Starting in October, we will be running a new series of articles in The Hartford Courant about community service and social change, through the Newspaper in Education (NIE) program. These articles will feature the stories of social changemakers from across the state and beyond. They’ll be designed to:

• Introduce students to the current issues and challenges facing our communities, country, and world and the efforts being made toward creating solutions.
• Inspire students to consider the role they can play as leaders in their community now and in the future
• Encourage lively classroom discussions about the elements of leadership and social change that will in turn motivate students to take action and develop skills that are needed to become effective leaders.

The Courant’s Newspaper in Education (NIE) program is a nationally recognized program that fosters the use of newspapers as a learning tool. Each year more than 1,000 teachers and 30,000 students throughout the region receive free newspapers (more than 500,000 each year) to use in their classroom. NIE collaborates with a host of community organizations in an effort to create unique and relevant learning opportunities for students and teachers. In addition to the “in-class” use, these articles are also published in all editions of the Hartford Courant, which has a daily circulation of 164,000 and a weekly adult readership of 800,000.

Our particular series of articles, Meet a Changemaker will run once a month from October 2009 to May 2010. Its primary goal is to engage students in conversations about leadership and social change through stories about leaders from Connecticut and across the country who are making our world a better place. The series will also provide teachers with the content and discussion/resource materials that they need to stimulate further learning, conversation, and action.

Please contact us if you are interested in sponsorship opportunities. Sponsor’s name/logo will appear with each edition (1/2 page, full run of press to 800,000 readers), along with an additional quarter page “thank you” to the entire distribution as well. Sponsorship can be made through The Purpose Project and is tax-deductible. Through the help of the sponsor’s support, we’ll be able to develop the content and also provide the teachers who sign up for the program with newspapers at no cost to the school–a contribution that is always appreciated, especially in these times of tightened school budgets.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 2:50 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.