No result found
2020-03-11
National Marine Sanctuaries;
Marine debris is a significant challenge facing our ocean and marine wildlife, and it is an ongoing challenge in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.Marine debris, including lost or abandoned fishing gear and trash, entangles stony corals, sea fans, sponges, sea turtles, manatees, and other marine life. It also degrades seagrass, hard bottom, coral reef, and mangrove habitats, and detracts from the natural beauty of the islands.Established in May 2018, the Goal: Clean Seas Florida Keys initiative aims to remove underwater marine debris from Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and educate the public about its role in marine debris prevention. Goal: Clean Seas Florida Keys partners work with sanctuary-recognized Blue Star Dive Operators to educate dive professionals and recreational divers on best practices for removal of marine debris; perform scoping dives to identify debris hotspots; remove, dispose, and recycle underwater debris; conduct post-removal data reporting and analysis; and engage the public in marine debris awareness and prevention through education and outreach.In the first year of Goal: Clean Seas Florida Keys efforts, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation-funded divers conducted 49 cleanup trips, engaged 450 volunteer divers, and spent nearly 900 hours underwater removing 78 intact lobster traps, hundreds of pieces of lobster trap debris, 16,369 feet of line, and 14,693 pounds of debris from Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
2019-07-28
National Marine Sanctuary Foundation;
The National Marine Sanctuary System, a network of underwater parks encompassing more than 600,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation ("Foundation") work with local industries, government, and communities to sustain healthy ecosystems, habitats, and aquatic nurseries in the 13 sanctuaries and two National Marine Monuments that make up the system. Sanctuaries support an environment, rich in biodiversity, that, in turn, supports local coastal and ocean economies. Visitors spend money on sanctuary-supported activities such as fishing, beach visits, boating, snorkeling, diving, research, and education activities, and other tourism-related expenditures such as travel, food, and lodging.
2019-01-11
Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation;
Jacksonville is rediscovering the value of its older urban core. This report from the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation highlights how Jacksonville's older buildings and blocks are already outperforming newer areas of the city across many sustainable development metrics. But they can become even stronger. Analysis of data from city, state, and national sources points to numerous areas of the city with high potential for successful reinvestment and revitalization. Unlocking this potential requires stronger incentives, innovative new policies, and increased awareness and capacity in the nonprofit, government, and private sectors. Using a methodology developed by the Preservation Green Lab, this study includes an analysis of all of Jacksonville's existing structures to assess the connections between the character of the city's building stock and more than 30 measures of neighborhood livability, economic vitality, and diversity.
2019-01-25
Jacksonville Community Council, Inc.;
The Great Recession of 2007-09, as pundits are now calling it, hit Northeast Florida brutally. A regional economy that had been fueled by population and construction growth, consistently doing better than the national average, saw unemployment skyrocket when the housing market collapsed, the economy retracted, and population growth slowed to a trickle.Jacksonville Community Council Inc. (JCCI) surveyed the community to identify residents' top priority for in-depth study. Job growth far surpassed any other regional issue. Volunteers and partner organizations from the seven-county region came together to explore new ideas for retaining existing jobs, rapidly creating new jobs, and for positioning the region for long-term economic growth.The study committee visited the seven partner counties (Baker, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Nassau, Putnam, and St. Johns), examined existing job development plans and economic development strategies for the region, and explored promising practices from other regions that were achieving success despite the national economic climate.The resulting recommendations are designed to enhance economic development and job creation, signaling to the state and nation that Northeast Florida is open for business.Implementation of these recommendations will highlight Northeast Florida's existing assets and strengthen its competitive advantages in the economic world. Most significantly, action will build on Northeast Florida's successes and enhance the combined regional approach to competing in the global marketplace.First, the region must focus on its key regional growth industries. The primary immediate opportunities for substantial job creation in the region are in the areas of:* port logistics and associated industries* health and medical sciences* aviation/aerospace and defense contracting* financial servicesSecond, the region must bring its business and education sectors together in a shared emphasis to build and maintain an educated and skilled workforce. Shifting economic realities, along with the skill sets required for job growth, necessitate the training (or re-training) of local workers and