h is printed on recycled paper using soy-based inks.h is printed on recycled paper using soy-based inks.

T H E H E I N Z E N D OW M E N T S

Howard Heinz Endowment

Vira I. Heinz Endowment

30 Dominion Tower

625 Liberty Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15222-3115

412.281.5777

www.heinz.org

NONPROFIT ORG

US POSTAGE

P A I D

PITTSBURGH PA

PERMIT NO 57

The Magazine of The Heinz Endowments

I N S I D E : T E C H L I N K S T H E D I S A B L E D P R E S C H O O L PA S S I O N

Receding watersPicking up the pieces after Hurricane Ivan

W I N T E R 2 0 0 6

Special (pre)K p a g e 2 2

29

of dance, fight, play, music, ritual and mimicry. Justin

has served on the Multicultural Arts Initiative board, the

Emerging Leader Council of Americans for the Arts

and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts’ grants panels.

In other staff news, Janet Sarbaugh and Marge

Petruska were each promoted in January to the new

Endowments position of senior program director.

Janet’s title had been director of the Arts & Culture

Program, and Marge had held the same position for

the Children, Youth & Families area. Their promotions

recognize their long and excellent service to the

Endowments, their exceptional skills as grant makers and

the special role they play in providing leadership as

members of the foundation’s senior management team.

Among the Endowments staff with the longest

tenure, Janet joined the foundation in July 1982, when

it comprised the Howard Heinz Endowment and the

Pittsburgh Foundation. The Vira I. Heinz Endowment

was not formed until 1986, and the Pittsburgh

Foundation did not move out on its own until 1993.

Under Janet’s direction, the Arts & Culture Program

makes grants to arts organizations and programs

totaling an average of $14.5 million annually.

Marge had been director of the Endowments’

Children, Youth & Families Program, formerly known

as Health and Human Services, since April 1984.

She manages a grant-making portfolio of about

$10 million a year that supports human services

agencies and programs.

The Heinz Endowments

welcomes two additions to its

staff this year. In February,

Christina Gabriel came on

board as director of the

Innovation Economy Program,

the new name and focus for

what had been the Economic

Opportunity Program area.

Justin Laing joins the staff in

March as an Arts & Culture

Program officer.

Christina was a vice provost and the chief technology

officer at Carnegie Mellon University for the past five

years. Prior to working for Carnegie Mellon, she was

a top official with the National Science Foundation.

Her extensive research and technical background also

includes positions as director of collaborative initiatives

at Carnegie Mellon and first vice president for research

and technology transfer at Case Western Reserve

University in Cleveland. Christina serves on several

nonprofit boards and has been the external advisor

for technology within the Pittsburgh Public Schools’

strategic planning process.

Justin was managing director and assistant artistic

director of The Village 4 an Afrikan Cultural Center,

and Nego Gato Inc., an African-Brazilian arts organi-

zation, since 1997. He also performed with Nego Gato,

which introduced many in Pittsburgh to capoeira

angola, a Brazilian martial art that combines elements

AFTERSCHOOLSPECIAL

The Endowments Children,Youth & Families SeniorProgram Director MargePetruska and ProgramOfficer Wayne Jonesparticipated in the WesternPennsylvania RegionalSummit on Afterschoolconference in January. ThePennsylvania StatewideAfterschool Youth Develop-ment Network hosted the one-day conference

at the Radisson HotelPittsburgh Green Tree.

Wayne served on thenetwork’s steeringcommittee that did strategicplanning for the summit,which attracted about 130 consultants, foundationrepresentatives and after-school program directors.Marge gave opening remarksfor the session, highlightingthe creativity and innovationof some after-school programs

and the need to address theuneven quality, inadequatetraining or lack of profes-sional development of others.

The Endowments hasfunded several studies onafter-school programs,seeking systemic solutionsto areas of concern. It alsohas given a $15,000 grant to the Center for Schools and Communities, a state-wide organization, to develop

a plan for parent–school–community partnerships that can help parents in 11 school districts getmore involved in promotingstudent achievement in their schools. The Januaryconference was one of aseries of policy summits that are being conductedacross the state to producestatewide standards andpolicies for sustaining qualityafter-school programs.

S T A F F U P D A T E S

Artist James Simon grins broadly as peopleexamine his colorful“Uptown Rhythm,” awhimsical cacophony ofswaying people, animals,musical instruments and animated buildings,topped by a large parrotand a “D” for DuquesneUniversity. The 9-by-25-foot sculpture stretchesup a wall of the ForbesAvenue garage inPittsburgh’s Uptown and is one of the latestexamples of public art the Endowments hassupported to promotecommunity development.The foundation contributed$10,000 toward the$30,000 project, whichalso received supportfrom Duquesne and the Allegheny CountyDepartment of Community Services.

Uptown Art

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h magazine is a publication of The Heinz Endowments. At the Endowments, we arecommitted to promoting learning in philanthropy and in the specific fields represented by our grant-making programs. As an expression of that commitment, this publication is intended to share information about significant lessons and insights we are derivingfrom our work.

Editorial Team Linda Bannon, Linda Braund, Maxwell King, Carmen Lee, MaureenMarinelli, Grant Oliphant, Douglas Root. Design: Landesberg Design

About the cover Flood-damaged photographs that reflected 52 years of memories for one Allegheny County family poignantly illustrate how Hurricane Ivan ripped thefabric of some southwestern Pennsylvanians’ lives in 2004. Helping them to rebuildsince the storm have been county agencies and faith-based organizations, withPittsburgh-area foundations providing financial support for the work. (Photograph copy-right, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2006, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.)

insideFounded more than four decades

apart, the Howard Heinz Endowment,

established in 1941, and the Vira I.

Heinz Endowment, established in 1986,

are the products of a deep family

commitment to community and the

common good that began with

H. J. Heinz and continues to this day.

The Heinz Endowments is based in

Pittsburgh, where we use our region

as a laboratory for the development

of solutions to challenges that are

national in scope. Although the majority

of our giving is concentrated within

southwestern Pennsylvania, we work

wherever necessary, including statewide

and nationally, to fulfill our mission.

That mission is to help our region thrive

as a whole community—economically,

ecologically, educationally and

culturally—while advancing the state

of knowledge and practice in the

fields in which we work.

Our fields of emphasis include

philanthropy in general and the

disciplines represented by our grant-

making programs: Arts & Culture;

Children, Youth & Families; Innovation

Economy; Education; and the

Environment. These five programs work

together on behalf of three shared

organizational goals: enabling

southwestern Pennsylvania to embrace

and realize a vision of itself as a

premier place both to live and to work;

making the region a center of quality

learning and educational opportunity;

and making diversity and inclusion

defining elements of the region’s

character.

Volume 6 Number 1 Winter 2006

4“Abling” the DisabledWith support from the Endowments and other foundations,

the Tech-Link Program of Pittsburgh is helping students with

disabilities build robots—and self-esteem.

12A Flood of HelpPittsburgh-area foundations focus donations and high hopes

for Hurricane Ivan victims’ recovery on two faith-based nonprofits

and a partnership with county government.

22Building BlocksEfforts by Pennsylvania foundations

and nonprofits to create a statewide

early childhood education network

are starting to bear fruit.

2 Feedback3 Message

28 Here & There

Abling, page 4

father attended there in the 1920s when he emigrated from Italy. Needless to say,thousands of immigrants have benefited from the ESL programs over the years.

When I was at Connelley, it was a rewarding experience for me to work withLois Feldman, Carol Schutte and two otherESL teachers not mentioned in the Ramshaw article, Ceinwen King-Smith and EleanorGard. All were exceptional professionals and excellent teachers.

I was sad to see Connelley close in 2004.I have to give credit to Pittsburgh schoolboard members who saw the value of adult education programs, appreciated the need for such services in Pittsburgh, and, therefore,supported the school for years. It was evenmore perceptive of Don Block of the GreaterPittsburgh Literacy Council, The HeinzEndowments, and other local foundationsand agencies to also see the value of the programs and not permit them to go out ofexistence. I have interacted with Mr. Blockand have a great deal of respect for him as a literacy advocate. I know under his leadershipand with the support of the Endowments and other community agencies, adulteducation and literacy programs at his center will continue to flourish.

