The Community Partnership Board (CPB) on Dec. 2 awarded more than $20,000 in grant monies to Cornell University-student-initiated, grassroots service-learning projects. CPB, a program of the Cornell University Public Service Center, awarded grants of up to $2,000 each to projects that address an outstanding social need in a community, which can be local, national or international.

Through a combination of social responsibility, partnership, student leadership, education and evaluation, CPB strives to strengthen the ties between Cornell students and their communities. During the past 10 years, CPB has given out $90,000 in grants to community partnership programs. The program is funded in part by the Student Activity Fee at Cornell.

The following projects and programs, with their Cornell student grant coordinators, were awarded grants of up to $2,000 each:

• Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC) Pee-Wee Room Renovation

Jennifer Harber '03

This renovation will provide more learning and growth opportunities for the youngest population that GIAC serves: prekindergarten students. These 4-year-olds participate in the Pee-Wee program at GIAC, which serves 10 to 15 students daily. Currently, the Pee-Wee room lacks the stimulation that such children need, with few wall decorations and hands-on resources. This renovation will target not only the physical room, but the program itself, providing exciting new resources like decorations, art supplies and educational activities.

• Big Red AIDS Campaign

Rose-Marie Jerlaianu '02

Sexuality and AIDS Foster Education (SAFE) is a student-run organization at the Cornell Public Service Center that brings awareness to the campus and Ithaca communities about sexually transmitted diseases through outreach, education and political activism. This year SAFE will work in collaboration with Youth Against AIDS in an educational and political campaign to shake up young people's complacency about AIDS. The activities this spring will focus on the Ithaca-area high-school age population as well as Cornell students.

• HALO: Help a Life Organization

Keisuke Nakagawa '04, Daguang Sun '04, Nina Rajpurohit '04

HALO's mission is to empower college students to be active participants in projects to save the lives of newborn babies. Specifically, HALO aims to raise money to donate critical medical technology to underresourced hospitals in New York state. HALO members will establish liaisons with needy hospitals, advertise itself on the Cornell campus, direct fund-raising efforts and, finally, purchase and transfer life-saving equipment to those hospitals.

• From Farm to Fork

Juleah Faye Tolosky '03, Rachael Kelly '02

The Cornell Agricultural Leadership Student Association (CALSA) intends to help spread agricultural literacy in Ithaca. They will visit Ithaca City School District elementary students to create and reinforce student connections to agriculture. Local Future Farmers of America members will be paired with CALSA members in groups and will be assigned in teams to schools within the district to present workshops for third-grade students in Ithaca. The lessons will focus on sharing with elementary students the knowledge of where their food comes from and how it gets to their dinner table. Different curricula (reading, spelling, math, history, etc.) can be taught using the integration of agriculture in the classroom.

• Beverly J. Martin Elementary School (BJM) After-School Newspaper

Abra Havens '03, Susan Chavez '03, Leon Cruz '04

The recipients will begin a BJM After-School Program newspaper, written, organized and published by the children of Beverly J. Martin's School Age Program. The children will work in groups according to grade level to organize their own page of the newsletter. The children will be in charge of interviewing and other means of gathering information for their stories. The children in higher grade levels will be in charge of taking pictures and also will have the opportunity of using tape recorders for their interviewing purposes. The children will be taught keyboarding and will be responsible for typing their articles. The newspaper, after being compiled and edited, will then be copied and mailed to the household of each child in the after-school program. All of this will be carried out during the six hours of enrichment the children have during the week.

• MacCormick Art Class

Rebecca Messineo '02, Katie Sawicki '02

Last year Cornell students started teaching an art class at MacCormick Secure Center, a maximum security facility of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services for boys ages 14-21. Each semester the students teaching the class at the center have focused on a different project. This spring they will do a project that will focus on learning about puppetry as an art form. They will look at practices of puppetry in different cultures and in traditions of celebration and resistance. They will work with the inmates to develop ways to use puppets to express ideas and tell stories, either by using forms they have learned or by creating their own forms. They will also put together an exhibition of the work at either MacCormick or Cornell.