the retention of these skilled local workers in their employment positions. It also prescribes the need for attracting talented workers from around the world.Third, economic success will require even more emphasis on encouraging the growth of small businesses. Enhancing the region's entrepreneurial spirit is critical to sustaining a vibrant economy. Improving access to support for small business development and expansion holds the potential for creating more jobs and more business owners.Fourth, the region requires both a vibrant urban heart and an expanded vision of its assets and aspirations – unfettered by current boundary definitions. The outsider's view of Northeast Florida often begins with Jacksonville and its downtown core. A good first impression of the city, along with having strong economic development partners with a variety of different attributes, can have long term positive implications. Successful regional economic development also means rethinking the regions boundary lines and embracing all the potential Northeast Florida has to offer – such as the research capacities demonstrated by the University of FloridaFifth, regional leadership must come together to encourage economic growth and enhance the business-ready environment of Northeast Florida. Regional leadership (political, business, and community) must maintain focus on reducing issues that unnecessarily add roadblocks to sustainable economic growth, by streamlining regulation and permitting processes, in order to improve Northeast Florida's competitiveness and economic success.Together, the implementation of these recommendations can accelerate short-term job creation and, more significantly, strengthen the region's ability to sustain economic growth for years to come.
2019-01-28
Jacksonville Community Council, Inc.;
Around the world, communities are working to take advantage of the technology revolution now propelling the global shift toward an information-based society, in which knowledge is the new capital and higher education is the new machine. Jacksonville, even with some of the necessary machinery in place, needs to build its intellectual infrastructure, which includes everything from improving high school graduation rates to attracting more research dollars into the local economy. Despite the recent rapid growth of the community and its higher education institutions, neither the community nor its colleges and universities have worked together in a strategic, comprehensive way to position Jacksonville for the future.The Town and Gown study committee began by identifying current and potential roles for both the community and higher education institutions in building the intellectual capacity of Jacksonville. In doing this, the committee reviewed the historical growth of higher education in the community. The committee then examined how higher education institutions were meeting the needs of the local community, and whether the community was supporting those endeavors. Lastly, the study committee identified successful efforts in other communities where strategic collaborations between institutions of higher education and the community have produced tangible results.The committee found that Jacksonville has reached a critical juncture in its history. Nothing less than the future of the community is in question. On the one hand, the future can be shaped through a deliberate, thoughtful, and intentional focus on building a community that recognizes knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge as a valuable local commodity beneficial to every resident's quality of life. On the other hand, the community (town) and its colleges and universities (gown) can continue growing along separate paths and Jacksonville may lose the opportunity to own its destiny in a world increasingly driven by intellect, ideas, and innovation.To compete globally and improve its quality of life, the Jacksonville community has to work locally with its higher education institutions to: develop sustained leadership in every sector of the community, including government, business, and higher education, to work towards building Jacksonville's intellectual infrastructure; create and implement a strategic vision that improves the quality of life in all areas of the community by co-opting the teaching, research, and service roles of universities for the betterment of Jacksonville as a whole; and build active collaborations between higher education and community institutions to carry out that vision as well as prepareJacksonville and its residents for meeting the opportunities and the challenges of the 21st century and beyond.
2018-03-30
The Foundation Review;
This article examines two philanthropic responses to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016, a tragedy that particularly impacted the region's growing Latinx LGBT community.The Central Florida Foundation's Better Together Fund and the Our Fund Foundation's Contigo Fund, while organized and operating in different ways, looked to best practices in crisis philanthropy and, in the wake of the massacre, provided the region with resources to address both short- and longer-term needs.Better Together practiced strategic philanthropy focused on addressing systemic issues. Contigo lifted up new and diverse leadership from the grassroots. Each learned from the other while responding to the Pulse tragedy in ways that adhered to their distinct missions and values. In doing so, they made important contributions to their community and, in planning and implementation, to the field of crisis philanthropy.
