Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis planned to open this year’s State of the City speech by thanking Caterpillar Inc. for its longtime commitment to the central Illinois town, declaring “We wouldn’t be Peoria without Caterpillar.”

It’s been that way for decades in Peoria and in other company towns across the United States. A major employer provided generations of locals with jobs and gave the cities a central identity, while executives helped keep cultural institutions, Rotary clubs and higher-end housing markets healthy.

Now many of those midsize communities are looking for a new identity as more companies trade their longtime hometowns for major cities with easier access to global markets and to the lifestyle talented young workers want, with public transit, nightlife and trendy restaurants.

Caterpillar’s recent decision to move 300 top headquarters jobs to the Chicago area made Peoria the latest city with a vacuum to fill. In 2014, Decatur, Illinois, lost Archer Daniels Midland to Chicago after 40 years in the town. ConAgra Foods moved 1,000 jobs last year from Omaha to Chicago.

Jobs follow the people

Some companies also are leaving suburban areas for downtowns, though the suburbs are still a popular choice. General Electric is moving its executives from a suburban campus in Fairfield, Connecticut, to downtown Boston, and McDonald’s said last year it will relocate downtown Chicago from a sprawling headquarters in suburban Oak Brook.

A study by the virtual think tank CityObservatory.org found the number of jobs located within three miles of the city center grew by nearly 2 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Center city jobs grew slightly faster than those in the periphery in one recent seven-year period, a reversal from much of the past several decades.

“I don’t know that I’d call it a trend yet but it certainly is becoming one,” said Tom Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor and senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “Maybe for the first time in history, rather than having people follow where jobs are … we’re beginning to see jobs following people instead.”

By a 2-to-1 margin, young college graduates are now choosing a place to live first, then finding a job, said Joe Cortright, director of CityObservatory.org.

For companies recruiting top talent, “the biggest competitive advantage is to be in the city,” Cortright said.

Urban-rural divide grows

The change is adding to the divide between urban and smaller communities in the U.S., especially in the Midwest, which is beset with sagging manufacturing industries.

“We joke about that there’s the great state of Chicago, and then there’s the rest of Illinois,” said Bishop Harold Dawson Jr., a lifelong Peoria resident and pastor of New Life Christian Church.

Like many locals, Dawson can rattle off a list of relatives whose livelihoods in Peoria have depended on Caterpillar. The company, known as CAT for short, established its first plant in Peoria in 1909 and employs more than 12,000 workers in the area, even after several layoffs.

The city of about 110,000 has been trying to breathe more life into its downtown and a scenic stretch along the Illinois River. But while new restaurants, coffee shops and apartments are opening, Ardis acknowledged few people would call the area dynamic. And parts of the city’s core are seeing growing poverty.

The headquarters move has been a blow to the city’s collective morale.

“There is emotion around” the decision, said Jeff Griffin, president of the Peoria Area Chamber. “Peoria is not unique in that tragedy across the country.”

Shift to small businesses

Griffin said he and his counterpart in Omaha talked recently about the importance of diversifying the local economy, relying on small business rather than large corporations.

“Part of the big challenge is leadership needs to recognize the rules have changed,” Murphy said. “They need to think about how they build their cities and the amenities they offer, and be really clear about what their competitive advantages are today, not what they were 100 years ago.”

A city should perhaps think about spending on public transit rather than highways, he said.

Improving the atmosphere of downtown seems to be helping some midsize cities recoup from the loss of major businesses, urban experts say.

Finding a new identity

In Greenville, South Carolina, where the decline of the textile industry left a huge gap in the economy, leadership arranged to remove a four-lane bridge that obstructed the view of a scenic waterfall, and added trees and cafes and sidewalks. A downtown that was once “dead” is now “beautiful and hugely successful,” Murphy said. In addition to drawing tourists, the city has a booming advanced manufacturing industry, anchored by companies such as BMW.

But other places, such as Decatur, are struggling to find a new identity. The city has the second-highest unemployment rate in Illinois, and Moody’s Analytics warns the lack of jobs could push the city back into recession.

Across the Midwest and Northeast in particular, a number of midsize cities are facing “big challenges,” Cortright said.