Alfred R. Fascetti, Ed.D.Retired DirectorConnelley Technical Institute and Adult Education CenterPittsburgh Public Schools

Editor’s Note: In the Fall 2005 issue cover story“Higher Fidelity,” Blaine Lucas was identified aschairman of WYEP’s board of directors. Lucas hasstepped down from that position, and the currentWYEP board chairman is Seán Sebastian.

2

feedback

The English teachers are wonderful people,and they are very good at taking foreignstudents who know very little of the languageand making them competent to go on touniversity work or jobs in the community.

I am very happy to know that the foun-dations are making sure this special programcontinues with the Greater PittsburghLiteracy Council. I cannot express enoughhow essential these classes are to [foreignstudents] who want to study and work inyour city and maybe become citizens.

I lived in Pittsburgh for several years butdid not choose to stay because of family andthe business I run in my home country ofVenezuela. But much of my business is nowconducted in Pittsburgh because of myexperience. I think it is a good thing to knowthat there is an English speaker in Venezuelawho says only good things about your city.

Marcos RodriguezCaracas

As a former director of the ConnelleyTechnical Institute and Adult EducationCenter, I read with great interest GreggRamshaw’s article about the GreaterPittsburgh Literacy Council’s new adulteducation center in downtown Pittsburgh.Having been part of Connelley’s adulteducation programs for almost 20 years untilmy retirement in 2001, I can remember thevaluable services they provided to thePittsburgh community. Those who workedwith the Adult Basic Education, GeneralEducational Development and English as a Second Language programs were out-standing people.

The history of the English as a SecondLanguage, or ESL, program precedes its operation at Connelley. It is my understand-ing that the program originated in the early1900s, and was offered at Forbes ElementarySchool, which was located near MercyHospital in uptown Pittsburgh. I also believe,although I cannot document it, that my

Higher FidelityFor 13 years, I have been the radio writer at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and haveobserved the evolution of local stations andtheir relationship to the community. I believe,in the story “Higher Fidelity,” that ChristineO’Toole provided a comprehensive history of WYEP-FM that gave listeners a better appreciation of what it took to build theadult alternative station they’re hearing today.The piece tracked the radio station’s journeyfrom often-flooded basement studios inPittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood threedecades ago to the recently opened WYEPCommunity Broadcast Center in the South Side’s historic Bedford Square.

WYEP was founded as community radio.Part of what that meant in the ’70s was people who loved different kinds of musicbrought in their record collections andhosted an eclectic mix of programs — sometimes good, sometimes bad and ofteninspired.

WYEP’s growth, both creatively andfinancially, has brought it to where it is today.Its new facility offers a performance spacewhere music fans can come to hear livemusic, a location for internship and trainingprograms, and room for the station to continue to grow. The building itself is aleading edge example of green design andarchitecture for the city to show off. It’s still community radio, but expanded andredefined in many ways.

Adrian McCoyRadio WriterPittsburgh Post-Gazette

No Adult Left BehindI was very disappointed on one of my trips to Pittsburgh last year to be told that theConnelley Adult Education Center had beenclosed. This was the first place that welcomedme to Pittsburgh and it was the only place I could afford to learn English.

The editors of h magazine and The HeinzEndowments welcome your comments. All printand e-mail letters must include an address withdaytime and evening phone numbers. We reservethe right to edit any submission for clarity andspace. Published material also will be posted onthe Endowments’ web site, which offers currentand back issues of the magazine.

Our Fall 2005 issue featured WYEP, Pittsburgh’s independent, communityradio station that after 30 years has maintained its passion for innovationwhile growing—with philanthropic nurturing—into the third-largest indiestation in the country. We also looked at how the Greater Pittsburgh LiteracyCouncil’s new Downtown Center is helping to replace programs lost afterConnelley Technical Institute and Adult Education Center closed in 2004.

governments. In the business-relief program, we participated in afund with Allegheny County government but insisted that our portion be held, controlled and monitored by one of our own—The Pittsburgh Foundation.

In the case of last year’s tsunami disaster, we saw a practical opportunity to help with a total of $450,000 in Heinz family-connected philanthropies going to a Pittsburgh-based grantee, theBrother’s Brother Foundation, which has a sterling reputation inworldwide disaster relief operations.

Of the $750,000 granted for Katrina relief efforts, some money was used to support the more than 500 evacuees transferred for temporary settlement in Pittsburgh. In New Orleans and the rest ofthe Gulf Coast region, we again sought to do grant making that wouldbe outside the purview of government but just as critical to recovery.Chief among these is helping with the environmental cleanup in a collaboration between researchers from Carnegie Mellon Universityand Tulane University.

But as the two other stories in this issue make clear, disaster victims need not be the only beneficiaries of creative coordinationbetween public institutions and private foundations.

In “Abling the Disabled,” Carmen Lee and Rob Quinn report onhow robotics and technology programs at the University of Pittsburghand Carnegie Mellon University, the same programs that receive heavyfunding from the U.S. government, are also recipients of Endowmentsmoney for several projects. One of these is the Tech-Link Program,which works to connect physically challenged students to science andtechnology, where the career field is more level.

In “Building Blocks,” Michelle Pilecki writes about how a statewidenetwork of foundations and nonprofits has dramatically increasedPennsylvania’s standing in early childhood education. To achieve this,the group engaged with, but never became beholden to, the politicalsystem at all levels.

So, whether it is in philanthropy done to address longer-term public needs, as these two stories exemplify, or in grant making inquick response to a disaster, the lesson is the same. We at theEndowments understand that a private foundation’s need to protectits values need not prevent it from careful coordination with government and other entities to achieve enormous good. h

3

message

By James M. WaltonChairman, Vira I. Heinz Endowment

In the shadow of a mountain of record-setting disasters—fromthe tsunami in southeast Asia to the flooding of New Orleansand the Gulf Coast to the earthquake in Pakistan and India—the damage inflicted by the last gasps of Hurricane Ivan across

southwestern Pennsylvania in the fall of 2004 may seem like a smalland distant memory.

But for the local communities directly in Ivan’s final path, theirdisaster was every bit as calamitous as Katrina to Gulf Coast towns, orthe tsunami to many Indonesian villages. Every death or injury, everypiece of destroyed property, is devastating when we focus down to thecommunity and neighborhood level.

That is why the boards and staff of our regional foundation, whosegrant-making territory was so seriously affected, saw a clear responsi-bility to act. We did so quickly and with enough resources—a total of$700,000 from the two Endowments—to make a difference.

As this issue’s compelling cover story by Jeffrey Fraser on the Ivanrecovery points out, the foundation community’s grant making waswell coordinated and in proper proportion to our other investmentsin the region. The overall result was a very effective relief operation.Getting to that point was not easy, especially for a group of mostly

private foundations carrying values and agendas that don’t alwaystravel along the same path as government agencies and huge institu-tional charities.

In disaster relief, government must be a leader and a primaryresource. Yet, private foundations such as ours embrace policies thatrequire some distancing from government. This allows for innovationand experimentation and helps us avoid making grants to programs at odds with our values.

So how can foundations participate effectively in “disaster recoveryphilanthropy” without getting mired in what Peter Frumkin, a seniorfellow at the nonpartisan New America Foundation describes as “. . . ossified arguments aimed alternatively at drawing or erasing a line in the sand separating the nonprofit world and government?”

I believe we at the Endowments are striving for a middle-groundapproach that ensures we engage in private actions of our choosingfor the benefit of the public good—and that we do this, at times, incoordination with government, but not under its thumb.

In the case of the local Ivan recovery effort for communities, wedirected our grants to two faith-based grantees also supported by local

In disaster relief, government must be a leader and a primary resource.Yet, private foundations such as ours embrace policies that require some

distancing from government. This allows for innovation and experimentation and helps us avoid making grants to programs at odds with our values.

“ABLING” THE

DISABLEDFOR MORE THAN A DECADE,PITTSBURGH’S TECH-LINKPROGRAM, WITH THE ALLUREOF LEGO TOYS AND ROBOTICS,HAS BEEN HELPING DISABLEDSTUDENTS APPRECIATE THEIRFITNESS FOR CAREERS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.BY CARMEN J. LEE AND ROB QUINNPHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSHUA FRANZOS

he middle school students huddled over containers of brightly colored LEGO parts don’t

look like revolutionaries. Clad in T-shirts and jeans, surrounded by laptops and what appear

to be oddly shaped, multi-colored toy trucks, they just seem to be kids in some type of techie

class or “camp,” as the gathering is called.

