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Sep 21
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Master’s student building libraries, bringing resources to Uganda
An MBA candidate created an organization to increase literacy in Uganda.
by Kimberly Burton, 20 September 2016
St. Mugaga Secondary School library is one of the nine libraries the Literate Earth Project has opened throughout rural districts of Uganda since 2013, with two more openings slated for this year.
During a service trip Jeff Fonda took to Uganda, he worked in a school with no textbooks. Instead, every student was given a hand-written version of a textbook for their classes. “It’s a crazy process, they actually hand copied each book over and over again,” Fonda said. “It was great they had the text, but they had no formalized pictures or graphs.”
Fonda, a first-year master’s of business administration student, was inspired by his experiences in Uganda to found the nonprofit called The Literate Earth Project, an organization that helps Ugandan children get access to books and increase literacy. Other than the hand-copied textbooks, students had no books to read for pleasure. Fonda soon discovered the school’s headmaster had approximately 15 books in his office and decided to show them to the students. “With these books and atlas, they were seeing pictures of new people, trees, buildings, things they had never seen before,” Fonda said.
Information about sports in particular were of interest to them, Fonda added. “They were asking things like, ‘What is this sport?’ They had never seen tennis before. ‘What is this racket for?’” he said. This is when his revelation occurred, he said. “You could see the wheels were going in their heads,” Fonda said. “That experience of seeing the real need for knowledge and how it spurred these other thoughts and conversations was amazing.”
Ugandan Vice President Edward Ssekandi and LEP Founder Jeff Fonda
The Literate Earth Project was officially formed in 2011. In 2013, Fonda and his organization opened their first library in Uganda. In that same year, they also received a LEAP grant from BetterWorldBooks. LEAP grants are given to organizations with “game-changing” ideas to “help advance a compelling literacy project,” according to its website. “We watched [the first library] for a year and half to see it’s successes and failures,” he said.
After Fonda and other individuals from the organization saw the library was working, they began to open more libraries throughout the country in 2014. In the past two and a half years, The Literate Earth Project has opened nine libraries in areas like the Rakai, Masaka and Wakiso districts of Uganda. The organization will also open two more this year. “As long as we are able to keep up funding, we’re actually on pace to open four to six libraries per year and we would like to continue at that pace,” said Alex Moore, project’s chief operating officer.
The need for books in Uganda is evident through the requests for the organization’s libraries. The Literate Earth Project has a list of about 50 schools that have been okayed to receive libraries, but hundreds have made requests. To ensure success, the organization has a vetting process where staff visit the school to assess its needs. They make sure the teachers and community are going to get involved, and that the books will actually be used by the students.
In the past, to raise awareness for the program, Fonda has met with Uganda’s Vice President, H. E. Edward Ssekandi. Ssekandi has implemented policy to aid in increasing literacy in Uganda. Fonda said he hopes to expand the program to the many schools on their waitlist, but the organization doesn’t have money for the books themselves. By applying for grants, starting college clubs and hosting events like the Let’s Get Literate 5K Run, they have started to raise more money for their efforts. “We’re constantly looking for new partnerships so that we can kind of work together with other organizations that might provide solar energy or computers to schools,” Moore said.
Fonda, who is interested in eventually starting a club on Main Campus connected to his nonprofit, hopes to continue focusing on Uganda due to the serious demand for libraries. “I’d like to say we can change the whole world, but right now our goal is to change Uganda,” Fonda said. “The demand is insatiable [there].”
Kimberly Burton can be reached at kimberly.burton@temple.edu.
Also see: Literate Earth Project, Books for Africa
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Apr 09
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Spirit Airlines passengers battered in fight sue the carrier for continuing to serve alcohol to assailants, failure to protect them
By Nancy Dillon, New York Daily News, Thursday, April 7, 2016
An in-flight riot over a noisy boom box is causing more turbulence for Spirit Airlines. (March 9, 2016) Three passengers involved in the cabin clash last month sued the carrier Thursday claiming it fueled the flap with copious amounts of alcohol and failed to protect them from injury. The tail-end of the incident was filmed by other passengers, and wild video of women slapping and grabbing each other over seatbacks quickly went viral.