“What do we do with the Peorias?” he added. “I don’t’ think we know what the answer to that is.”

Peoria has a growing health care industry and is home to other companies such as Maui Jim sunglasses and Bump Box, a monthly delivery of skincare and other products for pregnant women.

Ardis said the city just has to find more.

“We’re not just going to roll over and play dead,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Before Donald Trump won the November election, many analysts were sharply critical of his economic proposals. Some predicted big declines in financial markets, hiring slowdowns and a heightened risk of recession.

But just a little more than a month since Trump became the 45th U.S. president, U.S. stocks have enjoyed the longest winning streak in decades, hiring continues to beat expectations and consumer confidence is soaring.

Were naysayers wrong?

VOA spoke with an early critic of Trump’s economic plans, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, to ask him if the experts got it wrong.

Zandi’s answer was a crisp “No.”

 “If Mr. Trump got precisely what he wanted, the policy proposals that he had put forward, what would happen to economy? And the answer is, the economy would go into a deep recession.”

Zandi told VOA he stands by his initial assessment before Trump became president, saying that from a policy perspective, he has yet to deliver on his campaign promises.

“What he wanted was 11 million undocumented workers to leave the country. What he wanted was a 45 percent tariff on China, 35 percent on Mexico. What he wanted was tax cuts and government spending increases that would increase the budget deficit by $10 trillion over 10 years. So if that is what he got, that would lead to a recession. That hasn’t changed.”

Others see good signs

But others say the record run-up in stock prices reflects renewed investor optimism under Trump, much of it driven by expectations of corporate tax cuts and fewer regulations. PNC senior analyst Gus Faucher says it’s about higher profits in the short term.

“So they (investors) are expecting stronger U.S. economic growth under President Trump, both real growth — that is after inflation — but also perhaps higher inflation, and that’s going to boost profits as well,” he said. “And then also it looks like we’ll get corporate income tax cuts, so that means more profits to distribute to the shareholders so that’s good news for stock prices.”

Faucher says investors will be disappointed if Trump fails to introduce concrete proposals to boost growth, such as corporate income tax cuts or a major infrastructure jobs program, but he says, in general, the economic outlook is much better than it was just a few months ago.

Enthusiasm wanes

But enthusiasm surrounding Trump’s economic agenda may be waning.

Goldman Sachs says investor confidence may have reached its peak. And Kevin Kelly at Recon Capital Partners says markets may be close to reaching a tipping point.

“Now, it’s focusing on, OK, are we going to get deregulation or are we going to get taxes? Are things going to be weighing for a while? Is it going to be a second half of the year story? I think that’s what’s kind of seeping into the market right now.”

Some economists say Trump’s protectionist, anti-trade positions pose another risk to the larger global economy. 

Trump has turned his back on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he wants to renegotiate the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Critics of NAFTA say the North American trade deal destroyed millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the United States.

But Zandi of Moody’s says, “The United States is at the center of the global economy. It’s taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and brought them into the middle class. Think about Brazil, think about Eastern Europe, think about China and Asia. Consumers have also benefited enormously from cheaper goods. If we pull back on globalization, the world suffers and we will also suffer.”

Congress likely to back policies

Despite reports of disarray in the early days of the Trump administration, Zandi believes a Republican majority in both houses of Congress is likely to approve most of Trump’s policy proposals. 

But some economists wonder, given the Republican party’s brand of fiscal conservatism, if lawmakers approve Trumps proposed tax cuts, how is the administration going to pay for a major infrastructure jobs program, or new border agents, and of course, that giant border wall between the U.S. and Mexico?
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From: MeNeedIt

Before Donald Trump won the election, many analysts were sharply critical of his economic proposals. However, in Trump’s first month in office, U.S. stocks have hit a series of record highs and consumer confidence improved. Did analysts get it wrong? Economist Mark Zandi, an early critic of Trump’s economic plans, said it’s still too soon to tell. Mil Arcega reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

An international team of astronomers, using an array of ground and space telescopes, has discovered an astonishing seven Earth-sized planets in a system just 40 light years away.

Water, water everywhere

The seven planets, according to a press release, “all have masses less than or similar to the Earth.”