But several of the children tinkering with robotically programmed building blocks travel

by wheelchair or sport hearing aids. Their participation means the camps have the potential

to change the face of technology—a pretty good return on a bunch of plastic toy pieces

and some wire.

Helping to make the connections is the Tech-Link Program of Pittsburgh. It uses

rudimentary robotics to teach middle school students with and without disabilities more

about math, science and technology. The 13-year-old program also “links” high school

and college students who have physical challenges with internships at companies in the

Pittsburgh area.

And Tech-Link assists in the intangible construction of self-esteem within young people

too often noticed more for their wheelchairs or other enabling devices than for their

intelligence or personality.

“Tech-Link helped me take pride in who I am,” says Chaz Kellem of Pittsburgh. The

22-year-old, who has osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disorder, was involved in the

program in middle and high school. “It showed students with disabilities what they could

and could not do, and it gave the professionals who worked with us a new look on life

and helped them to be more grateful for what they do have.”

The Heinz Endowments gives about $3 million annually toward technology projects.

Beginning in 1996, staff decided to target investments toward developing computer-based

tutoring tools and creating software programs that facilitate learning. The foundation also

committed to provide these to residents of low-income communities. It has supported

Tech-Link since 1999, awarding the program more than $72,000 over seven years.

“We wanted to see much greater participation of all students in experiential technology

projects, with the goal of getting kids more interested in math and science or careers in

technology,” says Senior Education Program Officer Gerry Balbier. “Full participation is

our goal, so we work to make sure that young girls, minorities and children with disabilities

are given every opportunity to participate.”

Tech-Link also has received local funding from the UPMC Health System and Highmark

Blue Cross Blue Shield, and support nationally from the Mitsubishi Electric America

Foundation, which provided $30,000 in startup funds. The Mitsubishi foundation’s primary

mission is to help young people with disabilities maximize their potential.

While the program receives mostly private money, that may change if the National

Science Foundation awards University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University

a joint $20 million engineering research center grant. The universities’ application included

a Tech-Link component that would provide some money for administrative costs locally

and allow the schools to work with black colleges in Florida to develop programs similar

to Tech-Link there.

Carmen J. Lee is communications officer for The Heinz Endowments. Rob Quinn is a Philadelphia-based writer and editor.His last story for h was about the Safe Havens Training Project, which helps teachers and child-care workers assist children and families who witness violence.

5

6

Chaz Kellem breezes up to a table at a coffee shop, unclips his cell

phone from his waistband, pulls out a handheld wireless e-mail device

and stretches one arm across the empty chair beside him.

No need to fret over his wheelchair. He doesn’t.

“I have an able-body mind, I’m just in a wheelchair,” he says matter-

of-factly as he unzips the top of his red windbreaker, exposing a black

Pittsburgh Pirates T-shirt.

So confident is the 22-year-old Pittsburgh native that he calmly

tells the reporter frantically scribbling notes to keep up with his rapid

repartee, “Take your time, just take your time.” Meanwhile, he checks

the Internet on his Sidekick II for the latest blurbs about the Super

Bowl–bound Pittsburgh Steelers or the 81 points Los Angeles Laker

Kobe Bryant scored in a single game.

An obvious sports and technology enthusiast, Kellem attributes at

least some of his élan to his involvement in athletics and the Tech-Link

program.

As a middle- and high-school student, Kellem built robots with his

peers and served as a student member of Tech-Link’s board of directors.

Both experiences helped increase the self-esteem and develop the

leadership skills of a diminutive youth with osteogenesis imperfecta,

or brittle bone disorder.

“It showed me the options that were out there and that I could do

almost anything,” he says.

Because of Tech-Link, Kellem initially majored in computer science

at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. But his love of sports won out,

and he switched to health and physical education, with a minor in

speech communication and a concentration in sports administration.

Today Kellem puts the professional and interpersonal skills he gained

through Tech-Link into play as a sales rep for the Pirates. Those abilities

also have aided him in what seems to be a myriad of other activities

such as participating in various wheelchair sports and serving as a big

brother through the Big Brothers and Sisters program, assistant coach

for a women’s wheelchair basketball team and internship coordinator

for the Pittsburgh Passion women’s football team.

Kellem wants to return to the Tech-Link board as an adult so he can

share what he’s learned about the options available to individuals with

disabilities, from getting insurance coverage to learning how to drive—

something he mastered in college.

“The more active a person is, the more confident the person will be,”

he says. “I want to help those students live life to the best of their

ability, to the fullest.”

C H A Z K E L L E M

The current program was launched

in 1993 by a group of executives in

southwestern Pennsylvania. Roger

Barna, former chief executive officer

of Mitsubishi Electric Power Plant Inc.

in Cranberry, Pa., north of Pittsburgh,

paved the way for the Mitsubishi

Electric America Foundation to provide

the seed funding.

John Bernard, an original board

member, former Tech-Link executive

director and retired head of the Pittsburgh

Office of Vocational Rehabilitation,

recruited Cliff Brubaker, dean of the

University of Pittsburgh School of Health

and Rehabilitation Sciences, to serve on

the Tech-Link board.

“At the time, folks with disabilities

were rarely entering careers in science

and engineering,” says Bernard. “Not to

overuse the expression, but technology

often levels the playing field for students

with disabilities. It seemed worthwhile

and logical to a number of us at OVR

and in the business community to

create an organization that encouraged

and stimulated interest in the science,

technology, engineering and mathe-

matics professions.”

Brubaker tapped Rory Cooper,

chairman of Pitt’s Rehabilitation Science

and Technology Department, to get

involved. An engineer and wheelchair

user, Cooper subsequently received a

three-year, $80,000 grant from the

Mitsubishi foundation to pull together a

Tech-Link team to participate in the high

school robotics program called FIRST,

For Inspiration and Recognition of

Science and Technology. A multinational

Seldom at a loss for words or energy, Chaz Kellemchats and laughs with Rachel Cowan, a member ofSteel City Starz, the women’s wheelchair basketballteam Kellem helps coach.

7

nonprofit organization, FIRST’s mission

is to make science, math, engineering and

technology exciting for kids by having

them enter robotics competitions.

Tech-Link students were in the FIRST

program for several years until building

robots for competition became too

costly. The decision was made in 2001 to

shift the robotics focus to middle-school

students, creating Saturday “camps” at

Pitt and having the children participate

in the more economical FIRST LEGO

League contests for toy robots.

While Tech-Link focuses on people

with disabilities, it extends to other groups

underrepresented in math and science

fields. The middle school robotics pro-

gram is split between minority students

without disabilities and disabled students

of all races, with females accounting for

about 30 percent of the participants.

The need for programs such as

Tech-Link is a no-brainer for Jim Osborn,

a member of the program’s board for

three years and executive director of

Carnegie Mellon’s Medical Robotics

Technology Center.

“I’ve been at Carnegie Mellon since

my freshman year in 1977. In all that

time, I can count the number of persons

with disabilities I’ve encountered at

the university on my fingers and toes.

Moreover, only a few of them have

been in technical fields.

“I’m not an expert in the underlying

issues, but something is clearly going

on in pre-college education that keeps

young people with disabilities out of

engineering and science. It’s also still the

8

Lauren Hatcher is used to getting good grades. Her mother, Cindy,

teases that her daughter’s first B on a report card this school year was

“a traumatic experience.”

The bright and articulate ninth-grader, with thoughtful blue eyes

and shoulder-length brown hair, lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of Franklin

Park and zips around in a motorized wheelchair because she has cerebral

palsy. But that doesn’t stop her from riding horses or participating in

service activities at school. She also enjoys going to weekly Tech-Link

camp, where she meets students from other schools and builds toy

robots from LEGO parts.

Lauren says she already liked computers when she entered the

Tech-Link program as a seventh-grader. “But I didn’t know what I could

do with them as far as programming until I went to Tech-Link and talked

with the engineer mentor…. You have to be patient because it takes

time to learn how robots work.”

Now, Lauren’s considering engineering or robotics as career options,

and says the program has taught her how to work with people from

other backgrounds and to have confidence when speaking in front of a

group. While one student at her camp uses crutches to get around,

Lauren is the only one in a wheelchair. But she insightfully notes that

“some [students] have disabilities not recognizable to the eye.”

Lauren plans to stay involved with Tech-Link through high school—

“for as long as they will let me”—so she can be a mentor for middle-

school students in the program.

