Weekly Media Roundup - October 3, 2012

Prana Yoga Center in Geneva is developing an afterschool program for teens where they can practice yoga and have a space to do their homework. Lori Glazebrook, the program’s head and Prana Yoga Center’s marketing and promotional manager, said she wanted to create the OmWork Club because there aren’t many yoga programs for teens. Glazebrook told the Daily Herald, “Stress from outside sources was definitely considered when designing the OmWork Club, but so was stress related to school performance, peer relationships, and the benefits of physical activity.”

 

Mark Thorne, a special education teacher and afterschool program sponsor from Morgantown, is raising funds for South Middle School’s bike club by running in the West Virginia Trilogy – a three day race that totals 94.1 miles. Thorne told the Associated Press he was raising money this way so that students didn’t have to go door-to-door to fundraise. “All funds raised from the pledge drive will be used to purchase helmets, T-shirts and equipment needed to repair bikes,” Thorne said.  The South Middle School bike club meets every two weeks, rain or shine, and has 42 student members.

 

Candace Perez, a senior at Immokalee High School, credits her second grade afterschool program teacher at the Guadalupe Center with her academic success. As the child of a migrant farmworker, Perez said her childhood was “transient and unstable,” but after attending the afterschool program she got help with her homework and remembered “doing arts and crafts, going on fieldtrips, and other hands-on activities that helped me learn things I had missed while I was out of school,” the Naples Daily News reports. “Because of the help received, I began turning in my homework and I felt, for the first time ever, that I was not in a losing race. Even as a second grader, I knew I had been given a great gift, being part of this awesome program,” she continued. Perez was awarded the Sun Life Rising Star $5,000 scholarship in September, and now Megan McCarthy, her afterschool teacher, is director of program operations at the Guadalupe Center.

 

The All Stars Project of New Jersey is undergoing renovations so that urban youth in Newark can have “a stage, a spotlight and a place to shine,” The Star-Ledger reports. Part of the funding behind the new building was raised by the family of Scott Flamm, a successful financier who volunteered for more than 10 years with the All Stars program. Flamm died in 2006 and his family and friends raised 1.5 million to support the cause “he loved.” The Scott Flamm Center for Afterschool Development is set to reopen Jan. 17, 2013, with a 110-seat theater, conference room and office spaces.