According to scientists, the temperatures on the planets “are low enough to make possible liquid water on the surfaces…” as the planets are in that perfect habitable or “goldilocks zone,”

Michaël Gillon, of the STAR Institute at the University of Liège in Belgium, is the study’s lead author. Gillon says he is delighted by the findings. “This is an amazing planetary system — not only because we have found so many planets, but because they are all surprisingly similar in size to the Earth!”

The new findings are outlined in today’s journal Nature.

Dwarf stars – who knew?

The planets were discovered orbiting around a small, ultracool (as in temperature) star called TRAPPIST-1.

It is similar to another dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, that’s just 4.2 light years away from Earth. It also made news last year when scientists discovered an Earth-like planet, dubbed Proxima b, in its orbit that is also in the goldilocks zone.

These Earth-like planets are no surprise to Alan Boss, an astrophysicist who spoke to VOA about Proxima b a few months ago. Back then he said there may be as many as “1.2 habitable Earths per star.”

Finding the planets was an international effort. Astronomers had already discovered three Earth-sized planets orbiting the star last year. Those were discovered by monitoring so-called ‘transits,’ when planets cross in front of the star, dimming their light.

So researchers decided to take a closer look and monitored  the star “for months with different telescopes in Chile, Morocco, Hawaii, La Palma and South Africa, and in September 2016, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope monitored TRAPPIST-1 for 20 days.”

Their work discovered four more planets, all of which “could potentially have liquid water on their surfaces.”

The researchers say all of the planets are about the same sizes as Earth or Venus, but any resemblance to our solar system ends there.

For one, everything is smaller on TRAPPIST-1, beginning with the star itself, which is only about 8 percent the size of our sun, making it just a bit larger than our largest planet, Jupiter. That puts all seven of these planets “in far closer orbits than we see in the solar system.”

And more information is on the way. The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched in 2018 and will be able to take an even closer look at the planets around TRAPPIST-1.

Brice-Olivier Demory, one of the authors and a professor at the University of Bern’s Center for Space and Habitability, says adding the Webb Telescope into the mix will allow us to move beyond looking for planets, and instead start looking for life. “The James Webb Space Telescope,” he says, “Hubble’s successor, will have the possibility to detect the signature of ozone if this molecule is present in the atmosphere of one of these planets…This could be an indicator for biological activity on the planet.”

He says that making definitive statements concerning life beyond Earth will never be simple, but like Boss told VOA last year,” I expect to still be alive when it happens.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. home resales surged to a nearly 10 year high in January.

Wednesday’s report from the National Association of Realtors says existing home sales jumped 3.3 percent to an annual rate of 5.69 million homes.

The report says sales are being hampered by the smaller-than-usual number of homes available for sale.  The real estate industry group also says sales were up 3.8 percent from the same period a year ago.  

Sales growth was stronger than many experts predicted, perhaps because they thought rising prices and interest rates might cool the market a bit.

Economists may get more insight in possible interest rate hikes later Wednesday when Federal Reserve officials publish notes from their most recent policy meeting.  

 
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From: MeNeedIt

There is some good news for cat lovers. Turns out those reports that people who grew up with cats have a higher risk of mental illness are not true.

Writing in the journal Psychological Medicine, researchers from University College London say a common parasite associated with cats, Toxoplasma Gondii, which is associated with mental health issues, does not cause mental issues in people who grew up around cats.

Lead author Dr. Francesca Solmi said, “The message for cat owners is clear: there is no evidence that cats pose a risk to children’s mental health.”

She said, “Previous studies reporting links between cat ownership and psychosis simply failed to adequately control for other possible explanations.”

Solmi said, “In our study, initial unadjusted analyses suggested a small link between cat ownership and psychotic symptoms at age 13, but this turned out to be due to other factors. Once we controlled for factors such as household overcrowding and socioeconomic status, the data showed that cats were not to blame.”

Researchers say their study of those who grew up around cats is “significantly more reliable” than studies that suggested a link between cat ownership and mental disorders because the subjects were monitored for nearly 20 years, rather than asking people with mental illness to remember details from their childhood, as was the case with studies suggesting a link.

Furthermore, they say those studies were relatively small with “gaps” in the data.