“Tech-Link shows kids with disabilities that they can have careers

in math, science or robotics,” she says, “and they don’t have to stumble

into them by accident.”

L A U R E N H A T C H E R

Ninth-grader Lauren Hatcher gets a taste of mentoring younger Tech-Link students as she triesto help a giggly John Dwyer on the computer.

9

10

case that females aren’t encouraged to

pursue technical careers. Social prejudice

must be part of the cause of both

phenomena.”

Tech-Link Executive Director Sondra

Boularis agrees.

“Historically, we have seen that

children with disabilities get a sub-

standard education in math and science,

and often are not encouraged to consider

careers in science and technical fields.…

It is not unusual for teachers to assume a

student with a disability is automatically

less intelligent, or individuals without

disabilities sometimes lump everyone

with a disability into one group.”

Of course, all the training in the

world cannot overcome every type of

prejudice people with disabilities face

in obtaining job interviews, talking with

skeptical employers or working with

intolerant colleagues. While Tech-Link

doesn’t have a magic wand to eliminate

such obstacles, staff and volunteers do

their part to prepare students with dis-

abilities to face potentially harsh realities.

In addition to career preparation

and exposure, the program encourages

the students to be their own advocates by

becoming familiar with the Americans

with Disabilities Act and disability-

related issues. Some, like the current

and former Tech-Link students shown

here, are not only becoming advocates,

but also role models and leaders in

addressing the challenges the disabled

live with daily. h

D E W E Y B L A C K

For the past two summers, Dewey Black started a typical weekday

at 4:30 a.m. He commuted 120 miles round trip each day to work at the

Human Engineering Research Laboratories, a joint program between the

University of Pittsburgh’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

and the Veterans Affairs Pittsburgh Healthcare System.

But Black isn’t a doctor, healthcare executive or tenured professor.

He’s a 20-year-old junior at Pennsylvania State University’s Erie campus,

majoring in computer science with a math minor.

He also has muscular dystrophy, a progressive disorder characterized

by gradual wasting of skeletal muscle. Tech-Link staff helped him find the

internship with the research lab, where he’s worked for two summers,

and the program is arranging for him to have another internship at

Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield this year.

Black, who is from Prosperity, Washington County, a town south of

Pittsburgh, learned about Tech-Link at a Muscular Dystrophy Association

support group meeting. The guest speaker was a social worker from

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh who explained that the hospital

wanted to connect students with disabilities to the Tech-Link program.

“I was looking for an organization that could help find me an

internship in Pittsburgh,” Black recalls. “I was eager for any assistance

Tech-Link could provide for locating a summer internship that related

to my major.”

Tech-Link Executive Director Sondra Boularis says Black and his

parents are so committed to his internship participation that his mother

rose early during the summers to drive Black to work. Before Pam Black

retired from a human resources firm, she provided her son’s daily

transportation, backtracking 30 miles to her job after dropping him off.

And Dewey Black may become more than a Tech-Link success story.

He is on his way to becoming part of the effort to improve the quality

of life for people with disabilities.

During his first summer with the research lab, he modified and updated

the operating system that collects data on wheelchair propulsion

and activity.

“I also wrote software for power-wheelchair joysticks and software

to test the head-position monitor,” he explains. “Basically, it was a

headrest with sensors that could determine where the individual’s head

was oriented.”

Black aspires to work in computer research and development, with a

focus on software. He hopes to one day write his own computer operat-

ing system and is interested in exploring space and developing software

for manned and unmanned spacecraft.

“I hope from the internships Tech-Link has found me that I will

learn skills you cannot get in a classroom or from a textbook,” he says.

“And I hope to bring these skills to a permanent job someday.”

Dewey Black pauses for the camera betweenhis classes at Pennsylvania State University’sErie campus.

1111

12

lade Run, ankle-deep most of the time, was an angry torrent of muddy waterwhen Marion Beattie pulled up to her rural Butler County home in the drenching rain.Nine days earlier, the region had been soaked by heavy rain from a Gulf Coast hurricane-turned-tropical-depression. Glade Run had held. On Sept. 17, 2004, the leftovers

of another hurricane, Ivan, settled over the saturated hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania.Beattie’s streak of luck was about to end.“I left work early, knowing we could be in trouble,” recalls Beattie, whose plan was to rush home,

pack some clothes, gather her cats, stay the night with friends on higher ground and hope for the best.If the plan had a flaw, it was in miscalculating how quickly trouble would arrive.

She hadn’t been inside more than 15 minutes when the raging creek leaped its banks, shot acrossher five-acre yard, swept away her porch and surrounded her two-story frame house. Water the colorof milk chocolate filled her first-floor rooms to their ceilings, trapping Beattie and her cats in anupstairs bedroom, where she would stay for the next 24 hours, draining her cell phone with calls forhelp until she was rescued by volunteer firemen in a boat.

“It happened so fast,” Beattie says. “Then, all I had to show for 50 years of my life were theclothes on my back and my three cats.”

Within weeks, The Heinz Endowments and more than one dozen other western Pennsylvaniafoundations were developing strategies that would play an important role in easing the suffering andloss endured by Beattie and some 1,600 other homeowners, businesses and families who were amongthe least able to recover from the worst flooding to visit the region since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

After a year of disasters across the world, a coalition of more than a dozen foundations has stayed true to a recovery plan for southwestern Pennsylvanians hit hard byHurricane Ivan in 2004.By Jeffery Fraser Photography by Richard Kelly

Jeffery Fraser is a Pittsburgh-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to h.His last story ran in the 2005 annual report issue and reported on foundation support of the Flight 93 Memorial Design Competition.

G

A FLOOD OF

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The foundations’ support of efforts to

help flooded homeowners and families

focused on two faith-based nonprofits

with well-established roots and reputa-

tions for service in the region. Hosanna

Industries mobilized an army of

volunteers to rehabilitate flood-damaged

homes. North Hills Community Outreach

combed neighborhoods to provide

needy flood victims with food, clothing

and other basic needs. Both nonprofits

would rely on foundation grants to

significantly increase their capacity to

respond to the flood.

In Allegheny County, the Endowments

and 14 other foundations pooled their

contributions to offer grants to flood-

damaged businesses as part of the

Hurricane Ivan Business Relief Fund

established in partnership with county

government. The grants supplemented

zero-interest loans given by the county

to businesses that had been denied

Small Business Administration aid.

By last December, 14 months after

Ivan’s flooding, Hosanna Industries had

rehabilitated 500 homes; North Hills

Community Outreach had assisted

nearly 1,000 of the neediest flood

victims with cleanup, temporary shelter,

furnaces, water heaters, food, clothing,

appliances, household items and referrals

for additional aid; and all 48 Allegheny

County businesses given loans and

grants from the Hurricane Ivan Business

Relief Fund had reopened.

The rains that brought the region so

much misery began as a tropical storm

off the west coast of Africa on Aug. 31,

2004. Two weeks later, Ivan ripped

through the Caribbean as a Category 5

hurricane with 150 mph winds, killing

65 people on battered islands. It struck

the U.S. Gulf Coast as a Category 3

hurricane on Sept. 16, weakened to a

tropical depression and bullied north,

lingering over western Pennsylvania

as a torrential rain the following day.

The timing could not have been

worse. The soil was already saturated,

and many streams were still congested

with silt and debris from nearly five

inches of rain that had fallen when

Tropical Depression Frances rolled

through on Sept. 8 and 9. The six to eight

inches of rain from Ivan had nowhere

to go but to the rivers and streams,

which in many places would not hold.

“The first sign of trouble?” Charlene

Cutrone, co-owner of Huckleberry’s

Grocery and Delicatessen in Oakdale,

Allegheny County, repeats the question

put to her to help herself remember.

“The first sign of trouble was when

water started pouring through the door.”

Robinson Run, a few blocks behind

the market, had been anything but

menacing during the two years Cutrone

and her twin sister, Marlene Birnie,

owned Huckleberry’s. But Ivan’s rains

brought it over its banks and into Oakdale

so quickly that escaping the market

for high ground was touch-and-go for

a time. “There were four of us in there,”

says Cutrone, “all pushing against the

door to get it open so we could get out.”

The water was knee-deep in the

parking lot and rising fast when they

were rescued by boat.

The transformation wasn’tcaptured on a television program. But Marion

Beattie of Evans City,

Butler County, a town north

of Pittsburgh, can show

how her flood-ravaged

kitchen got an extreme

makeover with help

from Hosanna Industries.

