, at that same time, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. Go figure. Some paths are just destined. By college age I was presented with two opportunities … to pursue a career in musical comedy or accept an academic scholarship to UNLV in pre-med. I opted for the latter. DAVID: How and when did radio come into play? DR. DALIAH: When the recession hit in 2008, many families found themselves out of work and without health insurance. People needed a place to go for medical advice, so I thought it would be a good idea to offer my services to answer some of their concerns and questions. I bought airtime on KLAV AM 1230 Las Vegas in 2009. The rest is history. KDAWN loved the show and picked it up within a week! DAVID: Wow! That’s amazing. To what do you attribute your appeal? DR. DALIAH: My honesty. I’m one of the people. I’m just like my callers. I don’t pretend
that I’m above the issues they are asking about. If I’m having trouble with hemorrhoids, I talk about it openly. I’ll tell my listeners that I’m sitting on a hemorrhoid pillow! That makes people comfortable. It makes them feel like they can call me with anything, and they don’t have to be embarrassed. There was a 15-year-old boy in California who was too embarrassed to tell anyone about a growth on his scrotum … then one day it was too late. I don’t ever want that to happen on my watch. DAVID: I listen to your show. You insert a lot of humor in the points you make and the lessons you impart. Where does that come from? DR. DALIAH: I was born light-hearted. I naturally saw the funny side of things. I was the class clown, which wasn’t always a good thing! But I owe my mom for encouraging me to utilize my humor. She never tried to shut me down. Humor can bring down walls that might otherwise prevent us from opening up to what we need to hear … like the medical advice I offer. DAVID: How do you have time for your medical practice? DR. DALIAH: Well, it’s not easy, but I love my patients. I’m very loyal to them. I get into the office as much as I can. It’s great that my husband and I share office space. I’m also working on two books, a possible local TV show, and my charity work is very important to me. DAVID: What are your thoughts on the current health care reform legislation? DR. DALIAH: Our health care system definitely needs fixing, but unfortunately this health care bill has not addressed the problems adequately. In many instances it’s made things worse. It was written and passed hastily and not well thought through mostly because of politicians who wanted to grab the credit during their elected term. The mandates on employers are problematic; the affordable health care guidelines for physicians restrict their autonomy on how to fully treat a patient; the so called tax that will be imposed on those without insurance … well, it’s going to be cheaper to pay the tax than to insure a family, so many will opt to pay the tax … now you still have a country with too many uninsured people! Many doctors are leaving the profession. It’s a shame. But I’m not going anywhere, and hope to be around for a long time, reaching audiences with helpful medical advice. Thank goodness the health care bill can’t mess with that.
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