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Past Board Members

Ginger Spivey

Ginger Spivey graduated from Washburn University in 2000 with a Bachelors degree in Mass Communication with an electronic emphasis and a minor in Sociology. As a Programming Associate for KTWU (PBS), Ginger works directly under the Programming Director to put together three 24-hour program schedules, assist with viewer inquiries and recommend programs for the KTWU broadcast schedule. She also serves as the station’s PSA Director and producer for Minds That Matter."

Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, Ginger has a vast knowledge of the people, places and history of our community. She always has had a strong connection and passion for the youth, but her most recent spark rose out of a concern for the lack of investment, activities and programs that foster strong community bonds with the youth. Ginger is a graduate of Leadership Greater Topeka – Class of 2010 and co-founder of the C.O.M.M.I.T. crew. She currently serves on the Highland Park High School Site Advisory Council and C.A.S.E. board.

Mario Porras

Mario has been serving youth since 1999; starting at Upward Bound (Emporia State University), a TRIO program (federally funded program that helps low income students prepare for college) for six years as an Office Assistant and a summer Resident Assistant.

Mario has a passion for helping youth and pets. Besides being a member of the LEAD planning committee, Vice-President and Secretary of CASE, Mario also serves on the local dog park association, Friends of Hill’s Bark Park Association as Vice-President and a committee chair In 2005 he started working for Kansas Kids @ GEAR UP – Topeka office (a federally funded program that helps low-income and foster care students prepare for college) as a College Access Advisor and is still helping students in NE Kansas prepare for college Mario grew up in Topeka, attending Highland Park South Elementary School (now called Ross Elementary), Eisenhower Middle School, Highland Park High School (class of ’98), and graduated from Emporia State University in 2004 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Sociology. He is currently working on a Masters Degree in Liberal Arts & Sciences which he will complete in May 2010.

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Recent news Articles

Kansas health officer outlines priorities for 2012 with obesity taking top

Infant mortality, injuries and deaths from vehicle accidents and lack of immunizations are among issues the state�s top health official wants to address in 2012. But, his top priority is obesity.

Dr. Robert Moser, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said the number of adolescents and adults who are overweight has steadily increased during the past 15 years. It�s concerning because of the number of health conditions related to weight gain: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased risk of diabetes and arthritis.

�The obesity epidemic in Kansas is a complex issue that�s going to have to be addressed from a number of different directions,� he said.

[Read More...]

Immigration, education concern state's Latinos

By Andy Marso

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Los Portales Restaurante and Cantina sits on the east side of Topeka, across S.E. 6th Street from El Azteca Club and Nueva Vida Panaderia.

Inside the restaurant it is a slow Tuesday night, and Raul Munoz takes a minute in between carrying out margaritas and plates of sizzling fajitas to sit and talk.

Munoz, 35, came to the United States from Leon, Mexico, when he was 7 years old.

He and his parents, Jorge and Teresa, fully opened the restaurant last year after designing the interior and carefully carving roosters and horses into the wooden booths by hand. The recession made for a tough year, but business has been picking up lately, and Munoz is optimistic they may hire more staff in 2012.

[Read More...]

Kansas health officer outlines priorities for 2012 with obesity taking top

Infant mortality, injuries and deaths from vehicle accidents and lack of immunizations are among issues the state’s top health official wants to address in 2012. But, his top priority is obesity.

Dr. Robert Moser, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said the number of adolescents and adults who are overweight has steadily increased during the past 15 years. It’s concerning because of the number of health conditions related to weight gain: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, increased risk of diabetes and arthritis.

“The obesity epidemic in Kansas is a complex issue that’s going to have to be addressed from a number of different directions,” he said.

Moser said the state has to address physical activity and healthy food options in schools and workplaces, where people spend about half of their time.

“Studies are out there in multitudes that demonstrate a healthy workforce costs a lot less for the employer down the road and increases productivity as well,” he said.

The state also will encourage organizations and businesses to offer more activities.

“We know that people do better maintaining a healthy lifestyle when they partner up with others to do that, including spouses and children as well as colleagues and friends,” he said. “It’s going to take a community effort to make it work.”

