As many of you know, this community building diary series features news and links from the USA's fourth largest city/metroplex Houston, Texas. You'll see three headings with community, business and nonprofit information.
This week, I thought I'd start by sharing three of my personal Houston "insider links" to people, places and things I like about Houston:
Houston Galleria - Set beneath spectacular glass atriums, The Galleria features more than 375 fine stores and restaurants, an impressive ice rink and two Westin hotels. This world-class shopping complex showcases the best names in retailing including Neiman Marcus, Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany & Co., Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Ralph Lauren Collection, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Nordstrom
http://www.simon.com/...
Houston Arboretum - The Houston Arboretum & Nature Center (HANC), one of the first nature education facilities for children in the state of Texas, provides services to nearly 200,000 visitors annually. The Arboretum also provides nature education for more than 10,000 children annually. HANC is a 155-acre non-profit urban nature sanctuary located on the western edge of Memorial Park.
http://houstonarboretum.org/...
Chef Bryan Caswell - At REEF expertly prepared seafood with Gulf Coast, Mediterranean and Asian influences reflects culinary sophistication never-before seen among Houston’s high-profile restaurant scene. Caswell, who grew up along coastal waters and sharpened his culinary skills in water-side hot spots from New York to Hong Kong and Barcelona to the Bahamas, pairs a passion for pristinely fresh fish with the rainbow of flavors and textures of locally grown produce. Coupled with Caswell’s Jean Georges-taught culinary savvy, the resulting oceanic menu is cleverly diverse.
http://reefhouston.com/...
COMMUNITY
Preschool proves itself to homeless mom
Wendi Hay had faith and less than $400 when she arrived in Houston three years ago. She'd fled Alabama and a "domestic violence situation" in the middle of the night with her four daughters. After they stayed briefly with relatives, Houston beckoned. "I came to Houston to make a better life for myself," Hay told me recently. "I came on faith." It was rewarded by two Houston nonprofit organizations: the Star of Hope Mission and SEARCH Homeless Services, which provided day-care to her three preschoolers. Each morning, a "little green van" would pull up to Star of Hope and whisk her daughters away to House of Tiny Treasures, a preschool program operated by SEARCH.
http://www.chron.com/...
Texas Children's expanding into services for women
Texas Children's Hospital makes a fundamental shift this week, offering adult care on a broad scale for the first time with the opening of its $575 million Pavilion for Women. Officials expect the first baby to be born in the new labor and delivery suites sometime Monday. They predict about 4,000 babies will be born there during the first year, and eventually grow to more than 5,000 a year.
http://www.chron.com/...
Rice University Study: Childhood Hunger Policies Should Target Neighborhoods
Policies addressing childhood hunger should target neighborhoods, not individual families, according to new research from Rice University. Sociologists found that children living in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates and in those with high foreign-born populations and non-English speakers are more likely to experience hunger. The study, published in the Journal of Applied Research on Children, used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, a nationally representative dataset of more than 20,000 kindergarteners in 1998-1999, to examine individual, family and neighborhood characteristics of children who are or are not affected by hunger. In the dataset, the children were clustered according to schools and neighborhoods.
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/...
Houston ISD chief responds to cheating report
Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier said Sunday that his staff will meet with principals to discuss suspicious test scores flagged in a new investigative report, and that he will consider sending extra exam monitors to campuses. Grier acknowledged that cheating has taken place - the state's largest school system confirmed nine cases in the last two years - but he defended the district's test security measures and said he believes wrongdoing is rare.
http://www.chron.com/...
TX-DOT Trying To Keep Up With Freeway Graffiti
Fighting graffiti is a never-ending battle in Houston, but when it's scrawled along a major freeway, it's an even bigger eyesore. TX-DOT and a number of local partners are doing their best to keep up with the vandals.
http://app1.kuhf.org/...
Supreme Court Hearings on the Affordable Care Act: What to Expect
All eyes will be on the U.S. Supreme Court this week as it holds hearings on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For nearly two years, intense rhetoric — from many sides — has surrounded President Obama’s federal health reform law, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. GOP-friendly Texas never warmed to the changes passed by a Congress dominated by Democrats at the time. On the same day Obama signed the bill into law, Texas joined 12 other states in filing a lawsuit against the administration, challenging the constitutionality of a major provision in the legislation known as the individual mandate. It requires nearly all American citizens to buy health insurance. Those who cannot afford to pay for their benefits can receive subsidies from the government; those who refuse to comply face a penalty.
http://www.texastribune.org/...
