A state-wide survey released last week by The Afterschool Alliance showed that just 30% of Massachusetts youth participate in summer learning programs.  And yet, more than 50% of parents whose children are not involved in summer programming, say they would like to see their children enrolled in such programs.  read more »

Memorial Day Weekend was in full swing. Warm weather- check, list of cookouts to attend- check let the fun commence. That all quickly changed when the phone rang at 7a on Sunday morning. I'm always a little nervous when the phone rings early in the morning or in the middle of the night- never know what I might hear from the other end. This call was one of those. The news was that Cory Johnson, a family friend, more like a brother to me, had died. My heart sunk and my mind immediately went to hoping it wasn't by violence.  read more »

Last week, United Way along with the IRS joined four community agencies – Lawrence CommunityWorks, Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation, Greater Lawrence Community Action Council, Centro de Apoyo Familiar – in thanking 50 volunteers for being the backbone to success of a collaborative effort! Although tax filing is a one-to-one endeavor, gathering together to celebrate was important…this was an all time high return for this third year of the Lawrence EITC Initiative!  read more »

On April 30th, our United Way joined over 2,000 organizations nationally to take a Stand Against Racism. Stand Against Racism is a movement initiated by the YWCA in 2008 to raise awareness that racism still exists in our communities and that it cannot be ignored or tolerated. Its objective is to bring organizations together, who believe like we do, that united we can eliminate racism  read more »

The following post was written by Guest Blogger Mazy Yap, a student at Boston University.

As I went online to cruise through my high school website reminiscing my youth, I discovered that each of the past graduating classes had a graduating rate of 99%. This means that in the past 10 years, only 10 of the approximately 1,000 total graduates have dropped out. Growing up in an international school environment that maintains such a low dropout rate, I was surprised by the relatively low graduation rate in Massachusetts last year. The 2009 report released by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education indicates that only 81.5% of the 77,038 enrolled students in Massachusetts graduated last year. If my math didn't fail me, this means that roughly 14,252 students dropped out from school in 2009.  read more »