Gloria Allred announced a lawsuit against Spirit Airlines beside her clients, from left, Lisa Zampella, Tykisha Diadato and Danielle Fonda-Thomas, who were all involved in a fight on board the carrier’s plane.
“I am upset that the Spirit Airlines failed to protect us, disregarded our safety, and instead continued to serve the women in front of us alcoholic beverages even though they were clearly intoxicated and behaving aggressively,” passenger and plaintiff Tykisha Diodato said in a statement Thursday.
Diodato and her friends — fellow plaintiffs Lisa Zampella and Danielle Fonda-Thomas — say they were on the March 9 flight from Baltimore to Los Angeles for a long-awaited vacation. They claim three other female passengers seated near them got drunk during the flight, blared music from a blue tooth speaker for hours, sang loudly and stood and danced in the cabin, their lawyer Gloria Allred said at a press conference in New York.
When asked hours into the flight to lower the volume of the music, the rowdy passengers did so for a few minutes but then cranked the volume even higher, Allred said. Shortly before landing, a female flight attendant who allegedly danced to the women’s music earlier in the flight returned and provided them with additional rounds of alcoholic beverages despite their aggressive behavior, the plaintiffs claim.
The tail-end of the incident was filmed by other passengers, and wild video of women slapping and grabbing each other over seatbacks quickly went viral.
Upon touching down at LAX, the drunk women allegedly began shouting offensive and racist remarks and made the first move in the violent scuffle, Allred said. “F–k white people!” they yelled, according to Allred. “What are these f—ing people going to do?” Allred said her clients were “offended by these racial remarks.”
“Ms. Fonda-Thomas politely informed them that their language was inappropriate in front of children. Unprovoked, one of the intoxicated female passengers stood up, turned around, and began to batter and assault Ms. Fonda-Thomas,” Allred said. A second intoxicated passenger also began to attack Fonda-Thomas — and that’s when Diodato and Zampella rushed to her defense and also suffered physical injuries, Allred said. “It was not a mutual combat situation as some have described in prior reports,” Allred said.
“Because there is a lawsuit we are not at liberty to describe the specifics of their injuries,” Allred told the Daily News when asked to elaborate on her client’s alleged physical trauma. She said her clients are seeking compensatory and punitive damages at trial. A Spirit spokesman denied the charges in a statement to The News.
Allred said her clients are seeking compensatory and punitive damages at from the airline at trial.
“The flight had just landed at LAX and the flight attendants were in their jump seats as required by law. When the fight began, our flight attendants immediately moved to break it up. It is not our practice to over-serve alcohol to anyone,” Spirit spokesman Paul Berry said Thursday.
Fonda-Thomas called the experience a “nightmare.” “On that flight we became victims to a very bad situation and negligence of the airline. It was the first time in my life that I felt unsafe on public transportation,” she said.
“The flight attendants failed to take control of the situation before it got to the point where we were physically attacked, humiliated, and escorted off the plane as if we were criminals.” Zampella said the flight crew should have stopped serving the women and ensured a peaceful flight for all passengers. “I fear for anyone who travels with this airline that obviously doesn’t take their passengers’ safety seriously,” she said in a statement.
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Feb 07
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100 years ago in The Saratogian: February 7
From the George S. Bolster Collection of the Saratoga Springs History Museum
Posted: 02/07/16, 1:00 AM EST
From the George S. Bolster Collection of the Saratoga Springs History Museum
MONDAY, FEB. 7, 1916
Saratoga Lake is being overfished in the winter to the detriment of summer fishing and should have a longer closed season to preserve the fish stock, according to a New York angler quoted in today’s Saratogian.
In a letter to the editor of the New York Press, Murray R. Fonda recommended that fishing in Saratoga Lake be governed by the same schedule that applies to Lake George.
In Lake George, the fishing season for pike, pickerel and wall-eyes runs from June 16 through December 31, leaving the lake closed to ice fishers most of the winter. By comparison, Saratoga Lake is open for fishing for all but two months each year, its season running from May 1 to March 1.
