The 2015 Prudential Spirit of Community Awards 프루덴셜 지역사회참여 수상자

State Honoree Award Celebration

National Museum of Natural History
Washington DC
May 3, 2015

Raghav Ganesh

Middle Level State Honoree

Raghav Ganesh, 13, of San Jose, Calif., a seventh-grader at Joaquin Miller Middle School, designed and built a device that uses sensors to detect objects beyond the reach of the white canes used by many visually impaired people. Raghav got the idea after watching a video about the challenges faced by those with limited or no eyesight. “I saw how, despite being used for several centuries, the white cane does not provide users enough information about their environment,” he said. “I also saw why many high-tech alternatives are not meeting the needs of visually challenged folks.”

Because he enjoys science and electronics, and has become familiar with sensors and motors through a toy-building hobby, Raghav decided to see if he could design something better. He built a small prototype and entered it in a local science fair. He then sought advice from the head of a local blind center, and over the next several months made five major revisions based on feedback from blind center staff and actual cane users. He ended up with a device that clamps onto the cane, uses ultrasonic and infrared sensors to detect obstacles more than six feet beyond the end of the cane, and communicates this information to the user through vibrations in the cane’s handle. Raghav secured a grant to make multiple copies, and hopes to create an open patent so that organizations for the blind around the world can make the device for their clients.

Carolina Gonzalez

High School State Honoree

Carolina Gonzalez, 18, of Coral Gables, Fla., a senior at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy in Miami, started a nonprofit organization that has helped more than 500 undocumented young immigrants apply for temporary residence and employment in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and has raised more than $22,000 to pay the application fees of those who cannot afford them. Carolina’s grandparents fled Cuba to give their family and future generations a better life, Carolina said. “Since the time I was able to hold a conversation, my mother would remind me of what they went through. And always at the end of the discussion, she would accentuate how, because of her parents’ decision, I was born an American citizen,” said Carolina. “It has been engraved in me to never take my citizenship for granted.”

Carolina had been volunteering in various ways since she was 5, but was trying to think of some way to do more for her peers in her community. When her father, an immigration lawyer, mentioned how difficult it was for young immigrants to apply for deferred status, Carolina realized she had her answer. She began organizing clinics for DACA applicants and recruiting pro-bono lawyers to help them through the complex and time-consuming application process. She also raises funds to give small grants to applicants who cannot afford the $465 application fee. “I am not only giving them hope for their future, but also giving them the chance to achieve the American dream,” said Carolina.

Eunsuh Chin

Eunsuh Chin, 18, of Seoul, a senior at Daewon Foreign Language High School in Seoul, has provided translation services and other support to a competitive athlete with special needs. Six years ago, Eunsuh met Sejin, who was known as the “robotic leg swimmer.” Eunsuh was impressed that Sejin was never deterred by physical challenges as he pursued his dream of becoming an Olympic gold medalist. From then on, she wanted to become a good supportive friend for Sejin as he pursued his dream.

As Sejin was getting ready for the International Paralympic Games, he and his mother were struggling with all the procedures and document preparations required in English to get into the international competition. Eunsuh was not a professional translator, but she did her best and volunteered to assist Sejin with his IPC admission. Eunsuh also was closely involved in translating Sejin’s stories into English with a couple of other friends, believing that Sejin can become a good role model for other young people with disabilities. She and her friends have finished the translation and the book is out in the market.

Suhho Lee

Suhho Lee, 18, of Busan, a senior at Bugil High School in Chungchungnam-do, is a leader of a club that provides support to a group home that cares for neglected children. For more effective support, the club, called “ConGo,” adopted a one-on-one mentoring program for children in the home. To build a systematic operation process, they introduced club rules on volunteering and a pre-training curriculum on volunteerism. Their customized mentor-mentee system goes beyond volunteering activities for the children, including ConGo members studying baking by themselves to support a kid who wants to become a baker and using baked Korean letter cookies to teach children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder to help concentrate on learning the Korean alphabet.

Through these activities, children at the group home have started to dream of a new future thanks to the genuine care and support of the ConGo members. A child who learned how to play a guitar became a main guitarist in his school band, and another child who was afraid of English is now able to speak it fluently. And many other children have also become more cheerful and positive, enjoying their time at school. Suhho and his friends take great pride in the changes they see in the children’s lives.

Cities Struggle with Not So Pretty Vacancy

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0503_cities_vey.aspx

Regions and States, U.S. Economic Growth, Cities

Jennifer S. Vey, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

The Avenue, The New Republic

MAY 03, 2011 —

Have you ever wondered why someone doesn’t just do something about that big weedy lot on the edge of downtown, or the house up the street that’s been boarded up for years? You might ask your state legislator--though they probably won’t have a good answer.