16

damage that left their futures in doubt.

If they were to close their doors for

good, it would bleed jobs, tax revenues

and vitality from communities struggling

to recover from Ivan.

In response, a working committee

of foundation and government repre-

sentatives met over several weeks and

drafted plans for the Hurricane Ivan

Business Relief Fund. The plan called for

providing zero-interest loans to eligible

businesses of up to 20 percent of their

losses and grants to those businesses in

the amount of 80 percent of their loan.

The grants would be drawn from

a $1.58 million joint fund created by

15 foundations, to which the Endow-

ments contributed $500,000. The loans

would be financed by $2.5 million in

federal Community Development Block

Grant dollars the county had set aside

for flood relief.

Also contributing to the business

fund were the Claude Worthington

Benedum Foundation, Citizens Bank

Foundation, Dollar Bank Foundation,

The Grable Foundation, The Hillman

Foundation, Jewish Healthcare

Foundation, Laurel Foundation, Mellon

Financial Corporation, Richard King

Mellon Foundation, Pittsburgh Child

Guidance Foundation, The Pittsburgh

Foundation, PNC Bank, St. Margaret

Foundation and the Wagner Family

Charitable Trust.

Most opted to place their contributions

with the Pittsburgh Foundation, which

became their liaison with government.

The collaborative arrangement allowed

The six feet of water that swamped

the market had receded by the time they

returned the following day. But it had

claimed much: freezers, ovens, cooler, the

deli case, pots and pans, silverware, tables,

chairs, counters, cupboards, shelves,

computers, cash registers and inventory.

“People came from everywhere to

help us clean up,” says Birnie. “Then,

we sat down and tried to figure out what

the hell we were going to do.”

Within weeks, Pittsburgh Foundation

staff members convened a series of

meetings with Allegheny County Chief

Executive Dan Onorato and other

government officials. Their job was to

define what would be required for recov-

ery in affected communities and then

work with foundation officials to figure

out their best role in an emergency

relief plan.

In Allegheny County alone, an

estimated 10,000 homes sustained damages

ranging from flooded basements to

structural problems, ruined furnaces

and loss of contents. Nearly 1,000 busi-

nesses also were damaged, some losing

most of their equipment and inventory.

Several foundations, including the

Endowments, chose to support relief

efforts for families and homeowners

through individual grants to community

nonprofits engaged in the recovery.

“We also looked at what could be

done above and beyond what each

foundation was doing individually,” says

Gerri Kay, vice president for program

and policy at The Pittsburgh Foundation.

County officials were troubled that

many local businesses had suffered

The aisles are clear and the shelves neatly stocked at Huckleberry’s Grocery

and Delicatessen in Oakdale,

Allegheny County. Owners

Charlene Cutrone, left, and

Marlene Birnie holds up a

photo of a different scene

from September 2004,

when floodwaters gushed

through the store, whipping

its contents into worthless

heaps on the floor.

17

18

“Money matters in these situations,

but so does coordination,” says Marge

Petruska, the Endowments’ senior pro-

gram director for Children, Youth &

Families. “The great thing about these

partnerships is that the county has the

resources to drive the agenda, gather the

data and coordinate, and we fill in the

gaps the county has difficulty filling.”

The Hurricane Ivan Business Relief

Fund was made available to businesses

each foundation a voice in how its gifts

would be used and kept the pool of

money under foundation control. It

was based on a model first used by the

Pittsburgh Foundation, the Endowments

and other foundations to create the

Human Services Integration Fund, a

joint foundation account that supports

promising human service initiatives the

county cannot afford or cannot fund

due to restrictions on public dollars.

in 13 designated flood municipalities

that had been denied an SBA loan and

met other criteria, including limits on

losses and debt. “We wanted to give

businesses that were making it before

the flood an opportunity to get back on

their feet after the flood,” says Dennis

Davin, director of the Allegheny County

Department of Economic Development.

“If the foundations hadn’t come through,

we probably would have provided just the

zero-percent loans. In some cases, that

might not have been enough.”

Huckleberry’s Grocery and Delicatessen

reopened after four months of cleanup,

repairs and new equipment, most billed

to owners Birnie and Cutrone, who did

not carry flood insurance and had been

denied an SBA loan. They paid what

they could out of pocket, accepted a loan

from family and, says Birnie, “maxed out

our credit.” Still, they had little cash for

restocking the shelves and kitchen. Their

first post-flood orders were delivered on

credit or donated outright by vendors

to help them reopen. It wasn’t until they

received $24,000 in loans and grants

from the Hurricane Ivan Business Relief

Fund that they were able to establish

a measure of stability. “We had to order

products to get up and running, but

we had no cash flow,” says Birnie.

“Once we had cash, we could start

paying our bills.”

One year after the flood, only 76 of

the 150 eligible businesses that county

officials expected would ask for loans

and grants had actually applied, despite

having been notified by phone, letter

and other means. Their reasons varied,

In the wake of a significant disaster on the order of a 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina,

what is the proper role of private, independent foundations in contributing

to a recovery effort that is largely the purview of government and large

public charities?

The Heinz Endowments and dozens of other foundations in western

Pennsylvania make grants each year to nonprofit organizations and programs

as part of strategies that are carefully designed to achieve set goals.

In the past two years alone, the Endowments

has made more than $110 million in grants

to move the region forward in such areas as

business development from technologies

produced at local universities, delivery of

human services, workforce development,

early childhood education and promoting

environment-friendly, sustainable development

practices, to name just a few.

Yet, during the same period, portions of southwestern Pennsylvania were hit

hard by the last gasps of Hurricane Ivan, and remote sections of the world were

devastated by a series of natural disasters that set global records for loss of life.

In several cases, the foundation gave proportionally to several recovery

campaigns; in others, it chose not to contribute.

“In many of these disasters, an entire year’s allotment of grant making from a

regional foundation easily could be expended on disaster relief,” says Endowments

President Maxwell King. “The tough questions for a private foundation have to do

with deciding on amounts that are appropriate and identifying control measures

to make sure that the recovery work that is funded meets the foundation’s goals.”

In this issue’s message section on page 3, Vira I. Heinz Endowment Chairman

James Walton offers a board-level view of how a private, regional foundation

balances the need to respond to disaster relief with the need to protect

independence and preserve distinct values.

D I S A S T E R P H I L A N T H R O P Y

19

The Endowments

and several other foun-

dations made individual

contributions totaling

$2.17 million to Hosanna

Industries and North Hills

Community Outreach,

enabling them to expand

their operations and

help nearly 1,500 needy

homeowners and families

in the region.

By its own standards,

the idea that Hosanna Industries could

rehabilitate 500 houses in a year’s time

was wildly ambitious. “When I shared

the plan with my board and staff, it was

met with a little bit of wonderment,”

says Hosanna Director Donn Ed, who

as a Presbyterian minister launched the

nonprofit as a mission to help needy

families in 1990. “We were all concerned

about whether it could be done. But I

felt that, with faith, we could help out.”

Hosanna Industries, which in a typical

year rehabilitates 100 houses, increased

its workload five-fold by raising $1.87

million, 78 percent of those dollars

coming from four foundations, including

a $100,000 grant from The Heinz

Endowments. The nonprofit managed

to stretch that budget and complete

renovations with an estimated market

value of $6 million by relying on the

labor of some 4,000 volunteers and the

benevolence of vendors who offered

building materials at deep discount.

Marion Beattie, who narrowly escaped

the flooding of Glade Run with her cats,

remembers the Hosanna Industries

say county officials. Some businesses,

for example, chose not to apply for SBA

loans, and some decided not to rebuild

and closed their doors for good.

In October 2005, with about

$1.9 million in loans and $1.1 million

in grants still available, county officials

proposed options for extending the

program to more businesses. Pittsburgh

Foundation staff informed each

foundation of the specifics, gathered

comments and concerns, and conducted

an e-mail vote on repurposing the

grants. The result was consensus on

extending eligibility to businesses with

losses greater than the original limit

of $500,000 and to businesses outside

the target communities.

“That process,” says the Pittsburgh

Foundation’s Kay, “reinforced the value

of this model of pooling money, having

a foundation advisory committee around

the use of the money, working with the

county, getting regular reports, periodi-

cally revisiting what is working and what

isn’t working and, if it isn’t working, how

we might repurpose it.”

volunteers as “the people who made my

house a home again.”

