We have over 100 golfers for the day, thank you all for your support of CIS!

Come out and watch us play and/or watch Sean “The Beast” Fister hit his Beast Balls for the Longest Drive!

We will be updating this very soon with videos of our featured dancers, along with pictures and other exciting information leading up to the event! We hope to see you all there!

http://mooredancing.com/

Here is a bit of information to share with your friends:

Moore Buddies and Communities In Schools present

Dancing with the Sandhills’ Stars

January 9th, 2009    Pine Needles Golf Resort

Join us for an evening of dinner and dancing with the Sandhills Stars!

Without a doubt, young people who have the benefit of caring adult mentors navigate the path to adulthood more successfully.

Local leaders in the community will compete for your vote on the dance floor to raise awareness of mentoring and the impact mentoring has on helping children reach their potential and become successful in school and in life! The proceeds will go to support Moore Buddies and Communities In Schools. 48 community leaders, including Dr. Susan Purser, Superintendent of Moore County Schools, Coach Metzger, Kristen Palmer & Rich Rushforth, of 102.5FM radio, Steve Bouser, Editor of the Pilot, and many others, will entertain in a high-stepping show Emc’d by Jim Dodson, Editor of Pinestraw Magazine. He will be aided by such impartial and objective judges as GRADY LITTLE, of baseball fame, SENATOR HARRIS BLAKE and JOHN DEMPSEY, of Sandhills Community College! Guests will enjoy cocktails and dinner and an opportunity to vote for their favorite dancer. The contest is not based on dancing expertise or training (although some of the partners come from the Sandhills dance studios)­—it is, instead, the only contest which can be won by buying votes!

The COMPASS Project is a federal grant program from the Department of Public Instruction—Safe and Drug Free Schools. The mentoring program is administered by Communities In Schools of Moore County and based at Southern Middle School in Aberdeen, North Carolina. The grant, which began during the 2007-08 school year, provides funding to support one-on-one mentoring for students in need of a little extra help to succeed and stay in school. The Project is designed to provide middle school students direction in their lives through the guidance of a caring adult. Mentors ask students to articulate their dreams and aspirations. A primary focus of the Project is to produce academically successful students who become responsible for their futures. In addition to weekly mentoring visits, students also benefit from educational field trips and community service opportunities.

The Project currently pairs 70 middle school children at Southern Middle School with 70 community volunteers once a week for a minimum of one hour. There are also 50 Mentors at Aberdeen Elementary School, also spending one hour a week minimum.Outcomes for the first two years show that 97% of matches were maintained, 56% of students reduced their unexcused absences, 62% reduced their behavioral incidents, 58% improved their core academic grades, and 82% improved their attendance. In the 2009-2010 school year, Communities In Schools will expand the COMPASS program to support 110 students. Volunteer mentors will be critical to our continued success!

Moore Buddies is a private, non-profit agency that provides community-based mentoring to youth in Moore County who are at risk of not reaching their full potential due to a variety of factors. Moore Buddies provides close monitoring of school, home, and community behavior, as well as opportunities to learn social, recreational, vocational and educational skills. Moore Buddies youth are less likely to start using drugs or alcohol, feel more competent about doing schoolwork, attend school more, get better grades, and have better relationships with their parents and peers than they would have had they not participated in the program. Moore Buddies mentors truly help their youth create a vision of all they can become…and then together they work to make that a reality!

Moore Buddies provides community based mentoring to these youth so in need of a positive role model, support and guidance. The term community-based mentoring means that our volunteers spend time with their youth out in the community, exposing them to variety of cultural and social experiences, all geared to addressing the youth’s individual needs as well as their strengths. Our volunteers commit to working with their youth for a full year, at least once a week, for a minimum of 2 hours each week. Our mentors develop very close, personal relationships with their youth that translate into having a positive impact on their mentees life. Youth experts agree that mentoring is a critical element in any child’s social, emotional and cognitive development.

For more information contact:

Chrisy Connelly—Moore Buddies at 910-400-5236 www.moorebuddies.org

Andi Korte—Communities In Schools at 910-295-1072 www.cismoore.org

A huge thank you to Sean “The Beast” Fister for not only playing golf with us that day, but for his Long Drive Exhibition on hole #17 after the tournament. It was amazing to see! The winning drive was 371 yards straight down the fairway! We were all blown away!

Sean "The Beast" Fister, giving his pre-drive talk!

The crowd is hushed as Sean hits his long drives.

We can't even see the balls as they take flight!

He is just getting warmed up!

How far did this one go?

The Winning WalMart team with Sean "The Beast" Fister

Andi & Marty Korte's team, posed on the Ryder Cup cart.

Frank & Martha Butler, posing with Sean "The Beast" Fister

The day was warm, but fun, and everyone had a great time. What could be more worth the effort than the children of Moore County that we support with our programs?

Thank you again, you are a wonderful & supportive community!

(Pictures to follow shortly!)

The evening before, on August 26th, we are hosting a cocktail party with Sean Fister as our guest, Elliott’s on Linden is providing food and drinks.

There are also Beast Ball Raffle tickets still available as well, for $20 each. Beast Balls will be hit by Sean Fister, the three longest drives will win fabulous prizes.

Please call Andi Korte at 910.295.1072 for details and tickets to any of the above events. As always, thank you for your continued support for Communities In Schools and our programs!

