In a season of extreme need, some mutual aid groups are flourishing. Others are sinking under the weight.
Giving and volunteerism ebb and crest with pandemic fatigue, civil unrest, and the weather.
In April, Jena Harris and Katie Briggs ventured into two West Philadelphia parks to give out free produce and pints of homemade soup. The two friends, both freelance chefs and food activists, weren’t sure what to expect.
Pictured above: Volunteers with the West Philly Bunny Hop pack produce shares at the group’s warehouse space in Yeadon, PA.
But people came, masked and gloved, to the distribution sites in the Cedar Park and Cobbs Creek neighborhoods, where gentrification has displaced longtime residents and exacerbated inequality. Soon all the soup was gone. Harris and Briggs did it the next week and the next, adding rolls of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and bottles of bleach procured from restaurant-supply stores when supermarket shelves were empty.
Black-owned camp aims to make hunting more diverse
By JASON NARK, The Philadelphia InquirerDecember 26, 2020 GMT
PHILADELPHIA (AP)
If Warren Gamaliel Harding Brown could see the hunting camp his grandson has crafted in the Poconos, he’d admire the large, stone fireplace, the taxidermied deer head, and the turkey feathers on display beside some spent shotgun shells.
The flatscreen television mounted on the wall might have surprised the late patriarch, but the spirit of the place would have pleased the man who taught older family members to hunt and inspired the younger ones, decades ago, in rural Virginia.That’s why Jonathan Wright named the the place “Pocono Browns.”
IEEFA U.S.: Investors would best avoid two proposed Virginia combined-cycle gas plants
Unneeded projects, if they go forward, will likely end up as stranded assets
Investors should think twice before putting any money into two proposed natural gas-fired combined-cycle power plants in central Virginia. The rapidly moving transition to non-fossil generation resources is almost certain to turn the two plants, which would be only a mile apart, into stranded assets well before the end of their normal life expectancies.
The two plants, the 1,060-megawatt (MW) C4GT unit and the 1,650MW Chickahominy facility, would feed into PJM, the 13-state (plus the District of Columbia) transmission operator that already has far more generating capacity than it needs. The system’s peak demand this past summer was 144,266MW on July 20; total available capacity topped 187,000MW, giving PJM a reserve margin of just under 30% almost double its target margin of 15.5%.
Photo: WINA
Appalachian Christian School: Closed Thur.
Augusta County Public Schools: Virtual at-home learning for all students Thur., 12-month employees report 10am
Buckingham County Public Schools: Closed Thur., meals provided
Charlottesville Catholic School: 2-hour delay Thur.
Charlottesville City Schools: Late opening 10am.
Community Christian Academy: Closed Thur.
Covenant School: Closed Thur., grades 6-12 distance learning
Culpeper Christian School: Closed Thur.
Culpeper County Public Schools: Closed Thur.
Faith Christian Academy: Open late at 9am Thur.
First Baptist Preschool: Closed Thur.
Fluvanna County Public Schools: Closed Thur., Code 3
Four Seasons Learning Ctr: 2-hour delay Thur.
Generations Montessori School: Open late at 10:30am Thur.
Virginia leaders think it might be time for a more holistic approach. A new statewide project, the Virginia Partnership for School Mental Health, aims to strengthen school mental health services through two major pathways: by building a pipeline of graduate student trainees to high-need school divisions, and by creating an inter-professional network of school mental health practitioners.
Funded by a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the partnership between the Virginia Department of Education and the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development was announced last year.
Now, after eight months meeting with providers on the ground, identifying mental health needs and refining the project structure, the first efforts are underway to turn a fragmented system into a robust network of mental health services.