Without flood insurance, Beattie ran

out of money before she could rebuild

her eight badly flooded first-floor rooms.

Hosanna Industries finished the job

with a swarm of volunteers. “I don’t

think there was less than 40 people here

at any given time,” says Beattie. “One

afternoon, they put down flooring and

carpet padding and were working on

the finished trim. And I have big rooms.

On another trip, they painted inside,

rebuilt my outside steps and put on a

deck. They sided the whole house in

11 hours. It was like ‘Extreme House

Makeover,’ Pittsburgh-style.”

Michael Zilka, whose basement in his

East Deer home took nearly four feet

of floodwater, learned about Hosanna

Industries from a North Hills Community

Outreach volunteer who had delivered

school supplies to his three children.

Hosanna volunteers walled in a blown-

out basement door at his request, built

him a new porch and supplied him with

a new furnace.

MaryAnn Tomaro learned of North

Hills Community Outreach from volun-

teers sent by the neighborhood Lutheran

church to help her clean out her beauty

salon and apartment, both of which were

flooded when Pine Creek overran into

Etna’s business district. The nonprofit

donated a computer, a fax machine and

beauty supplies.

“There is an advantage to working

with local organizations who know their

communities,” says Scott Izzo, director

of the Richard King Mellon Foundation,

Cop

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Top: People of all ages joined in the cleanup after remnants of Hurricane Ivan deluged southwesternPennsylvania in September 2004. Students at All SaintsSchool in Millvale, a community three miles north ofPittsburgh, scraped mud off the floor and piled up water-logged books in one flood-damaged classroom. Bottom: Many southwestern Pennsylvanians were overwhelmed by the devastation Hurricane Ivan leftbehind. This woman from Etna, another town north of Pittsburgh, could not control her emotions after herhouse was condemned because floodwaters had filled her basement and first floor, making the foundationunstable and causing the walls to buckle.

20

21

which gave to Hosanna Industries,

North Hills Community Outreach and

the Hurricane Ivan Business Relief Fund

as part of its flood-relief grant making.

“They know where the resources are

and on which streets to look for those

most in need.”

North Hills Community Outreach was

no stranger to flood relief. The interfaith

nonprofit evolved from the relief efforts

of local religious and community organi-

zations during the 1986 floods that

ravaged neighborhoods in several towns

north of Pittsburgh. When Ivan struck,

one of the nonprofit’s first tasks was to

restore operations at its Millvale satellite

office, which had been badly flooded.

The nonprofit received more than

$712,000 in foundation grants, includ-

ing $100,000 from the Endowments.

Foundation grants accounted for

64 percent of the $1.1 million North

Hills Community Outreach raised for

flood relief, which increased its caseload

by one-third. The nonprofit added

seven staff to help coordinate more than

1,100 volunteers, respond to hundreds

of offers to donate anything from money

to living room furniture, identify needy

families, confirm their eligibility and

make sure their basic needs were met,

whether that meant getting them food,

appliances, tetanus shots or a security

deposit for a new apartment.

“I thought, if we had the money we

would be able to gear up and get the job

done,” says Fay Morgan, North Hills

Community Outreach executive director.

“We have a strategic plan and a strong

infrastructure. Donating goods and

mobilizing volunteers isn’t new to us.

But if our regular staff would have had

to handle the additional load, it would

have been crushing.”

MaryAnn’s Beauty Salon had become

a day spa just five months before Ivan’s

rains brought six feet of water through

the Etna storefront. “We lost everything,”

says Tomaro, who opened the salon in

1988 when she bought the building.

“The tanning area, massage area, nails

area, salon, front desk, floor and doors

blew out; windows smashed; a tree

came through. We had stuff in here that

didn’t even belong to us.”

Her flood insurance covered structural

damage to the building, but not its

contents. She had recently refinanced the

building and was in no position to aban-

don it or her business. Volunteers from the

neighborhood helped with the cleanup.

She depleted her savings to repair the

uninsured damage and borrowed money

from family to pay utilities. The business

machines and beauty supplies from

North Hills Community Outreach

moved her further along. With $22,000

in loans and grants from Allegheny

County’s Hurricane Ivan Business

Relief Fund, Tomaro replaced ruined

massage, salon and tanning equipment

and reopened last February.

Like many business owners who’ve

recovered from Ivan, Tomaro is deeper

in debt today than before the flood.

And business has been slow to return.

“I don’t know what the future will

bring,” says Tomaro. “But I know that

without all the help I got, I’d already

be down and under.” h

MaryAnn’s BeautySalon in Etna, north ofPittsburgh, was anything

but pretty after flooding

made a mess of the

business’s interior. Today

owner MaryAnn Tomaro’s

clients can get primped

and polished in a salon

that looks the part.

O

23

a statewide, nonpartisan advocacy group. With only a modest

$500,000 promotional budget, what was known as the Focus

Five for Kids campaign needed “a bit of blue smoke and mirrors”

to make an impact.

Bravo Group, a Harrisburg-based, political-communications

consultant firm, scoped out where state legislators’ cars would

be parked and leafleted them. Workers also followed candidates

on the tailgate-party circuit, says Jeanette Krebs, the company’s

vice president of public relations. Fraternity and sorority

members distributed the beach balls and bookmark-like

information sheets—complete with purple and yellow

buttons—to partygoers and anyone talking to the candidates.

That push to be part of the candidates’ debate and on

the agenda of the future governor worked.

“The only thing that Fisher and Rendell agreed on was a

commitment to early learning and other childhood issues,”

recalls Benso, whose coalition was supported by The Heinz

Endowments and the William Penn Foundation of Philadelphia.

The marketing strategy to gain a foothold in the guber-

natorial campaign was just one more step in a multi-year,

multi-faceted, multi-partner effort to spotlight the benefits

n a balmy Saturday in September 2002, signs

proclaiming positive goals for children greeted Nittany Lion

fans as they approached Beaver Stadium. Dotting the road in

Penn State’s blue and white were signs that likely brought

puzzled looks from traveling football fans.

“Our children deserve to enter school ready to learn,”

shouted one banner.

Harsh realities were spelled out in the red and white of

the day’s opponent, Nebraska: “State money invested in

Preschool = ZERO.” Circulating among football followers were

still another set of colors—purple and yellow—emblazoned

on buttons, signs, leaflets and even glow-in-the-dark beach

balls with the message “What About the Kids?”

The slogans were intended to raise awareness of children’s

issues among Pennsylvania gridiron fans—two in particular:

state Attorney General Mike Fisher and former Philadelphia

Mayor Ed Rendell, then in the last months of their contest for

governor, with State College a highly visible campaign stop.

The goal was “to create a sense that kids’ issues were big

issues for the election,” explains Joan L. Benso, president and

chief executive officer of Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children,

A STATEWIDE STRATEGY TO PULL PENNSYLVANIA OUT OF THE CELLAR IN ITSCOMMITMENT TO EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION WAS BOOSTED BY A CHANGE INTHE POLITICAL CONVERSATION. BY MICHELLE PILECKI ILLUSTRATIONS BY LEIGH WELLS

Michelle Pilecki is former executive editor of Pittsburgh Magazine.Her last story for h showed how the foundation-supported expansion of The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is delighting children and adults.

BUILDINGBLOCKS

24

Across the country, states such as Oklahoma and Georgia

began offering universal access to pre-kindergarten while

others, like North Carolina, started to provide targeted, state-

supported programs for disadvantaged 4-year-olds. Nationwide,

spending on pre-kindergarten soared: from $25 million in the

1970s, to $198 million in the 1980s and $1.8 billion by 1998.

With some 64 percent of Pennsylvania children cared for

outside the home, “we were very anxious to do more funding

for early childhood, but it’s tough to do in a state with no

system for early childhood education,” says Emily B. Watson,

program officer at the Grable Foundation.

Taking another ambitious step in establishing high-quality

preschool programs designed for and supported by their local

communities is the Pennsylvania Partnership for Quality

Pre-Kindergarten.

Its roots can be traced to efforts such as a $2 million

Endowments grant that in 1996 launched the Early Childhood

Initiative, an ambitious project designed to provide intensive

early childhood education and care to the neediest children in

Allegheny County, and the William Penn Foundation’s invest-

ment in early care and education programs during the 1990s,

especially Child Care Matters, a six-year, $14 million program.