“Our study suggests that cat ownership during pregnancy or in early childhood does not pose a direct risk for later psychotic symptoms,” said senior author James Kirkbride. “However, there is good evidence that T. Gondii exposure during pregnancy can lead to serious birth defects and other health problems in children. As such, we recommend that pregnant women should continue to follow advice not to handle soiled cat litter in case it contains T. Gondii.”

For this study, researchers investigated 5,000 people born in 1991 or 1992 who were part of an 18-year ongoing health study. Data from the study showed whether cats were in the house when the mother was pregnant or had cats while the children were growing up.
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From: MeNeedIt

The playwright who inspired the Oscar-nominated movie “Moonlight” has won a prize from PEN America, the literary and human rights organization.

Tarell Alvin McCraney received an award for best mid-career playwright, PEN announced Wednesday. McCraney’s “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” is the basis for the acclaimed movie drama, which is up for eight nominations at Sunday night’s Academy Awards. McCraney is also known for his acclaimed “The Brother/Sister” trilogy.

Suzan-Lori Parks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her play “Topdog/Underdog,” received a PEN award for “Master American Dramatist.” Thomas Bradshaw, whose works include “Burning” and “The Bereaved,” was named best emerging playwright.

Other honors included the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, given to Matthew Desmond for “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.” The Bosnian-born Aleksandar Hemon won the Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, for “How Did You Get Here?: Tales of Displacement.” Named for the author of “Edie” and other oral histories, the Stein grant is a $10,000 award “for an unpublished literary work of nonfiction that uses oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place or movement.”

The PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing went to Joe Nocera and Ben Strauss for “Indentured: The Inside Story of the Rebellion Against the NCAA.” British author Helen Oyeyemi’s “What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours” won the PEN Open Book Award for “an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color.”

“As global and national political discourse turn toward exclusion, PEN America continues to uphold the humanities’ place in fostering coherent dialogue,” the organization’s president, Andrew Solomon, said in a statement. “Many of this year’s honored books explore the social themes that are at the surface of our nation’s consciousness.” A dozen emerging writers received $2,000 prizes for outstanding debut short stories, including Angela Ajayi for “Galina,” Amber Caron for “The Handler” and Emily Chammah for “Tell Me, Please.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde on Tuesday that he expects the IMF to

provide “frank and candid” analysis of exchange rate policies, a Treasury spokesperson said.

In a phone call with Lagarde, the spokesperson said, Mnuchin also “noted the importance that the administration places on boosting economic growth and jobs in the United States, and looked forward to robust IMF economic policy advice on its member countries and tackling global imbalances.”

The conversation on U.S. priorities occurred as officials from the Group of 20 major economies express concern about how the United States will approach multilateral institutions and delicately crafted G-20 language on foreign exchange cooperation, trade and other economic policies.

As President Donald Trump pursues an “America First” agenda aimed at reversing chronic trade deficits with China, Mexico, Germany and other major trading partners, some are concerned his administration could back away from pledges to maintain an open global trading system.

“I believe the Trump administration will try to leverage the IMF and the G-20 to help achieve its external objectives and escalate pressure on China and Germany,” said Domenico Lombardi, a former IMF board official who is now with the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think tank.

Targeting currency manipulation

Throughout his election campaign, Trump accused China of manipulating its yuan currency to gain an export advantage over the United States. And Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro in late January said Germany was using a “grossly undervalued” euro to do the same. Both countries have large bilateral trade surpluses with the United States.

But IMF officials no longer view the yuan as undervalued, especially since China’s central bank has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up the yuan over the past year to counter capital outflows.

The euro’s value against the dollar is widely viewed as a function of still-weak fundamentals in key eurozone economies and the European Central Bank’s use of negative interest rates at a time when the U.S. Federal Reserve is raising rates.

A ‘constructive discussion’

Mnuchin, who was sworn in as Treasury secretary just a week ago, has yet to lay out his priorities. Before his Senate confirmation, he pledged to work through the IMF, the G-7 and G-20 to address currency manipulation as an unfair trade practice.

But he added in written remarks to senators: “The IMF and other multilateral institutions do not appear to have prevented nations from manipulating the value of their own currencies.”