(Excerpt from the CISNC Rock the Dance Education Ball 2009 website, see link in the sidebar for more details)

The 7th Annual North Carolina Education Ball, to benefit the Communities In Schools network across North Carolina will be held in Raleigh on June 26, 2009 at the RBC Center. Unlike previous balls, which featured many Broadway stars performing on stage with children from across the state, this year’s event will feature several well known Triangle personalities in a dance contest similar to Dancing with the Stars, but with a twist. We are thrilled to announce Governor Beverly Perdue and her husband, Bob Eaves will serve as our Event Chairs!

While we are entirely mindful of the current economic situation, we also know the next couple of years stand to see an increase in dropouts throughout our state if we don’t remain unyielding in our work. Recent reports indicate that the current mortgage and loan disaster will displace some 40,000 North Carolina families with school-aged children. Additionally, we already know that over 80,000 of our children were retained in grade this past school year. Consequently, we know through research that both of these factors will contribute to higher dropout rates over the next twenty-four months, and these increases are certain to increase the already depressing thirty-one percent dropout rate. This is why we will not forgo this very important charity ball. Besides serving to raise several hundred thousand dollars, the ball increases the public’s awareness of this discouraging problem, and it helps to bring in new business partners and other friends to join the rest of us in conquering this problem.

Until we increase the graduate rate in the entire state to 100 percent, we will continue to raise the funds necessary to fight the good fight by any means which makes sense. Please join CIS this coming year by sponsoring the 2009 NC Education Ball. At a cost of just under $300 per student served, and a 98 percent success rate of keeping these at-risk students in school, your donation will make a difference for thousands of our neediest students and will have a positive impact on the communities where we live.

Sincerely,

Kate Kenney

2009 NC Education Ball Dancers

Harvey Schmitt, President Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce
John Clark, News Anchor ABC11
Antwan Harris, Former UVA and New England Patriots football star
Billie Redmond, Owner Coldwell Banker Trademark Properties
Laura Bromhal, Raleigh Realtor
Acton Archie, Former CIS student; Current CISNC Board member; Currently with SAS

EVENT CHAIRS:
Governor Beverly Perdue
Bob Eaves

EVENT PRODUCER:
Kate Kenney

From CIS Moore County:

We thank all of our community supporters and participants as we attend the 2009 Education Ball. CIS Moore County has done a great job at the Ball in the past, we are sure this year will be no different! Thank you for your continued support, we look forward to seeing you there!

The current cohort graduation rate in North Carolina is 70 percent. This means that 30 percent of our students drop out of school, and for African-American males, less than 50 percent graduate. From a social standpoint, we know that failure to graduate high school almost always means a life of poverty, a much greater likelihood of criminal activity, lengthy periods of unemployment, a much less healthy lifestyle and poor decision-making skills. From a financial standpoint, at $5,400 per dropout per year, the dropouts from the freshman class of academic year 2003-2004 will cost the State $161.2 million this year and the next year and so on. If this isn’t scary enough, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there were 1.6 million high school dropouts in North Carolina in 2007, and we are currently adding more to this number each year than we are losing. All of these dropouts will cost the State $8.6 billion this year; well over one-third of the original 2009 State budget, and four times the projected shortfall. We also know the following about our high school dropouts:

1. They are twice as likely to be unemployed, three times as likely to be arrested and six times as likely to be unwed parents.
2. Almost 82% of youth offenders in North Carolina are dropouts and juvenile incarceration costs $79K/year (NCDJJDP).
3. Of the 39,746 inmates in NC prisons at the end of 2008, 27,688 or 70 percent were dropouts, and their incarceration costs alone were $692 million.

The Solution

CIS is results oriented and cost effective. Last year North Carolina CIS affiliates:

• Served almost 164,000 children and their families in 50 counties;
• Recruited 20,422 volunteers who contributed over 397,000 hours of their time;
• Helped 98.3 percent of CIS students stay in school;
• And provided all of these services at a cost of $177 per child. (NOTE: Remember, a single dropout will cost society $5,400 per year, every year.)

Communities In Schools (CIS) is the largest and most effective “dropout prevention network” in the country. In 2005, ICF International, a well-respected research institute having no ties to CIS, began a five-year evaluation of the CIS model as well as other dropout prevention programs across the country. In the Spring of this year, ICF released the first results of that study. Based on an in-depth analysis of 1,766 CIS schools and comparative analysis of outcomes for more than 1,200 CIS and non-CIS comparison schools over a three-year period ICF International found that:

> Among dropout prevention programs using scientifically-based evidence, the CIS Model is one of a very few in the United States proven to keep students in school and is the only dropout prevention program in the nation with scientifically-based evidence to prove that it increases graduation rates.

> When implemented with high fidelity, the CIS Model results in a higher percentage of students reaching proficiency in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

> Effective implementation of the CIS Model correlates more strongly with positive school-level outcomes (i.e., dropout and graduation rates, achievement, etc.) than does the uncoordinated provision of service alone, resulting in notable improvements of school level outcomes in the context of the CIS Model.

Invest In Success for our children and their futures.

Start Up Kit

1 Rubbermaid Roughneck Container—size small

4 Small Vents (2” diameter)—found in Roofing Section of Lowe’s

Newspaper—Barrons, Wall Street Journal, Raleigh N&O (soy-based inks)

1# (pound) Eisenia Fetida (Red Wigglers) found on this site:

Red Hen Enterprises

Spray Bottle for Water

See this blog’s page named Promote Global Worming for assembly instructions & detailed information

Kathy Byron