2020-08-01
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy;
In light of the national uprising sparked by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and building on other recent tragic movement moments going back to the 2014 murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri), NCRP is analyzing grantmaking by community foundations across the country to find out exactly how much they are – or are not – investing in Black communities.We started by looking at the latest available grantmaking data (2016-2018) of 25 community foundations (CFs) – from Los Angeles to New Orleans to New York City to St. Paul. These foundations represent a cross section of some of the country's largest community foundations as well as foundations in communities where NCRP has Black-led nonprofit allies.
2018-04-05
Giffords Law Center;
This year, America's young people are demanding change and building a movement for gun safety reform. We have watched in awe as young students emerged from bullet-ridden classrooms in Parkland, Florida, and exclaimed Never again. We have witnessed their courage and eloquence as they stood up on national television to US Senators and NRA celebrities, demanding action, answers, and accountability. This generation—the future leaders of our country—understands that gun violence is not inevitable. And they know that the Second Amendment is not under threat. We are.Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence presents this report as a tool for this new generation of activists. It provides data about the scope of the gun violence problem facing America's youth and offers concrete recommendations for evidence-based policies that save lives. Our goal is to support the Parkland students and the thousands of young people they have inspired, as well as the lawmakers who hear their call for action and want to work together to make a change. Despite the brutal pain that follows each tragic shooting in our country, the courage of our nation's youth shines a brighter light on our future.
2017-09-27
Urban Institute;
Although several studies have documented the effects of statewide private school choice programs on student test scores, this report is the first to examine the effects of one of these programs on college enrollment and graduation. Using data from the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarship program, we find that low-income Florida students who attended private schools using an FTC scholarship enrolled in and graduated from Florida colleges at a higher rate than their public school counterparts.
2010-02-01
Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest);
This report presents information on the clients and agencies served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. The information is drawn from a national study, Hunger in America 2010, conducted in 2009 for Feeding America (FA) (formerly America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest organization of emergency food providers. The national study is based on completed in-person interviews with more than 62,000 clients served by the FA national network, as well as on completed questionnaires from more than 37,000 FA agencies. The study summarized below focuses on emergency food providers and their clients who are supplied with food by food banks in the FA network. Key Findings: The FA system served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida provides emergency food for an estimated 731,900 different people annually.47% of the members of households served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida are children under 18 years old (Table 5.3.2).33% of households include at least one employed adult (Table 5.7.1).Among households with children, 64% are food insecure and 35% are food insecure with very low food security (Table 6.1.1.1).55% of clients served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel (Table 6.5.1).32% had to choose between paying for food and paying for medicine or medical care (Table 6.5.1).23% of households served by The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida report having at least one household member in poor health (Table 8.1.1)The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida included approximately 489 agencies at the administration of this survey, of which 338 have responded to the agency survey. Of the responding agencies, 275 had at least one food pantry, soup kitchen, or shelter.79% of pantries, 63% of kitchens, and 53% of shelters are run by faith-based agencies affiliated with churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious organizations (Table 10.6.1).Among programs that existed in 2006, 86% of pantries, 74% of kitchens, and 49% of shelters of The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites (Table 10.8.1).Food banks are by far the single most important source of food for agencies with emergency food providers, accounting for 78% of the food distributed by pantries, 52% of the food distributed by kitchens, and 38% of the food distributed by shelters (Table 13.1.1).As many as 92% of pantries, 79% of kitchens, and 72% of shelters in The Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida use volunteers (Table 13.2.1).