A look at the obesity rate in America. by kbritt

Moser’s other health priorities for 2012 are:

• Continue to work toward accreditation. He said the American Public Health Association has been developing an accreditation process for state health offices and local health departments for the past three years. He said the process will define what core services need to be provided and how well they are doing their jobs.

Moser believes the accreditation process will help standardize public health across the state. Currently, each local health department is responsible for its own safety and health issues and some may not have the resources that others have.

“It’s a little bit more organized approach to looking at where the problems are and how do we go about addressing them,” he said. Moser has seen more collaboration between health departments and communities as they work toward accreditation and he hopes that increases.

Moving toward accreditation is a voluntary process, but Moser believes having accreditation will help departments garner grants in the future.

• Increased collaboration among providers. He wants all health care providers to address behavioral risk factors — smoking, exercise and preventive care — in a more timely manner. For example, he said, if a woman uses a local health department to get a vaccine, staff should take a few minutes to ask about her routine preventive exams. Has she had a breast exam? What about a mammogram or colonoscopy?

Moser also wants more health care providers to do a better job of measuring how they’re doing. As a primary care doctor in western Kansas, Moser said he thought he did a good job of reminding his patients to take all of the preventive measures, but when they looked at the clinic’s patient population, they found they weren’t doing such a good job.

“If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” he said.

• Decrease in infant mortality. The rate has declined the last couple of years, but not enough. He said there are a number of things that help decrease infant mortality including practicing healthy habits like exercising and not smoking while pregnant and breastfeeding babies for at least six months after birth. He said babies who are breastfed have fewer respiratory ailments, are healthier and less likely to be obese.

• Increase in immunizations. Moser said there has been a slight decline in the number of adults and adolescents who are getting their recommended immunizations. The state’s 2010 Healthy Kansas goal was to have more than 90 percent of children getting their immunizations, instead it’s in the 80 to 85 percent range.

He said scientific research has proven that vaccines are effective and safe; yet he spends a lot of talking about it. He believes it’s because Kansans are a couple of generations removed from seeing a great deal of vaccine-preventable diseases.

During his first year of residency in 1985, he saw children who suffered neurological deficits because of haemophilus influenza. He said it was not unusual to do three or four spinal taps a day in the winter months. By the time he finished medical school, he didn’t do any spinal taps.

“It was a very vivid example of how effective a vaccination can be for a disease that can cause serious health concerns and long-term problems,” he said.

• Decrease in vehicle accidents. Moser said the highest rate of accidents occurs among Kansans between the ages of 15 and 24, and he believes it’s often because they are distracted — because of a passenger, changing the radio station or using a cell phone.

Moser said when Kansas implemented the mandatory seat belt law and the graduated license law, there was a significant drop in accidents.

“It was effective,” he said.

He said there could be a bill introduced at the state level in regards to cell phone use, but he questions how well law enforcement could monitor it.

“Our law enforcement folks have a great deal of other things to keep them busy, so it will be interesting to see what happens,” he said.

Moser said the state would be monitoring what happens in other states and at the federal level.

• Less tobacco use. The slight decline in tobacco use among adults has leveled off while there has been a slight rise in the number of adolescents who are using tobacco, he said. He believes the state needs to be more innovative in its approach.

“We’ve been doing some of the same things for a long period of time,” he said.

Moser said, for example, health department staff may need to speak up when they see a client carrying a pack of cigarettes even though they aren’t the person’s primary care provider and the client is there for a flu shot. He said they need to provide some education about tobacco use and resources to get help.

“There’s not a smoker or tobacco user out there that will tell you they don’t know that tobacco is bad for them, but finding a way to help them find the willpower, motivation and the ability to quit is going to take a little bit of a different approach over time,” he said. “We all have a role to play in helping those who want to quit.”

[link back]

Immigration, education concern state's Latinos

By Andy Marso

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Los Portales Restaurante and Cantina sits on the east side of Topeka, across S.E. 6th Street from El Azteca Club and Nueva Vida Panaderia.

Inside the restaurant it is a slow Tuesday night, and Raul Munoz takes a minute in between carrying out margaritas and plates of sizzling fajitas to sit and talk.