“I can state from personal experience that I have found the fishing poorer at Saratoga Lake every successive summer for the past four years until last summer the game was hardly worth the candle,” Fonda wrote, “and until the fish are better protected there and the fishing consequently improves I would not advise my brother anglers to seriously consider Saratoga Lake.”
Saratoga Lake Postcard 1914
The Saratoga Lake Association has already considered conservation measures, but despite his admiration for Mayor Walter P. Butler, who is also the Association president, Fonda feels that the changes proposed last December 27 were inadequate to the situation.
“The only remedy favorably considered by the [conservation] commission seems to be the elimination of night fishing through the ice and the limiting of each person to five tip-ups [i.e. bait lines] instead of the fifteen now allowed.”
To put this recommendation in perspective, Thomas C. Luther, who lives at the south end of the lake, told the commission that there were “about two thousand” tip-ups just in the vicinity of his place.
“Though this protection is good as far as it goes, it is entirely inadequate even as to winter fishing,” Fonda wrote.
Since Saratoga Lake is just a fraction of the size of Lake George – “You could in fact put it into one of the big bays of Lake George” – Fonda believes that Saratoga Lake has more need of a shorter fishing season. “Other things being equal, the smaller the lake the more protection is needed, for the less chance is there for the fish to escape destruction.”
IN THE RED. The organizers of the Russian Symphony Orchestra concerts at the Convention Hall last Saturday will end up losing approximately $500, according to manager Alfred Hallam. Poor sales for the afternoon concert, attended by 902 people compared to the 1,373 who attended the evening show, are blamed for the shortfall.
– Kevin Gilbert
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Dec 17
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Historian bags Boston Tea Party link
1774 letter discovered in Montgomery County refers to tax protest
By Paul Nelson Published Tuesday, December 15, 2015, Times Union
A 1774 letter from a file of Patriot leader Jelles Fondas personal writings discovered in the Montgomery County relates to the Boston Tea Party rebellion. The correlation was found by Montgomery County Historian Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar. The missives, which had never been uncovered before, described the political rift that developed between he and Walter Butler and the heirs of Sir William Johnson, chronicles Johnsons attempts to curtail free speech and the rebellion of citizens in Tryon County in August 1774. Additionally, Fonda mentions the allegations leveled at him and the repercussions Bostonians would feel for destroying the tea in the city. (Courtesy Montgomery County)
Fort Plain, NY – In the spring Montgomery County Historian Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar went with her daughter on a class trip to Boston, where they visited the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.
On Monday, Farquhar made history herself when she found personal writings about the subject while taking inventory of the archival collections of patriot leader Jelles Fonda.
On Tuesday, the historian recounted how the words ‘Boston’ and ‘tea’ on those documents caught her eye. They describe the political rift between Fonda and Walter Butler and the heirs of Sir William Johnson, and chronicles Johnson’s attempts to curtail free speech and the rebellion of residents in August 1774 in Tryon County, from which Montgomery and several other counties were later created.
Fonda also mentions allegations leveled at him and the repercussions Bostonians would feel for destroying the tea in the city. “Everybody that I’ve shown it to is pretty certain it was written by Jelles Fonda,” said Farquhar, who has worked with the county department of history and archives for nearly two decades. She made the find while inventory in advance of making the historical papers digital.
The Boston Tea Party (initially referred to by John Adams as “the Destruction of the Tea in Boston”) was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773. They boarded the ships and threw the chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution.
The discovery occurred days before Wednesday’s 242nd anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when the city residents dressed as Native Americans dumped tea into the harbor to protest taxes. The Fondas were early settlers in the region, the county seat bears their name and their descendants including the Fonda acting family of Henry, Peter and Jane.
Fort Plain Museum researcher Norm Bollen transcribed the letter, and said in a statement that “reading and understanding 18th-century handwriting can be challenging.”
The letter will be featured as part of a new exhibit he and Farquhar are working on for the department that showcases the history of Tryon County at the beginning of the American Revolution. It is expected to debut sometime next summer.