• Multicultural Initiative for Racial Awareness through Reading (MIRAR)

Tamika Lewis '02, Stephanie Harris '02, Jackie Castro '03

MIRAR is a program initiated by BLEND (Bi-/Multiracial Lineages, Ethnicities and Nationalities Discussion) in conjunction with the after-school programs at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School and the Greater Ithaca Activities Center in downtown Ithaca. The program's goals are to foster racial awareness in children and in the process hone these children's reading skills through the use of books that incorporate multiracial, interracial and multicultural themes. They feel that it is important for children not to be racially preoccupied but racially aware , especially in a society that pays so much attention to the social construct of "race." By fostering a sense of racial awareness, children will be able to appreciate and celebrate both their similarities and differences.

• College Is Key

Christina Lofton '04

This planned event will be an opportunity for 15-20 Ithaca High School students, many of whom may not be considering college, to interact with Cornell students of similar career interests, to be motivated to attend college and to fulfill their dreams. The students will visit Cornell in February.

• College Info Session

Edwardo Valero '04

Valero and other successful alumni of Orosi High School (Cutler-Orosi, Calif.) will return to the high school and inform students, starting at the freshman level, of strategies for getting into and going to college. Most of the students, who come from a deprived academic environment and whose parents have little education, need this guidance from their peers who have gone on to become educationally successful. The College Info Session will allow students of all grade levels and their Spanish-speaking parents to get information regarding college life and the expectations surrounding a college degree.

• Lesbian Health Initiative

Somjen Frazer '02

The lesbian health initiative project is intended to collect data about barriers to health care for Cornell undergraduate- and graduate-student women who partner with women. The information collected from the research will be used to design outreach programs targeting the health care needs and issues of these women and/or training sessions for Gannett Health Center clinicians. The forms of this outreach are to be determined by the ongoing research. Probable forms include: pamphlets on lesbian health issues and health consumer issues, workshop packets, posters for Gannett and posters for outreach purposes.

• Multicultural Education Program

Rotem Ayalon '02, Matthew Gewolb '04, Jessica Brown '04

This is a multicultural education outreach effort of the Roots and Shoots humanitarian and environmental program, centered on diversity. In its first year, Muslim students from Cornell will visit local schools, beginning with Enfield Elementary School, to lead a series of discussions and lessons with children about Muslim culture, including traditions, religion, food and dance. In their music classes, students will learn about the music of Muslim cultures and work toward performing traditional songs and chants in a public performance. At the end of the program, students will create artwork expressing their dreams and fears for the world. These lessons on Muslim culture will be the starting point for a series of multicultural lessons about many different cultures and religions.

• Ngware

Andrew Mude and Lydiah Bosire, graduate students

Bondo is a district in western Kenya, where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is over 30 percent in the adult population. Unemployment is very high and it increases the vulnerability of youth to HIV infection. The premise is that economic viability, as well as AIDS education, is necessary to help those at high risk. In 1998, a community member initiated a project of starting self-employment in this region. This grant will be used to complement the project by purchasing sewing machines, teaching women how to sew and leading them to become self-employed.

• YOU: Youth Outreach Urgently

Mary Ann Nkansa '02

Innovate Youth Outreach of Ghana (IYOG) is a nongovernmental organization established in August 2001 in Accra, Ghana. Its first project, entitled Youth Outreach Urgently, will educate and inform the public, particularly the youth, about HIV/AIDS, which is the biggest obstacle facing the youth of Ghana today. The program's target populations live in underprivileged areas where they do not have easy access to information about sexually transmitted diseases. Other target populations include sex workers, juvenile prisoners and street children. IYOG volunteers realized early on that in order to make a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS, they must be able to reach out to the people in the community who need the help the most, no matter where they are.