In the call with Lagarde, the Treasury spokesperson said Mnuchin “underscored his expectation that the IMF provide frank and candid analysis of the exchange rate policies of IMF member countries.”

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said that Lagarde “had a constructive discussion with Secretary Mnuchin on a wide range of issues of interest to our membership. We look forward to continuing our close and productive engagement with the U.S. authorities.”

US is largest IMF shareholder

The United States is by far the IMF’s largest shareholder, with about 17 percent of its board voting power, enough for an effective veto over many major decisions.

It is unclear how Mnuchin might wield U.S. influence over the IMF on issues such as whether it should commit resources to Europe’s bailout of Greece.

In his written remarks to senators, Mnuchin said the Trump administration will “ensure that U.S. resources placed in international institutions such as the IMF and multilateral development banks are used to promote policies consistent with the objectives of the United States to the greatest extent

possible.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Autonomous automobiles aren’t taking over American highways yet, but automation is becoming a bigger part of the driving experience.

A mobile phone app called Shell allows drivers to pay for a fill-up of gasoline from their in-car touchscreens. No debit or credit cards are involved, so the process will work for drivers who forgot their wallets.

The downside? The app will take care of the payment, but somebody — in most states, the driver — still has to get out and manually insert the fuel pump nozzle into the car’s gas tank.

Here’s how it works, assuming the user already has downloaded the Shell app and connected the mobile phone to the car’s network. The car’s touchscreen will guide the user to the nearest service station (a Shell station, of course, considering the app’s name).

After pulling up to the gas pump, the user enters a PIN code and the gas pump’s number. Payment takes place through ApplePay or PayPal, and a receipt is displayed onscreen and sent by email.

Then comes the hard part: Get out of the car, unlatch the fuel pump hose and insert it in the gas tank.

A couple more caveats about the Shell app:

The app works only on iPhones, not on other brands — although developers say they are working on a version for Android Pay.

The app is available only to owners of certain brands and models of cars — the Jaguar F-PACE, XE and XF, plus Land Rovers — and it works only in Britain. Those two car manufacturers and the Shell company, which collaborated on the app, say it will be rolling out in other global markets later this year.
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From: MeNeedIt

Suicide attempts among teens, particularly those who are gay, lesbian and bisexual, declined in states that legalized same-sex marriage, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, researchers from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health say their study showed that in states that legalized same-sex marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit saw declines in attempted suicide.

Specifically, the researchers analyzed data from 1999 to 2015 and found a 7 percent reduction in suicide attempts of high school-aged youngsters in 32 states that had already legalized same-sex marriage. Among gays, lesbians and bisexuals, the decrease was 14 percent, researchers say.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for U.S. teens, but occurs at a higher rate among gay, lesbian and bisexual kids. For example, 29 percent of LGBT teens in the study reported a suicide attempt, compared to just 6 percent among heterosexual teens.

Researchers say the study does not prove a connection between same-sex marriage and suicide as much of the data is self reported; but, they do theorize that perhaps laws that are for gay adults may send a message to teens to feel “more hopeful for the future,” said lead author Julia Raifman, a researcher at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For their study, researchers looked at data from more than 700,000 public high school students who took part in government survey about risky behavior from 1999 to 2015, which is the year same-sex marriage was declared legal by the Supreme Court. Of those, more than 213,000 identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Surveys did not ask about students who said they were transgender or queer.

To hone in more on the connection between suicide and gays, lesbians and bisexuals, future researchers will need to account for economic status and religion, among other things, according to the study.

“There is a need for further research to understand the association between sexual minority rights, stigma and sexual minority health,” according to the study.
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From: MeNeedIt

Croatian police have filed disorderly conduct charges against two people who allegedly used a racial slur to insult Hollywood actor Jamie Foxx in a restaurant.

Police said they acted after receiving reports Sunday of “particularly arrogant and rude” insults made against restaurant guests, including “one of the guests on racial grounds.”

The police statement did not name Foxx as the target, but the actor briefly posted comments about the incident on his Instagram profile before deleting them.

Foxx mentioned an offensive racial term among the examples of the vulgar language used.

Police said they are investigating whether to pursue other charges against the men.