Farquhar said Tuesday that she remains excited about the find. “I’ve come across a lot of neat things but this is pretty close to the top of the list, if not the top because of the reference to national history,” she said.
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Dec 17
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BHS Yearbook Production Now A Popular Class
By Christi Boortz, Curriculum & Professional Development Department
Posted on December 16, 2015
Blind and visually impaired high school students were excited when a new class showed up on the FSDB course schedule for the fall semester, among the usual listings. Technically “Journalism 1,” the class focuses on Yearbook Production, and is taught by English and Language Arts instructor Melissa Fonda. The class has a strong literacy component integrating technology and the visual arts. Students learn writing and listening skills, as well as the aesthetics of photography and layout design. They use email to schedule interviews, fact check, and submit assignments via computer. Also, they use the Memory Book website to upload photos and create copy and layouts. Fonda has many good memories from participating in yearbook production as a student back in her early years—she “enjoyed the technical and creative aspects of making layouts and writing features,” Fonda received state of the art technology and equipment to implement the class, in the form of a giant Apple screen display unit with wireless keyboard and mouse, and two high quality Canon cameras. The class is composed of juniors and seniors, which is just fine by Fonda since “older students have had time to develop their writing skills, they know who people in the high school are, and they have a sense of the extracurricular activities that everyone is engaged in – more maturity overall.” Fonda is also pleased with the cross section of students who signed on, which includes athletes, musicians, artists, and Student Council members. Initially six students signed up, but three more added the class after they heard it was fun. Word travels fast in BHS!
Bryce Cothron plans to be a novelist in adulthood, so he especially enjoys writing snippets for the yearbook. He also expressed appreciation for learning about the various elements of photography, such as composition and positioning. He summed up, “It’s interesting to see how it all comes out. Good stuff.” Jonathan Moran asked himself, “Why not?” and showed up for class. He cites editing as one of his favorite activities. Ditto for student Aaliyah Gisondi, who loves being a copy editor. She admitted with a smile, “I get to tell anyone when they have made errors. It might sound funny but that makes me happy.” Gisondi also took the class so she could work with “Ms. Fonda,” one of her favorite BHS instructors. Roque Moran, brother to Johnathan, took the class partly because it fit his schedule and partly because he felt it would be interesting. The class has met his expectations. Among other things, he has learned “taking good pictures requires accuracy.” And he enthusiastically endorsed the instructor, saying “Ms. Fonda’s teaching is awesome.”
Emmitt Johnson enjoys writing and “running around the school to take photos of events.” He has learned, in terms of formatting, what to do and what not to do. Nick Thompson favors design and layout, but explained that he additionally does “odd jobs, like getting photo permissions.” Vanessa Coleman had a professional take on the “soft skills” she has been learning through the course, stressing that one should “always follow up and stay on task.” She shared her former problems with procrastination and explained “As soon as you get a task to do, you better get on it right away!” Quinn Delong took the course on the advice of Assistant Principal Charlie Crozier. Delong already had some accumulated knowledge from working with Fonda on the yearbook last year. He feels the course has added to his skill set in media, from technical aspects of layout to the softer skills of working in teams effectively, and sharing knowledge with his classmates. He has some advice to offer: “Do what you love, love what you do.” Apple Polonia is the editor of the club section in the yearbook, and through an email interview, shared that she is learning cooperation and interviewing skills. She highly recommends the class as a good learning experience for those who enjoy design and communication. She suggests that her peers should “try as many different things as possible, because knows that thing might turn into an interest and then maybe a passion.”
About FSDB
Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (FSDB) is a fully accredited state public school and outreach center available tuition-free to eligible pre-K and K-12 deaf/hard of hearing and blind/visually impaired students. Comprehensive educational services at FSDB are individualized, specific to the unique communication and accessibility needs of each student for independence and lifelong success. FSDB gratefully accepts private donations to support vital programs that directly benefit students and are not paid by state general revenue funds. To visit the school or to learn more about eligibility for enrollment, contact 1-800-344-3732. For more information, visit www.fsdb.k12.fl.us.