Newspapers / Philanthropy Journal of North … / Oct. 1, 1993, edition 1 / Page 9
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October 1993 ■« :»• Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina • 9 Volunteers pedal for charity More than 400 volunteers provided support for two ISO-mile bike rides lost month to raise money for the state's Multiple Sclerosis Societies. The rides went from Greenville to Camp Seagull and from Charlotte and Fayetteville to Sunset Beach. Rape center honors employers The Orange County Rape Crisis Center has recognized a number of Triangle-area employers who support the work of their staff and are trained volunteers for the center. Among the employ ers honored are Carolina Population Center, Duke University and Triangle Laboratories. Thousands will visit the 1994 North Carolina State Fair Food drive opens NC state fair Visitors who bring tour unopened cans of Winn Dixie Thrifty Maid brand food to the North Carolina State fairgrounds in Raleigh Oct. 15 will receive a free ticket. Items most needed for the drive by the Food Bank of North Carolina are fruit juices, corned beef hash, beet stew, vegetables. Volunteers build homes for needy United Way of Wake County volunteers have bro ken ground on construction of a duplex housing unit for needy families in Raleigh. The project will be coordi nated by Habitat for Humanity with management and placement of families administered by Step UP Ministries. Tate Continued from page 8 He’s also been on the board or involved in numerous other civic organizations that provide services for and work with children, such as the United Way, the N.C. Center on Crime and Punishment, the YMCA and the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching. “One-third of students are so tar behind the first day of school that they never catch up,” Tate says. “Eventually, they drop out.” To try and catch some of these students before they tall, Tate is also active in Cities in Schools, a drop-out prevention program that brings a city or community resources, such as social workers, health professionals and volunteer tutors, to the schools. Cynthia Marshall, executive director of the nonprofit organiza tion, says Tate’s leadership was fun damental to the program’s early suc cess. “Jack was the guiding force behind the development of this orga nization for these five years,” Marshall says. “His leadership really has been a catalyst not only for Charlotte, but for North Carolina.” H is energy behind this stems from his innate love of children and concern tor them and for their future. I've heard Jack say many, many times. Cities in Schools is in the business of saving lives. CYNTHIA MARSHALL Executive Director, Cities in Schools Charlotte’s Cities in Schools, founded in 1986, was the first of 15 programs throughout the state, and North Carolina’s Cities in Schools program is the fastest growing in the country. Tate brings strong organizational leadership to Cities in Schools, Marhsall says. But even more impor tant, she says, is his love for chil dren. “His energy behind this stems from his innate love of children and concern for them and for their future. I’ve heard Jack say many, many times. Cities in Schools is in the busi ness of saving lives.” Tate says his most far-reaching philanthropic endeavor has been at the UNC-CH School of Social Work. “That project, of trying to strengthen that school, had a greater leverage than anything I’ve ever worked on. Social workers deal with people who have problems. Their business is to help people become independent, to solve their own prob lems.” Tate established the school’s first board of advisers 10 years ago, has worked countless hours on the school’s five-year capital campaign, has established two endowed chairs and is working on a third, and played a key role in successfully lobbying state lawmakers for $9.8 million for a new home for the school. “The school is 70 years old and we have literally been trying for decades to get state appropriations to construct a building,” says Elizabeth Benefield, director of development at the school. “So much of the credit can be given to Jack,” she says. ‘"That was one of our greatest successes and it’s one that he deserves so much praise tor.” She says that Tate also is her partner in all the school’s major gift work and that she confers with him three or four times a week “My colleagues across campus in other department say to me, “What we wouldn’t give to have a Jack Tate.’” But even more important than all his practical roles at the school, Benefield says, is Tate’s role in con stantly reminding the school of its mission. “1 think above all else is he has helped to focus the mission of the school on the needs of the people of the state of North Carolina. He con tinually reminds us in our work of the need to sort of get off the hill and get out there and provide services and be present and have an impact on rural communities in the eastern part of the state and in the mountains. “We have a mission to serve the state. Jack is a constant reminder of that mission.” And in his continuous quest to better the lives of North Carolina’s children, Tate helped endow a chair at the school in honor of his father: “The John A Tate Chair for Children in Need.” Tate is spending his retirement trying to fix the lives of children he may not live to see grow up, but he says he is optimistic that society is beginning to do its part, and provide North Carolina’s disadvanta^ chil dren with a fighting chance at a decent life. “1 think the court system is going to force us to recognize that we’re really raising problems,” Tate says. And businesses are increasin^y con cerned about their future labor force, so it’s in their best interest to find a solution to this problem. “We are at an unusual point in society,” he says. “I sort of think that things will get so out of sync that nat urally corrective forces will inter vene.” Pausing for a moment he adds, “I’m optimistic. I’m sure it’s going to work itself out.” Hate Continued from page 8 race, religion or ethnicity. But it does not cover attacks made because of sexual orientation. Zumbach sees a clear connection between homophobia and other forms of hatred. “One of the things we’re learning is that the people who perpetrate this kind of violence against gay and les bian people are