The Early Childhood Initiative, which also received support

from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, established top-

quality preschool programs that researchers found were

of building an effective support system

to meet the needs of young children.

Whether the question was reducing

poverty and crime or promoting eco-

nomic and workforce development, the

answer, advocates insisted, was early child-

hood education—and Pennsylvania was

sorely behind in making it a priority.

In 2000, Pennsylvania was one of

only nine states that didn’t invest in early

childhood learning. When advocates

first looked at this issue in the 1980s,

Pittsburgh’s poverty rates were growing—especially among

African Americans—and hovering above the national rate.

Poverty is the single biggest predictor of problems such as

school dropouts, violence, pregnancy and substance abuse

among teenagers, and there was no focus in the region on

attempting to prevent these situations long before adolescence,

says Marge Petruska, the Endowments’ senior program director

for Children, Youth & Families. “The very idea was pretty

unusual at that time. We thought it was an opportune moment

to build an agenda that would directly benefit children birth to

age 5 and their families.”

That agenda has grown in spurts and starts, but the

movement has been bolstered by scientific research where the

stakes are laid bare in the numbers. Advocates cite the Carolina

Abecedarian Project, a North Carolina study that has been

tracking 111 people born into poverty and who now are in

early adulthood. Those who received quality early childhood

education scored higher on cognitive tests in adolescence and

were more likely to attend college by a rate of 36 percent to

14 percent.

The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study in Michigan, which

began in 1962 with toddlers at risk, has found that participants,

now in their 40s, who had high-quality pre-kindergarten are

more likely to own homes. They earn about $5,000 more per

year and are less likely to have been arrested. The study also

estimated that the total benefit–cost ratio of the program over

time was $17 for every dollar invested.

25

Early childhood education advocates realized, however,

that the best way to draw a governor’s attention was to make

their agenda a campaign issue.

The Partnership for Children teamed up with University

of Pittsburgh’s Office of Child Development, the Philadelphia

Citizens for Children and Youth, and Philadelphia Safe and

Sound to inject five issues into the campaign. Focus Five for Kids

sought to improve access to health care, after-school programs,

public school education, family-support centers and school

readiness through a system of pre-kindergarten education.

The coalition partners met with campaign staff members

and the editorial boards of nearly every major newspaper

in Pennsylvania. They also commissioned a poll that found

majorities of voters favored state-subsidized health insurance

for uninsured children and more state funding for public

schools, and that 40 percent of likely voters would oppose a

gubernatorial candidate who didn’t support either proposal.

Candidates Rendell and Fisher outlined the details of their

support for early childhood education in a presentation at the

Delaware Valley Association for Education of Young Children.

“It was a watershed moment,” says Ronnie Bloom, the William

Penn Foundation’s Children, Youth & Families director.

But winning over a future governor was only a partial victory.

While pre-kindergarten had wide support, some

conservatives, such as the Commonwealth Foundation in

a widely printed op-ed, argued that Focus Five sought to

“allow…parents to abdicate, and the government to usurp, the

most basic of child-rearing duties.” And after Rendell’s victory,

the Republican-led legislature was not going to give the new

Democratic governor everything he wanted, such as his initial

proposal of $375 million for educational block grants.

Change started with the 2004–05 education budget, which

provided $200 million in new educational accountability block

grants to the state’s 501 school districts. Districts could use

the grants for any of 10 options. Two-thirds chose one of the

three related to early education: reducing class size in primary

grades, creating pre-kindergarten programs or, the most

popular, establishing full-day kindergarten.

providing dramatic benefits to the children enrolled. For

example, significantly fewer of the children receiving services

were held back after entering school compared with their

peers. Special education placement rates plummeted among

those in the program from 21 to 1 percent.

But a Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Endowments

determined that, despite the successes, the initiative suffered

from problems such as wrong assumptions about costs and

demand for services, which were later exacerbated by federal

welfare reform. The program was scaled back, but lessons

learned proved helpful to future efforts in Pennsylvania

and elsewhere.

“The results where the program was implemented offered

local data that we used to make powerful arguments for public

investment in quality early learning,” says Petruska.

In Cleveland, George Gund Foundation officials followed

the initiative’s example and began looking at early childhood

programs that start at birth and impact a child’s total develop-

ment. Gund also learned from the Pennsylvania experience

the importance of a long-term financial commitment from

the public sector before launching an early childcare and

education initiative called Invest in Children. “We couldn’t

expect miracles overnight, and we needed public officials to

hang in there for the long haul,” says Marcia Egbert, Gund’s

senior program officer for human services.

The efforts to improve school readiness among young

children at both ends of Pennsylvania intensified attempts to

institutionalize the concept in the state.

The Pennsylvania Business Roundtable, an association of

chief executive officers of the state’s largest corporations, tried

to convince Gov. Tom Ridge of the need for a statewide early

childhood education initiative. Instead, it was his successor,

Gov. Mark Schweiker, who made the first move, appointing

the Task Force on Early Childhood Care and Education. Some

critics called the group’s study “iterative,” but Republican

David Dumeyer, executive director of the House Education

Committee, credits the former Republican governor

with laying the groundwork “with a series of blue-ribbon

recommendations” in 2002.

Advocates say quality pre-kindergarten offers youngchildren several long-term benefits such as providingthem with experiences and brain developmentactivities that will help them excel on standardizedtests and prepare for higher education.{

26

“We need to build a set of supporters from across the

state that goes beyond the four- and eight-year cycles of state

government,” says Haigh. The idea is to make high-quality

early childhood education part of the institutional landscape,

not something that vanishes with a new administration.

A model program that organizers hope will grow is the

Pre-K Partnership of Bucks County, which includes three

neighboring school districts and nine community partner

organizations. The coalition is creating a “seamless” pre-

kindergarten program for 189 children, in which different

providers are given the same curriculum based on state

education standards for ages 3 and 4, the same strategies for

preparing children for kindergarten and the same staff training

conducted in conjunction with the school districts’ employees.

“These districts are showing how a partnership effort can

increase the quality and capacity of pre-kindergarten programs

and have a lasting effect on the physical, emotional and

intellectual development of young children,” says Pennsylvania

Partnership Director Bob Bell.

Another early childhood effort worth noting is Keystone

STARS, which stands for Standards, Training, Assistance,

Resources and Support. The rating system for preschool

programs recognizes consistent improvement and enables

them to receive grants to make their services better each

time they qualify for a star.

Since getting its first star in January 2003, the Marian Manor

Child Development and Learning Center in Green Tree, just

outside of Pittsburgh, has qualified for seven grants totaling

$69,000 and is working on its third star. Visitors walking into

the nonprofit center can see that the children’s colorful artwork;

posters of career options showing men and women; and

shelves of books, toys and art supplies have been strategically

placed at child height. The grants enabled the center, which

serves 65 children from birth to age 5, to buy easels, playground

equipment and age-appropriate furniture.

Most important, the additional money will help the center’s

staff obtain more specialized training, and each of the 16 staff

members now has a personal Professional Development Record

Last school year, more than 50 percent of children in

public schools had access to full-day kindergarten, up from

less than 40 percent the previous year. And the state approved

its first-ever Head Start supplemental: $15 million to enable

2,500 more students to attend the federal preschool program

for at-risk children. The allocation for the current school year

doubled, but half the children who qualify for the program

are still not enrolled, says Harriet Dichter, deputy secretary

for the state Department of Public Welfare’s Office of

Child Development.

Helping to fill the gap is the Partnership for Quality

Pre-Kindergarten, a massive public–private coalition that is

assisting 23 pre-kindergarten pilot programs across the state.

The Endowments, the William Penn Foundation, and the

Grable and Richard King Mellon foundations of Pittsburgh;

the Raymond John Wean Foundation of Warren, Ohio; the

national John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, based in

Miami; and the state Department of Education are working

toward raising $16 million for the community-based

collaborative programs.

The Partnership has a three-pronged approach for

bolstering early childhood education in Pennsylvania. The

first part involves planning and implementing high-quality

pre-kindergarten programs at participating school districts

that offer the services by partnering with Head Start and

qualified private childcare providers.

The second is building a network of community leaders

who can share information and identify mutual interests,

thus creating a new set of advocates.

