News

• News Archive
• EPA Funds Grant to Improve Environmental Health of Children
• River Ambassadors Add Energy to Partnership
• New Faculty Members Tour the Mill City
• At-Risk Youth to Receive Training
• Silka Edits Three Books
• Lowell Cambodian Advocacy Group Wins Award

EPA Funds Grant to Improve Environmental Health of Children

UMass Lowell was awarded $150,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to educate New England health professionals on how to better understand, diagnose and prevent environmental health hazards faced by children.

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River Ambassadors Add Energy to Partnership

Talking trash can be a serious business. Recently, teens from the River Ambassadors Program (RAP) sponsored by the Center for Family, Work and Community, took part in an effort to clean floating trash from one of Lowell's prime features: the North Canal outside Wannalancit Mills. The students, all from Lowell High School, joined the Lowell Historical National Park and Lowell Canalwater Cleaners, who provided the equipment and supervision. Though the project was halted early by the Italian company that owns the waterflow, the team had put in several hours of vigorous scooping. The waterway looked much better and participants agreed that the fun factor was high.

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New Faculty Members Tour the Mill City

In an effort to reach out to the campus newcomers, Linda Silka, professor of Regional, Economic and Social Development and director of the Center for Family, Work and Community (CFWC), along with Paul Marion, executive director of outreach, organized a downtown tour for new faculty.

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At-Risk Youth to Receive Training

At-risk youth in the Lowell area may soon receive pre-employment training in the skills and expected behaviors in the workplace, as well as on-the-job mentoring and training, thanks to a program hosted by the Center for Family, Work and Community (CFWC). The program involves a group of private, non-profit and public sector leaders who have been meeting regularly for initial planning discussions. The group expects to be ready for a pilot program with two or three businesses by early February.  Dan Toomey, a program manager at CFWC, has been representing the University.

The group includes representatives of the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, Materials Systems, Inc., MMT Associates, the Lowell Police Department, Lowell YWCA, Casey Family Services and United Teen Equality Center.

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Silka Edits Three Books

Prof. Linda Silka, director of the Center for Family, Work and Community, has edited, or co-edited, three books published in early spring 2006: “Inside and Out: Universities and Education for Sustainable Development” (Bayview Press; co-edited with Bob Forrant); “Citizens as Planners” (University of Massachusetts Press; co-edited with Elisabeth Hamin and Priscilla Geigis); and “Scholarship in Action: Applied Research and Community Change” (U.S. Housing and Urban Development.)

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Lowell Cambodian Advocacy Group Wins Award

The Lowell Cambodian-American Voting Project (LCAVP), which, with help from the UMass Lowell Center for Family, Work and Community (CFWC), has been working to increase voter participation among members of Lowell’s Cambodian community, was nominated recently for a major national award.

A member of the LCAVP traveled to Stratton Vt., on Oct. 29 to accept a plaque signifying the nomination for the inaugural Rika Welsh Community Impact Award, given each year to a group or individual whose championing of a project has led to significant regional results.

The LCAVP, according to Dan Toomey of the CFWC, who sits on the project’s board, has been responsible for a 40 percent increase in the number of registered Cambodian voters in Lowell over the last 12 months alone. Since 1997, says Toomey, that number has increased from just 250—only 75 of whom actually voted—to more than 2,700 as of February of this year. By now, he guesses, the number is probably over 3,000.

“The project has been incredibly effective,” he says. ”We’ve had them in here, up to 10 at a time, mostly Cambodian kids, working with a UMass Lowell student, checking demographic maps of Lowell, counting the potential voters. We’ve helped them with administrative stuff, voter registration, tallying the votes, all that sort of stuff. They’re really determined, and the results have shown their efforts…

“When you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable. A lot of these people have been in internment camps [in Cambodia]. They have a natural fear of the government. Democracy doesn’t exactly come naturally when you come from a background like that.”

In the last two weeks of October, according to an e-mail from the LCAVP,the group produced two voters’ guides—written in both English and Khmer—outlining the names and positions of the 29 candidates running for various city positions: city council, school committee and technical/vocational school committee. Of these, three candidates were Cambodian. Still, “despite this honor,” continues the project’s e-mail, “the LCAVP will remain neutral in our role as an educator and advocate”.

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