Enlarge Matthews Alive! (Photo by Erin Smith, The Charlotte Observer)

Posted: September 8th, 2010 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• A pair of features in the Sunday paper about two people with commitments to fresh thinking about Charlotte’s future--Candice Langston gets set to host a convention of creative thinkers September 24 at TEDxCharlotte, the Queen City version of a Silicon Valley thinkfest; and local sustainability advocate Shannon Binns continues to develop ways to improve the city’s long-term quality of life through the nonprofit Sustain Charlotte.


• Mayor Anthony Foxx, the freshly named chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Small Business Task Force, is trying to come up with ways to help small businesses grow in the recession.


• The Charlotte Chapter of The Links Inc. will sponsor a two-mile walk starting in Marshall Park on September 18 to raise awareness about childhood obesity, a problem that’s worst among Latino boys and African-American girls.


• And the magnificent pre-autumn weather over the weekend meant a monster turnout for a festival that’s raised more than $750,000 for area nonprofits and volunteer efforts--Matthews Alive! Were you there?

Posted: September 1st, 2010 Greg Lacour

A group of 13 philanthropists, businesspeople, government officials and citizens are joining up under the banner of Foundation For The Carolinas to try to relieve one of Charlotte’s knottiest problems-–how to close the achievement gap and curb dropout rates in public schools.

It’s an increasingly difficult task, especially with the economy taking a toll on tax revenue and public funding for school systems like Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s. So like some other school systems throughout the country, CMS is turning to the business and philanthropic communities for help.

The new CMS Investment Study Group’s 13 members will meet with administrative and staffing help from FFTC beginning September 8. The group will examine other communities’ experiences with philanthropic involvement in public education. By the end of 2010, they hope to produce a set of recommendations on how best to apply philanthropic gifts to help lessen the performance gap between affluent and poor, and minority and non-minority, CMS students.

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