the same people who perpetrate violence against women and people of color,” he says. Many local police departments have just started reporting hate crimes to state and federal law enforcement agencies. In the mean time, volunteer documentation efforts remain the primary source of research on those crimes. Coalition volunteers use a nation al press clipping service and reports from local hotlines as sources for the group’s annual hate crimes tally. With the help of a $30,000 grant from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, volunteers now are reaching out to social service groups such as AIDS organizations, to get a more accurate reading of hate crimes in North Carolina. One of the difficulties involved in documenting bias crimes against homosexuals is that people often are afraid to report them, says Ann Burlein, coortfinator for the coalition. “There are no civil ri^ts protec tions for gays and lesbians. So if an employer finds out [someone’s been attacked because they are gay], they can lose their job. If the landlord finds out, they can lose their home.” A state law that makes oral and anal sex a felony also can make peo ple reluctant to report incidents because gay-bashing victims fear they will be charged with crimes against nature if they report to police, Burlein says. Despite the obstacles, hotline vol unteers say calls about hate crimes are on the rise in North Carolina. “I think these crimes are driven by fear,” says Doris Colomb, a volun teer with the coalition’s outreach pro ject. “When times aren’t so good, that’s when they increase.” Research conducted by North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence in Durham sug gests that perpetrators of bias crimes are getting younger. “There’s a lot of tension between young people right now,” says Linda SheaJey Williams, director of the 10- year-old nonprofit. “What’s fri^ten- ing is that sometimes you have young people who go in groups to beat someone up.” Jeremy j | ^ere Raw started ; volunteering j are no civil \wth the or^- ; protec- mzation short- i ly after moving I tions for gays to the Trian^e j lesbians from New York ; City a year i ANN ago. He now i BURLEIN spends about j Coordinator four hours a j NC Coalition for week review- i Gay and Lesbian ing press clip- i Equality pings and other sources of information on hate crimes. “One of the problems I see in the press reporting on these issues is a strong effort to bury the fact that there was a racial or religious moti vation” for a crime. Raw says. “They’d rather not discuss that or confront it. Our approach is to say look, we need to acknowledge that these things are happening.” In addition to documenting bias crimes, the Durham group is working to address the causes of hatred by sponsoring workshops and visits to 'Mangle-area schools. Education also is the mission of PRIDE, a nonprofit formed after a foundation supporting white supremacists moved to Black Mountain in 1992. PRIDE - People Recognizing Individuality, Dignity and Diversity in Everyone - has persuaded several local governments to pass resolutions against hate crimes and has just com pleted a survey of past documenta tion efforts by community groups in Western North Carolina. Although relations between police and groups monitoring hate crimes have historically been strained, PRIDE hopes the situation will change. “This is not something police are accustomed to doing - writing some thing down as a hate crime,” says Elizabeth Fames, co-chairman of PRIDE’S board and one of the organi zation’s three paid staff members. “Part of our job is to help them identi fy these crimes. It’s important not to take an adversarial relationship.” Some police officers have used reports and research conducted by nonprofit monitoring groups. “They are privy to a lot of infor mation I don’t have the contacts to get,” says Durham Police Lt. Steve Chalmers. Others are more skeptical of infor mation coming from unofficial sources. “Just because a white male assaults a black male or a heterosex ual assaults a homosexual, doesn’t make that a hate crime,” says Detective Sgt. Dennis Lane of the Raleigh police. “People have their own opinions or versions of what they consider as hate or bias-related crimes. We have to go by the letter of the law.” Burlein says volunteers for the North Carolina Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality are trained to look carefully at the circumstances sur rounding a crime before defining it as bias-related. Questions on the group’s volun teer documentation forms include whether the attacker was known to the victim; whether there was evi dence of homophobic motive such as epithets or threats; and whether the incident was reported to police. Althou^ the FBI did not list a sin gle bias-related crime for North Carolina last year, Burlein believes the reason has more to do with how people view law enforcement than how often such crimes occur. “Part of the reason we set up local [documentation] projects is that we know people do not feel safe to report to police,” she says. “There will be a discrepancy in our numbers and the police numbers until people in com munities feel that the police depart ment is a safe place for them to report to.” The success of efforts to docu ment hate crimes in itself makes it hard to interpret the numbers. “We don’t know if we’re at the top of the list [of hate crimes nationwide] because violence is so much worse in North Carolina or because our docu mentation efforts are really good,” Zumbach says. Volunteers believe more careful monitoring is needed. “It’s not simply a question of pointing fingers,” Raw says. “It’s a question of saying we want to under stand the motivations for these crimes.” SOFTWARE RULES: 1. Use the correct software. 2. Use the software correctly. 3. Use a company that knows your business. a company dedicated to Non-Profits... Cost Management Associates, Inc. Computer Systems/Services/SL4pport 635-H Chapel Hill Road Burlington, NC 27215 800-747-0906 919-228-6008 ♦ Fund Accounting Software ♦ Fund Raising Software ♦ Client/Service Databases ♦ Networks ♦ Installation, Training, Consulting
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina (Raleigh, N.C.)
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Oct. 1, 1993, edition 1
9
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