2010-02-01
Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest);
This report presents information on the clients and agencies served by The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida. The information is drawn from a national study, Hunger in America 2010, conducted in 2009 for Feeding America (FA) (formerly America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest organization of emergency food providers. The national study is based on completed in-person interviews with more than 62,000 clients served by the FA national network, as well as on completed questionnaires from more than 37,000 FA agencies. The study summarized below focuses on emergency food providers and their clients who are supplied with food by food banks in the FA network.Key Findings: The FA system served by The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida provides emergency food for an estimated 144,300 different people annually.37% of the members of households served by The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida are children under 18 years old (Table 5.3.2).41% of households include at least one employed adult (Table 5.7.1).Among households with children, 81% are food insecure and 61% are food insecure with very low food security (Table 6.1.1.1).56% of clients served by The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel (Table 6.5.1).47% had to choose between paying for food and paying for medicine or medical care (Table 6.5.1).28% of households served by The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida report having at least one household member in poor health (Table 8.1.1)The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida included approximately 142 agencies at the administration of this survey, of which 112 have responded to the agency survey. Of the responding agencies, 89 had at least one food pantry, soup kitchen, or shelter.69% of pantries, 65% of kitchens, and 51% of shelters are run by faith-based agencies affiliated with churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious organizations (Table 10.6.1).Among programs that existed in 2006, 89% of pantries, 64% of kitchens, and 86% of shelters of The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites (Table 10.8.1).Food banks are by far the single most important source of food for agencies with emergency food providers, accounting for 76% of the food distributed by pantries, 43% of the food distributed by kitchens, and 31% of the food distributed by shelters (Table 13.1.1).As many as 95% of pantries, 94% of kitchens, and 63% of shelters in The Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida use volunteers (Table 13.2.1).
2001-08-01
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch;
In the summer of 2001, family farmers and ranchers throughout North America are struggling. During the 1993 debate over the fate of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Florida farmers and ranchers as well as farm communities across the U.S. were promised that NAFTA would provide access to new export markets and thus would finally bring a lasting solution to farmers off-and-on struggles for economic success. Now, seven years later, the evidence shows the income of independent Florida farmers has declined, consumer prices have risen while some giant agribusinesses have reaped huge profits. Florida has lost 1,000 small and medium sized farms since NAFTA went into effect. Total net income for "farm operations" in Florida increased between 1993 and 1999 but all of the income gain was in corporate farms. When corporate income increases are eliminated farm income drops steeply in Florida. During the seven years of NAFTA, net farm income for non-corporate Florida farm operations fell 74.4% between 1993 and 1999 from $51.4 million to $13.4 million. These bad outcomes for independent farmers are defining the growing national debates over President Bush s proposals to establish Fast Track trade authority and to expand NAFTA to 31 other Latin American and Caribbean nations through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This report documents the results that are causing farmers concern about NAFTA and its model of export-oriented agriculture. This special Florida supplement to a recent national report on NAFTA s agriculture-sector outcomes examines the impact of NAFTA on Florida farmers. For the past seven years, Florida vegetable growers, especially tomato and bell pepper growers, have been facing intense pressure from increasing imported vegetables from Mexico. Florida s citrus crop, the jewel of Florida s agriculture production, is already facing increased pressure from Mexico and will face even further import threats if President Bush is granted Fast Track trade authority. President Bush has announced he is seeking trade authority to negotiate FTAA NAFTA expansion which could result in Florida facing severe competition from powerhouse citrus producer Brazil. Farmers raising beef cattle in Florida who have seen incomes decline as farmgate prices for beef have collapsed in Florida under NAFTA would face new FTAA imports from beef giants Argentina and Brazil. Moreover, sugarcane farmers, who received special protection from Mexican sugar imports when NAFTA was negotiated, face even greater threats from FTAA nation Brazil which dominates the world sugar trade. Brazil has announced that access tothe U.S. for its citrus, beef, and sugar is a non-negotiable requirement for any FTAA deal. The complete executive summary and access to the full report are available via the link below.