Croatia, like other European countries, has seen a rise in far-right sentiments.

Foxx was in Dubrovnik, a resort on the Adriatic Sea, filming Robin Hood: Origins, in which he plays Little John. The Lionsgate retelling of English folklore stars Taron Egerton as the titular thief. Otto Bathurst is directing the action film, also starring Tim Minchin, Eve Hewson, Jamie Dornan and Ben Mendelsohn.

A day after the alleged racial slur, Foxx said on his Instagram profile he has his “mind blown” by the beauty of Dubrovnik.

“I’m out here in Croatia, it’s crazy,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Nelba Marquez-Greene believes the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which killed her 6-year-old daughter, could have been avoided if more had been done years earlier to address the social isolation and mental health problems of the shooter, Adam Lanza.

To help other vulnerable youths, Marquez-Greene, a family therapist, is working with a Connecticut school system on a program to help students connect with one another.

“I want people to remember that Adam, the person who did this, was also once 6 and in a first-grade classroom, and that if we had reached out earlier then maybe this could have changed,” Marquez-Greene said.

Marquez-Greene’s Ana Grace Project foundation, named for her slain daughter, is working with four elementary schools in New Britain, a city just west of Hartford, to teach empathy, combat bullying and help socially isolated children. Her Love Wins campaign, created with a local teacher, builds on the existing curriculum and also brings therapists and interns into the schools to help identify children who need extra help with social skills.

She is one of several people touched by the December 2012 shooting inside Sandy Hook who have become involved in the broader movement to incorporate social and emotional learning in American schools.

Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was among the 20 children killed, was involved in pushing for a 2015 law that allows federal funds to be used by schools for such things as recognizing the early signs of mental illness and crisis-intervention training. She has a foundation that has developed its own social-emotional learning curriculum and is being used on a pilot basis in four schools: Rippowam Middle School in Stamford; Ka’elepulu Elementary School in Kailua, Hawaii; Washington Elementary School in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Mission Achievement and Success Charter School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“I believe this is an urgent matter,” Lewis said. “I believe it would have saved my son’s life, as well as the lives of other victims across the United States and reduce bullying.”

In the years before the 20-year-old Lanza carried out the massacre, he spent long stretches of time isolated in his mother’s home and had psychiatric ailments that went without treatment, according to investigators, who never pinpointed a motive for the shooting.

Marquez-Greene connected with the New Britain school district after she received a letter of condolence from Craig Muzzy, a teacher at Chamberlain Elementary School in New Britain.

Marquez-Greene and Muzzy developed the program for city schools. Muzzy already had been taking pointers from the Ana Grace Project’s website, making a reading-comprehension assignment, for example, about a student who moves into the area from a different country, and leading discussions about how to make people feel welcome.

On Valentine’s Day, Muzzy’s students took part in “Friendship Day” activities, which included making bracelets and cards to exchange. Marquez-Greene attended and helped introduce a new student, Jaden Garcia, to Muzzy’s class. She showed students how to get to know him better by asking about his favorite food (pizza), his pets (he has a cat) and his favorite sports (soccer).

Araceli Buchko, 10, made a bracelet for a friend she had made by using similar conversation starters.

“I wanted to try it out and see if they would like me,” she said. “I tried one person and it was good. We found out we had a lot in common, and she became my best friend.”

The charity has set up four Love Wins family resource centers in New Britain, including one at Chamberlain, geared toward developing the social skills of preschoolers.

In addition, it hosts a day of training for all New Britain teachers on issues such as how to deal with a child who may acting out in class because they are dealing with a divorce or a parent in prison.

The New Britain school district spends $48,000 per year to implement the Love Wins campaign in the four elementary schools. That money comes from a federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant. The Ana Grace Project and a private nonprofit agency provide another $40,000 per year.

School officials say they believe the Love Wins campaign is helping. They say there are fewer reports of bullying, and fewer office referrals for fights.

“But you really know it’s working when you see the children interacting with one another, when they spontaneously go over to a classmate and say, ‘How are you feeling? You look sad today,’” said Jane Perez, the Chamberlain principal. “You see it in how they work with each other now and collaborate with each other.”
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From: MeNeedIt