Enlarge The group shared experiences and lessons in communication.

Posted: October 27th, 2011 Amanda Pagliarini

When it comes to communicating your message or about your cause, take the time to understand your audience if you want them to take the time to understand you.  

This was the recurring theme Oct. 25 at "Make Your Voice Heard: Tried and Used Communication Strategies," a civic summer school session that was part of Crossroads’ Know It 2 Work It initiative. 

Panelist Brandi Williams, a public relations consultant, noted that the first thing she asks a client is not what message they want to communicate, but who they want to hear it. She looks at communication strategies as a bag of tricks—the strategy is in using the right trick for the right audience.   

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Posted: October 26th, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• It’s not necessarily cause for parading in the streets, but a report released Tuesday shows signs that home values in Charlotte and around the country may slowly be improving.


• Several community leaders, including Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Chipp Bailey and County Manager Harry Jones gathered Sunday at Myers Park Baptist Church to talk about the “moral imperative” of helping our public schools. Do you think there’s a moral component to helping our kids in public schools learn?


• Last month, the Leon Levine Foundation awarded a $25,000 grant to the cash-strapped Hospitality House in Charlotte, a longtime nonprofit for families with hospitalized loved ones. The organization had to start charging families because of a lack of donations, and while the grant was welcome, the foundation was expected to raise matching funds by December. But someone unexpected stepped up instead—Leon Levine’s son Howard, the Family Dollar CEO.


• Democratic National Convention organizers made it plain from the beginning that they wanted to make sure minority contractors won a significant share of the work the convention would generate. An Atlanta construction firm billed as the nation’s fourth-largest minority-owned business is among several recently awarded $7 million in convention-related contracts, along with a pair of prominent Charlotte firms.


• Finally, in keeping with our efforts to remind you Charlotte has some alternative flavor goin’ on: An interview with the artist R.A.W.

Posted: October 21st, 2011 Amanda Pagliarini

It was standing room only in the CPCC auditorium for the MeckEd / WFAE Interactive Debate with CMS School Board Candidates on Wednesday night.  Regardless of whether you had a seat, each attendee—both live and virtual—was given a voice through the use of live audience polling to determine debate topics via texting or social media. 

The room was filled with not just parents, teachers and community members, but with current and former CMS students. The youngest noted in the room was a sixth grader from Community House Middle School who confidently stepped up to the microphone during open Q&A and asked why his school no longer has fitness or journalism electives—making a point to express his confusion given the number of overweight students in his school.

Assessing student learning and the achievement gap were the two topics of priority to attendees. When discussing the emphasis placed on standardized tests, candidate McCray stated that we needed to prepare our children not for a test, but for the world; noting that the world would require creativity, critical thinking, and the ability to work in groups.

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Posted: October 19th, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• Last week brought huge news for—and a huge gift to—Johnson C. Smith University. The Duke Endowment in Charlotte presented the school with a $35 million donation believed to be among the top five gifts ever to one of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. JCSU will use most of the money to build a science center to support the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics program. What an astounding gift.


• About 7,000 people stepped through the streets of Optimist Park, Belmont and other poor neighborhoods Sunday for the annual CROP Walk, a 3.75-mile amble through Charlotte that aimed to raise $260,000 to help the hungry. Did you join the walk?


• Planning to attend the school board candidates’ forum at CPCC tonight? Bring your hardware.


• There was: drumming; video from India; poetry; talk of technological advances and its ability to transform our world; and mix tapes for the world. Pretty standard TEDxCharlotte, in other words.


• Finally, President Obama visited our state Monday to talk about jobs, his job-creation plan and a Republican-dominated House of Representatives devoted to blocking anything he tries. Setting aside whether you support Obama or not, how can we use North Carolina’s status as a battleground state, as it was in 2008 and will be again, as a way to illuminate larger issue in our communities?