The final prong is the executive committee chaired by

Gov. Rendell and James E. Rohr, chairman and CEO of PNC

Financial Services Group. Two years ago, the company launched

the PNC Grow Up Great program, a 10-year, $100 million

commitment to universal access to high-quality early childhood

education in its service area of nine states and the District of

Columbia. Robert Haigh, senior advisor to the Partnership

for Quality Pre-Kindergarten, and Thomas Lamb, senior vice

president for government affairs at PNC, are recruiting some

20 to 30 business, civic and political leaders to join the

bipartisan, nonpolitical group.

}Another benefit of good early childhood educationis supporting local workforce development byequipping young learners with the skills necessaryfor success after graduation.

27

“It all signals a new understanding of what kids

need,” Hibbard says. “The pre-K momentum is

tremendous throughout the country.”

But pre-kindergarten alone “is late, if you

think of the brain research. The birth-to-3 years

are imperative,” she says.

And Pennsylvania’s early childhood agenda

is going there. Dichter says her office is working

on a strategy for infants and toddlers. It includes

training for caregivers and a pilot nurse-visitation

program to help parents be comfortable and

confident in their role. The Endowments has

given $400,000 toward the acceleration of

this work.

“Our view is that it is a continuum,” Dichter

says. “It’s been a long trip to get to where we are,

and we have a way to go yet.”

Traveling quickly along that path are childcare

centers like the nationally accredited York Day

Nursery, which serves 120 children ages 6 weeks

to 5 years and has a four-star Keystone rating.

Kristy Kitching marvels at the changes in herself

and the York, Pa., center in the decade she’s been

there. She’s transformed from a part-time kinder-

garten aide with no post-secondary education

to a lead teacher with an associate’s degree in

human development and family studies, with

an early childhood option.

The center now maintains more up-to-date materials

and equipment; encourages and, in some cases, helps pay for

advanced staff training; and creates relationships with the

community through activities such as sponsoring arts shows

and organizing field trips to a local library for story hour.

“I think this is something parents look at. They want to

see how trained these people are and what type of education

their children are getting,” says Kitching. “I couldn’t be happier.

This is the way to go.” h

tracking her progress, Director Penny Bongiorni explains.

“It treats the childcare field as a profession, not just a job.”

With the evolution of such new thinking, early childhood

experts are heartened. “Before, Pennsylvania was in the bottom

tier. Now, in some areas, it’s in the vanguard,” says Susan Hibbard,

a consultant with the Build Initiative, a multi-state partnership

created by the Early Childhood Funders’ Collaborative.

Keystone STARS is the sort of innovation that Pennsylvania

can share with the Build Initiative, which it joined in 2003.

Pre-kindergarten efforts in the state were included among

the $2.5 billion spent nationally on such programs last year.

28

here&thereTeresa Heinz, chair of the Howard Heinz Endowmentand the Heinz Family Philanthropies, will welcomeofficials from about 2,000 foundations who will meet in Pittsburgh’s David L. Lawrence ConventionCenter May 7 through 9 for the 57th annualconference of the Council on Foundations. Mrs. Heinz will speak about special initiatives

local foundations have funded that have proven effective in the Pittsburgh region and could be replicated nationally.

The conference also will beanother opportunity for the city to shed its smokestack image asPittsburgh nonprofit leaders show

off how far the city has come since it was knownfor steel mills and soot-filled skies. Conference-goers will visit some of the best examples ofPittsburgh’s philanthropic work and see a city thatis among the nation’s leaders in “green,” orenvironmentally friendly, innovation—often withfunding from local foundations.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to change the national conversation about Pittsburgh,” saysEndowments President Maxwell King, who alsoserves as vice chair of the national council. “We will be able to showcase the city while demon-strating that those likely to lead in Pittsburgh’s

continued quality-of-life improvements are beingfunded by foundations.”

The last time the Washington, D.C.–based council held its national convention in Pittsburghwas 41 years ago. This spring, convention-goerswill tour foundation-supported programs such asthe Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Bidwell TrainingCenter, the Carnegie Museum of Art and several of Pittsburgh’s “green” buildings.

Some sessions will detail the transformation of Pittsburgh’s downtown through the arts, therevitalized riverfronts and the evolution in the city’seconomy from steel to technology industries.Others will include speakers such as Nobel PeacePrize winner Wangari Maathai; George Soros,founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute;former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich; and Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the U.S. SenateFinance Committee.

“It’s an outstanding tribute that the Council onFoundations was so enthusiastic about coming toPittsburgh, our nation’s birthplace of philanthropy,”said Bill Trueheart, president and chief executiveofficer of The Pittsburgh Foundation and chair of the Independent Sector. “Many key individuals from across the United States and other parts ofthe world will experience the wonderful attributes of our great city.”

C O U N C I L O N F O U N D AT I O N S C O N F E R E N C E

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of dance, fight, play, music, ritual and mimicry. Justin

has served on the Multicultural Arts Initiative board, the

Emerging Leader Council of Americans for the Arts

and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts’ grants panels.

In other staff news, Janet Sarbaugh and Marge

Petruska were each promoted in January to the new

Endowments position of senior program director.

Janet’s title had been director of the Arts & Culture

Program, and Marge had held the same position for

the Children, Youth & Families area. Their promotions

recognize their long and excellent service to the

Endowments, their exceptional skills as grant makers and

the special role they play in providing leadership as

members of the foundation’s senior management team.

Among the Endowments staff with the longest

tenure, Janet joined the foundation in July 1982, when

it comprised the Howard Heinz Endowment and the

Pittsburgh Foundation. The Vira I. Heinz Endowment

was not formed until 1986, and the Pittsburgh

Foundation did not move out on its own until 1993.

Under Janet’s direction, the Arts & Culture Program

makes grants to arts organizations and programs

totaling an average of $14.5 million annually.

Marge had been director of the Endowments’

Children, Youth & Families Program, formerly known

as Health and Human Services, since April 1984.

She manages a grant-making portfolio of about

$10 million a year that supports human services

agencies and programs.

The Heinz Endowments

welcomes two additions to its

staff this year. In February,

Christina Gabriel came on

board as director of the

Innovation Economy Program,

the new name and focus for

what had been the Economic

Opportunity Program area.

Justin Laing joins the staff in

March as an Arts & Culture

Program officer.

Christina was a vice provost and the chief technology

officer at Carnegie Mellon University for the past five

years. Prior to working for Carnegie Mellon, she was

a top official with the National Science Foundation.

Her extensive research and technical background also

includes positions as director of collaborative initiatives

at Carnegie Mellon and first vice president for research

and technology transfer at Case Western Reserve

University in Cleveland. Christina serves on several

nonprofit boards and has been the external advisor

for technology within the Pittsburgh Public Schools’

strategic planning process.

Justin was managing director and assistant artistic

director of The Village 4 an Afrikan Cultural Center,

and Nego Gato Inc., an African-Brazilian arts organi-

zation, since 1997. He also performed with Nego Gato,

which introduced many in Pittsburgh to capoeira

angola, a Brazilian martial art that combines elements

AFTERSCHOOLSPECIAL

The Endowments Children,Youth & Families SeniorProgram Director MargePetruska and ProgramOfficer Wayne Jonesparticipated in the WesternPennsylvania RegionalSummit on Afterschoolconference in January. ThePennsylvania StatewideAfterschool Youth Develop-ment Network hosted the one-day conference

at the Radisson HotelPittsburgh Green Tree.

Wayne served on thenetwork’s steeringcommittee that did strategicplanning for the summit,which attracted about 130 consultants, foundationrepresentatives and after-school program directors.Marge gave opening remarksfor the session, highlightingthe creativity and innovationof some after-school programs

and the need to address theuneven quality, inadequatetraining or lack of profes-sional development of others.

The Endowments hasfunded several studies onafter-school programs,seeking systemic solutionsto areas of concern. It alsohas given a $15,000 grant to the Center for Schools and Communities, a state-wide organization, to develop

a plan for parent–school–community partnerships that can help parents in 11 school districts getmore involved in promotingstudent achievement in their schools. The Januaryconference was one of aseries of policy summits that are being conductedacross the state to producestatewide standards andpolicies for sustaining qualityafter-school programs.

S T A F F U P D A T E S

Artist James Simon grins broadly as peopleexamine his colorful“Uptown Rhythm,” awhimsical cacophony ofswaying people, animals,musical instruments and animated buildings,topped by a large parrotand a “D” for DuquesneUniversity. The 9-by-25-foot sculpture stretchesup a wall of the ForbesAvenue garage inPittsburgh’s Uptown and is one of the latestexamples of public art th