Munoz, 35, came to the United States from Leon, Mexico, when he was 7 years old.

But he is worried that the recovery is tenuous, and one thing that would kill it is an illegal immigration crackdown in Kansas similar to what states like Arizona and Alabama have instituted in recent years.

“I think it would hurt a lot of things, not just here, but a lot of businesses,” Munoz said. “From my point of view, there was a time when the Hispanic population was really strong. They work hard, they’re good customers, they spend lots of money. They get money rolling, and that’s what spurs the economy.”

Immigration and education are two issues on the minds of Kansas Latinos, who make up 10.5 percent of the state’s population, heading into the upcoming legislative session.

Kris Kobach, one of the architects of the Arizona and Alabama laws, was elected secretary of state in Kansas last year and has long been an outspoken advocate of stronger immigration enforcement.

But Adrienne Foster, executive director of Gov. Sam Brownback’s Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission, said the governor wants to keep immigration out of the coming session.

“He’s not supporting any immigration legislation,” Foster said. “There may be some that is presented, but I don’t think it would come out of the committees.”

But Reps. Louis Ruiz, D-Kansas City, and Mario Goico, R-Wichita, both said immigration-related issues likely will come up.

The two representatives said a challenge to the Kansas statute allowing in-state college tuition for students who have spent at least three years at Kansas high schools but haven’t established legal residency is nearly inevitable.

“Ever since I have been in the Legislature, we’ve always had to debate that bill,” said Ruiz, who was first elected in 2005.

It is an issue that Goico is passionate about because of personal experience. He came to the United States from Cuba as a child through Operation Peter Pan and worked his way up from orphan to Air Force pilot flying 36 combat missions in a refueling plane in Desert Storm to Boeing engineer.

He said his education at Wichita State University was essential to that transformation, and he wants the same opportunities for other immigrant children.

“To me, if you take the hope of a better future from a child, you’re destroying them,” Goico said. “There’s a lot of unhappiness about illegal immigration and here we’re taking these children that did not decide to come here and trying to take away from them the hope of life.”

Last year the bill to repeal the in-state tuition provision was sponsored by Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, who made national news when he joked in a committee hearing that perhaps illegal immigrants might be shot from helicopters like feral hogs.

Peck later apologized, but Ruiz said the outcry over his comment helped scuttle the bill Peck sponsored.

The in-state tuition issue split the Legislature’s four Latino members, with Goico and Ruiz voting against Peck’s bill and Reps. Reynaldo Mesa, R-Garden City, and Ramon Gonzalez, R-Perry, voting for it.

Mesa and Gonzalez didn’t respond to an email requesting comment for this story.

Ruiz said he expects the tuition provision to come up again and a repeal of it would probably pass the House.

He said it would face a tougher road in the Senate, and he wasn’t sure what Brownback would do with it.

“If it makes it through both Houses, will he sign it or will he veto it?” Ruiz said. “That’s the question.”

When asked that question in an email, the governor’s spokeswoman, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, declined to answer it.

“He will consider the merits of every bill that reaches his desk carefully before taking action,” Jones-Sontag replied, noting that the governor was focused on his full legislative agenda.

That agenda includes a bold new school finance formula that also has caught the attention of some Kansas Latinos. The new formula would do away with weighted enrollment for at-risk students, including those who are still learning English.

“They’re wanting to find out where the governor is coming from and how he expects to offer a fair and equitable education when he’s going to be cutting these programs out,” Ruiz said of his Wyandotte County constituents.

Goico said he wanted more time to examine the plan, but in his experience full immersion with English-speaking classmates was an effective way to catch up.

Those issues will be debated in the coming months in a Kansas Statehouse that sits barely a mile from where Raul Munoz will be working at Los Portales.

Munoz’s passion is boxing. He is 22-15 all-time and will start training soon to drop 40 pounds before his next bout in April at the Kansas Expocentre.

But for now he is just a small-business owner trying to make it in a recovering neighborhood.

His family started El Azteca about 12 years ago, taking over an establishment formerly called The Main Attraction without knowing that it had such a history of violence that locals had nicknamed it “The Fatal Attraction.”

Since then, the Munozes have worked with Topeka police to increase security inside and outside the club.