BUSINESS
Industries Fear the Ripple Effects of Proposed Postal Service Cuts
As Congress begins work this week on legislation to shore up the finances of the debt-ridden post office, companies representing a cross-section of American business are spending millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers to oppose or support various proposals to keep the agency afloat. In total, lobbying disclosure records show that companies and unions with a stake in a postal overhaul have spent nearly $300 million in the last three years as the financial condition of the post office has worsened, though it is not known how much of that was spent specifically on postal issues.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
How Texas Chases Millions in Oil & Gas Royalties and Why Some Landowners Feel Cheated
Federal regulators say they're considering making companies pay a lot more in royalties on the oil-and-gas extracted from federally-owned land. Here in Texas, land-owners earn billions from those royalties. But StateImpact Texas' Dave Fehling reports on the controversy over whether all that is owed is actually being paid.
http://app1.kuhf.org/...
Is Procter & Gamble Losing Its Edge?
Digital has been a hallmark of Procter & Gamble Chairman-CEO Bob McDonald's tenure, hailed as key to wringing $10 billion in overall costs and $1 billion in marketing savings out of its massive budgets in five years. But while P&G has gotten plenty of media play lately -- social and otherwise -- over its digital ambitions, it faces growing questions about how much good digital marketing can do amid broader signs P&G is losing its edge. Some analysts and competitors question whether P&G can digitize its way out of its deeper issues, or enjoy the same scale advantages in a digital world that it had in traditional marketing.
http://adage.com/...
Email Is Crushing Us, Can Activity Streams Free Us?
Activity streams promise to alleviate the email overload we've all come to know and dread. If you're struggling to keep your email box from overflowing, you are not alone--this morning, my inbox summary told me I had 616 new messages awaiting my attention. Now, that's a daunting way to start the day. Email overload is a well-documented phenomenon that has been linked to reduced productivity, inability to focus on important tasks, and even physical and emotional stress. So it is no wonder that alternative forms of communication are being actively pursued to reduce overload, both at home and at the office. One method that is gaining popularity is the activity stream.
http://www.fastcompany.com/...
The 4 things brands can NEVER ignore on Facebook
Marketers tend to think about the big picture when it comes to social media: How can you do a better job of driving authentic engagement and connect with fans through your brand pages? But too much of this thinking can draw your focus away from the small stuff. It’s common—especially with the changes brought on by the shift to Facebook Timeline—to get bogged down in overarching strategy. But if these aspects of day-to-day community management fall by the wayside, your car (and your brand) will stall. So here are a few examples of commonly overlooked social media aspects to help you avoid this type of neglect:
http://www.prdaily.com/...
NONPROFIT / OTHER
Accountability & Action: USAID's Counter-Trafficking Policy
Last week, the White House hosted the annual Presidential Inter-Agency Task Force (PITF) on counter-trafficking in persons (C-TIP). This high-level meeting, chaired by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is an opportunity for leadership throughout the Administration to reaffirm our commitment to combatting trafficking in persons, outline steps taken, and those to come.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Foundation Portrait: Demographics and Compensation
The release of the 2011 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report by the Council on Foundations is an occasion for the world of operating charities to see how they stack up to grantmakers in terms of staffing and compensation. Since the failed passage of the Charitable Giving Act of 2003, which would have established some parameters on private foundations’ administrative expenditures and compensation of foundation trustees, foundation compensation practices haven’t gotten much attention in the mainstream press.
http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/...
More Than 40% of Nonprofits Plan to Add Workers This Year
Forty-three percent of nonprofits expect to add new workers this year, but as the economy improves, charities also anticipate that they will face turnover as workers get better job offers elsewhere and more older employees decide to retire after putting off such ideas during the downturn. The share of groups forecasting plans to hire new workers is about the same as the percentage that said they added workers last year, a sign that the economy has recovered enough that more groups are hiring than laying people off or not hiring to save money.
http://philanthropy.com/...
To fix government, call in the geeks
A couple of years ago I started a program to try to get rock-star tech and design people to take a year off and work in the one environment that represents pretty much everything they're supposed to hate -- government. It's called Code for America, and it's a little bit like a Peace Corps for geeks. We select a few fellows every year, and we have them work with city governments. Instead of sending them off into the Third World, we send them into the wilds of City Hall. And there they make great apps and work with city staffers. But really what they're doing is showing what's possible with technology today.
http://www.cnn.com/...