All over the country, cities grapple with vacant and abandoned land and buildings. The issue is particularly problematic in places--think Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo--that have lost a large portion of their residents and jobs over the decades, but it’s also a growing challenge in parts of the South and West, where the bursting of the real estate bubble has driven up foreclosures and owner “walkaways” in cities and once-booming suburbs alike. Even relatively healthy cities have some neighborhoods where low demand yields high numbers of vacant properties.

Though seemingly a purely local issue, Alan Mallach and I describe in a new brief how weak and antiquated state laws--on tax foreclosure, land banking, code enforcement, and other areas--can have huge influence on what properties get redeveloped (or at least mowed) under what time horizons.

While many of these laws may seem trifling or arcane, they can be a huge burden for the municipalities governed by them, as they can hamstring local leaders’ ability to minimize distressed properties’ costs--their drag on property values and their ongoing need for basic maintenance--as well as their ability to repurpose them for tax generating development or other uses.

For example, excessively long periods during which tax delinquent owners can redeem their properties by paying the back taxes--as many as five years in some states--and other procedural obstacles to responsible reuse mean that vacant properties can spend years in limbo with unclear, unmarketable title, while others pass from hand to hand through a revolving door of neglect. Even when a property has been long since abandoned by its owners, state laws can make local governments’ ability to acquire and/or dispose of it time-consuming, complicated, and expensive.

As state leaders continue to dig under their figurative couch cushions for spare change and cut the fat, and then some, out of their budgets, they should also look for ways to help their local (and thus ultimately state) economies through legal and policy reforms that don’t need to cost a dime. In economics, remember, land is one of the key factors--along with labor, capital, and for some, entrepreneurship--in the production of wealth.

States should start treating it accordingly.

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/0503_land_value_mallach_vey.aspx

Recapturing Land for Economic and Fiscal Growth

U.S. Economic Growth, Environment, Regions and States, Housing

Alan Mallach, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program
Jennifer S. Vey, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

The Brookings Institution

MAY 03, 2011 —

Vacant land and abandoned properties challenge both older industrial metros struggling with the effects of long-term population decline and metros that were booming until the foreclosure crisis and the recession wrought havoc on their economies. These properties are a significant drag on local economic and fiscal health, exacerbating already intense fiscal stress for local governments. Yet they are also major potential assets for business growth, job creation, and neighborhood revitalization.

Unfortunately, weak and antiquated state laws governing tax foreclosure, land banking, code enforcement, and other areas make it difficult for local governments to address vacancy and abandonment, and prevent them from unlocking properties’ productive potential. To give municipalities the tools the need to repurpose distressed land and buildings, states should:

• Reform inefficient tax foreclosure laws
  
• Create clear paths to public control of vacant and abandoned properties
  
• Empower effective code enforcement and nuisance abatement
  
• Enhance local government’s power to mitigate the harm created by mortgage foreclosure

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/28/the-incredible-shrinking-city/we-need-a-new-mindset-to-unbuild-cities

Promoting Ungrowth

Updated March 30, 2011, 10:27 PM

Jennifer Bradley is a fellow with the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. Her work focuses on land use and economic development in Great Lakes metropolitan areas.

People in Cleveland, Detroit, Flint and Youngstown, and in Bilbao, Leipzig and Turin, have plenty of ideas about what cities can do with vacant and abandoned land: urban agriculture; watershed restoration and stream daylighting; side-lot programs; extensive park networks; public arts zones; new museums

What we need is a new mindset. Physical growth has been a powerful American narrative, embodied in huge public expenditures from the Louisiana Purchase to the Interstate Highway System and the mortgage interest deduction. The nation now needs a parallel commitment to physical ungrowth. Ungrowth is not surrender but a phase of urban evolution.

Remaking a city is breathtakingly expensive, and the market won’t do it. Indeed, the lack of a robust land market is part of the problem in shrinking cities. It costs about $10,000 to demolish a single-family home in Detroit; about 12,000 vacant homes there need demolition. And clearing the land is just the beginning. Philanthropy has stepped up in Detroit and elsewhere, but the need exceeds most foundations’ resources.

Last year, the federal government allocated $836 million to clean up and reuse old General Motors sites. That should be the first of many federal investments.

The federal government spends $104 billion a year subsidizing home-building through the mortgage interest deduction. What if it took 10 percent, or even 1 percent, of that money to help places unbuild and reinvent? At the very least, cities should be able to reallocate money they already get from the federal government and use it for unbuilding.

When the federal government poured money into shaping cities through highway building, urban renewal and public housing, the results were expert-approved, fast and brutal. Ungrowth needs to be bottom up, slow and exquisitely careful. It will take a long time to convince residents of battered cities that the new city landscapes dreamed up by their neighbors, city planners, foundations, academics and outsiders are worth uprooting their lives for. Americans have been spending for growth for centuries. Our commitment to ungrowth, and new ideas about how cities change and what they look like, needs to be sustained for decades.