After well-publicized shootings in 1999 and 2007, things have quieted. Now they are focused on the restaurant.

“We’ve worked so hard with our hands and our minds on getting this what it is,” Munoz said of the neighborhood. “Ten years back you’d look around and be afraid because everything was abandoned and dark. I feel really good — proud of what we’ve done.”

Andy Marso can be reached

at (785) 295-5619

or andy.marso@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter
@andymarso.

[link back]

Latino youth program set

Open house planned Thursday to outline leadership course

Posted: August 4, 2009 - 1:22pm

By Bill BlankenshipA group of Topekans are ready to launch a program to encourage Latino high school students to not only earn their diplomas but also get college degrees and take on leadership roles in their community.

An open house explaining the Latino Empowerment And Development Program will be offered from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Topeka LULAC Multipurpose Senior Center, 1502 N.E. Seward, to introduce high schoolstudents to the program, as well as showcase it for adults interested in supporting the effort.

Robert Soria, LEAD Program co-chairman along with Angela Valdivia, said the effort is in response to the continuing low graduation rates achieved by Latino students have as compared to other groups.

"This issue has been a concern for years and a continued source of frustration in the Latino community," Soria said. "Personally, I have been disappointed about the lack of progress since I first learned about thesestatistics in the late 1980s.

The LEAD Program, which is modeled after one in Kansas City, Mo., will offer 14 biweekly, two-hour sessions at Washburn University. Those session will being Sept. 12 and continue through May.

First, we hope to inspire and plant the seeds of achievement in young Latino minds," said Soria, who said the LEAD Program's mission also is to "provide the students with practical and proven skills to help them achieve their goals" and to instill in them "community pride" so they can develop into leaders.

In addition to recruiting student participants, the LEAD Program also is working to organizing itself into a nonprofit corporation and develop partnerships in the community to support the effort.

Others on the LEAD Program planning committee are Keith Tatum, curriculum development chair; Alicia Guerrero-Chavez and Mike Chavez, curriculum facilitators; Precious Porras, marketing; Mario Porras, secretary; andmembers Nici Soria, Dona Walker and John Ybarra. Robin Bowen, Washburn vice president of academic affairs, is the liaison with the university.

For more information about the program, attend the open house, where refreshments will be served, or contact Soria at 845-5460 or djritmo@yahoo.com.

Bill Blankensihp can be reached at (785) 295-1284 or bill.blankenship@cjonline.com.

LATINO YOUTH PROGRAM SET (via CJ Online)

Let's Help, Inc. Presents: 2011 SOS street music fest

Let's Help, Inc. Presents: 2011 SOS street music fest
Featuring , KC and Sunshine Band
Saturday, Sept. 3rdd
Downtown Topeka

This will be held on Sept. 3rd from 3:00-11:00pm at 3rd and Kansas. The will feature local bands, regional food and drinks, and family-friendly entertainment, KC and Sunshine Band will rock the night when they take the stage and finish out a fabulous event.

Non-profits are invited to share the day! Booth space (10x10) is available at no charge to any 501(c) 3 organization on first-come -first-serve basis. Your organization will have the opportunity to sell food, set up games of chance, or simply promote its services. City of Topeka ordinance do require completing a transient merchants application ($140) and/or purchasing a mobile restaurant license ($250) . Organizations will be responsible for staging booth space and for complete clean up of booth area. Participants must be self-sufficient, no electricity available.

Let's Help expects this event to attract an audience of close to 10,000. the offer this opportunity to fellow non-profits for two reasons:
1st we know you will promote the event to your donors and advocates and 2nd we know you will give back to Let's help . In exchange for free booth space, participants may make a donation of a small portion of their proceeds to Let's Help (10% recommended) and/or supply Let's help with volunteers who can work the event.

Let's help 2011 SOS street music fest is a fundraising event that will benefit Let's help Adult Basic Education Program. Let's help will sell tickets to the event and will have exclusive rights to sell beverages and lighted novelties.

Angela M. Valdivia, Office Assistant
Student Activities & Greek Life
785.670.2723 Fax: 785.670.1045
www.washburn.edu/getalife