01 Jul July 2021 Newsletter

July 2021 Newsletter

Welcome to the July 2021 edition of the Daniels Foundation Newsletter. In this issue, we explore the following topics. Click on the links to read the articles!

The Investing In Girls Alliance makes the data grade! The work of the Investing In Girls Alliance (IIGA) is accelerating dramatically… Click here to read more…

Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester tutors for 46 years! At the quarterly meeting in June, the Daniels Foundation granted $ 5,000 to the Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester… Click here to read more…

Robert Daniels – a tale of Presidents and a king! If you have stumbled on this article, then no doubt you are descended from Robert Daniels or you know someone descended from him… Click here to read more…

Worcester Cares for Kids – babysitting during the pandemic! At the June meeting, the Daniels Foundation voted to award $20,000 to a unique collaboration between seven Worcester area agencies… Click here to read more…

The Investing In Girls Alliance makes the data grade!

The work of the Investing In Girls Alliance (IIGA) is accelerating dramatically. Originally conceived and championed by our own Meridith Wesby, the Foundation has been developing this strategic focus on girls, age 10-14, since 2004. Our earliest grants date to 2005, and IIGA was engaged and founded shortly after that.

What began as two consultants paired with the Executive Directors of the YWCA, Girls, Inc, and the Girl Scouts of Central and Western MA is now a collaborative of more than 20 youth agencies, each with a commitment to girl specific programming opportunities, and working together to share resources, expertise, and (perhaps most critically) DATA.

In fact our two consultants, Mary McRae and Dodi Swope, have added a 3rd partner to this effort: Karyn Martin. Karyn owns her own data analytics business, and she gives a considerable amount of time to analysis of the data collected by IIGA. This data comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, regularly administered by the Worcester City Schools, as well as other sources in Worcester County. The data we receive is generally less than one year old, and this gives the Foundation and IIGA the chance to make real time decisions based on real time needs being felt by the girls.

Which leads to the latest iteration of the IIGA model: using this data, the folks at IIGA are developing Thrive Benchmarks for use by girl serving agencies in Worcester. Through the lens of Health and Healthy Relationships, Violence and Safety, or Economic Empowerment, we are collaboratively establishing benchmarks for measurement of how our girls our doing as well as how our agencies are doing. In partnership with IIGA experts we are rolling out online training, professional peer support networks, and capacity building strategies for agency leadership. All of which means girls are being better served with programs that are meeting their real needs today. Learn more by clicking here.

And from the Daniels Foundation perspective this data driven approach allows us to formalize our grant RFP’s to aim squarely at the most critical needs in real time. Last year as the pandemic raged our current grant focus on Social Media was critical to the wellbeing of isolated girls throughout Worcester. And we expect that the upcoming data set will reveal that an RFP focused on mental health is likely to be the critical need.

All of which serves to meet our most important goal: to make a difference, to move the needle, and to focus our funding to make a real and lasting impact. More than 35% of our total funding is dedicated to this core initiative, and our data driven approach continues to convince the Foundation Board members that these dollars are very well spent indeed.

Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester tutors for 46 years!

At the quarterly meeting in June, the Daniels Foundation granted $ 5,000 to the Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester. This organization was established in 1973 as a one-on-one English language tutoring program in Worcester. Well over 11,000 adults have profited from the one-on-one tutoring and mentoring that has gone on now for 46 years.

An adult who is in need of English language proficiency is paired up with a volunteer tutor, who has undergone an 18 hour training course. Some of the volunteers are retired professors. These volunteers are truly dedicated to their mission of teaching English to others.

For example, Crystal, a literacy volunteer, worked with Loretta, a woman from Albania, and gave her the ability to understand sentences and to read short passages in English. Loretta now has the capability to understand, communicate and write in English, so that she has confidence to overcome her language barriers. Loretta is happy to be able to be more independent in her new country.

Frank Callahan, who recently retired from Worcester Academy, has been a member of the board of directors of the Literacy Volunteers of Greater Worcester for 5 years now. He is truly impressed with the expertise of the management officials of the organization. As an aside, he also was pleased to have taken a key role in arranging the two reunions that the Daniels Foundation had at Worcester Academy in recent years.

Robert Daniels – a tale of Presidents and a king

If you have stumbled on this article, then no doubt you are descended from Robert Daniels or you know someone descended from him. Robert came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony prior to 1636 and settled in Watertown. The Daniels family lived in eastern Massachusetts for the next 300 years until the mid-1900s. And that means you are a 11th or 12th generation Daniels.

I am a very amateur genealogist and have spent hours and hours researching my ancestors, including the ancestors of Sally Daniels Pettit, my mother, daughter of Dwight Clark Daniels, who was the youngest son of Fred Harris Daniels. It is a hobby at best but one that fascinates me. For example, depending on how the number is calculated, if you from the 12th generation then you have more than 8000 great grandparents. I have documented over 50 grand mothers and grand fathers who came to New England during this family’s first wave of immigration from England. According to Thomas Purvis, who wrote Colonial America (1999), the entire population of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640 was 8,932, so we are pretty much related to every one of those folks.

And that brings up some very interesting connections. We know, for instance, that Gramma Daniels (Sarah Lydia Daniels) side of the family is descended from Robert Taft. Everyone knows, of course, that William Howard Taft, 27th President of the US is also descendant from the same Robert Taft. They were cousins!!

We also are descended from Richard Warren, who came here in 1620 on The Mayflower. Because of a number of factors (too numerous to relate here) Richard Warren opens a delightful can of genealogical connections, like: Ulysses S. Grant 15th President and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President, who are our cousins, as well as Sarah Palin, Taylor Swift, Ernest Hemingway and a whole slew of other notables.

Robert Daniels’ son, Joseph, married Mary Fairbanks, whose mother was Mary Adams. Mary descends from the same Adams as John Adams, the second president of the US and John Q., the 6th President of the US.

Therefore you can claim five US Presidents as cousins.
 

From the Hartford Courant, March 25, 2008: (President) Obama “can call six U.S. Presidents…  his cousins”.  On his mother’s side he is descendant from Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod who died in 1662, as is George W. Bush. What do you bet we could add a few more presidents since I last looked at this (in the 1980s)!

That is very cool, right? But hey if you are in the (Fred) Harold Daniels line there is more. Uncle Harold’s wife, Eleanor Goddard, traces her family back to William Goddard, who also settled in Watertown in 1665. It is through that Goddard line that she traces her ancestors back a further 15 generations to King Edward 1st, King of England from1272 – 1307, also known as Edward Longshanks and The Hammer of the Scots. That is about 27 generations, or 782 years back.


Five Presidents and a King. Who knew?

Worcester Cares for Kids – babysitting during the pandemic!

At the June meeting, the Daniels Foundation voted to award $20,000 to a unique collaboration between seven Worcester area agencies. As concerns increased over the well-being of young children at home during the pandemic, many of whom were being cared for by older siblings, Worcester Cares for Kids (WC4Ks) created a babysitting course for middle-school-aged youth to provide high-quality babysitting training around developmentally appropriate childcare for young children in their homes.

The coalition built enrichment activities around the core babysitting course to include the concept of “babysitting as a first job,” to appeal to local middle schoolers. The four-session program provides youth with babysitting certification, a set of toys and activities to support their work, and a stipend to express the value of their learning new skills to engage in their first job.

The Board saw that providing high-quality babysitting training can generate “multiplier effects” by allowing youth to get paid to care for young siblings, thereby decreasing stress on parents and providing a meaningful youth employment option. An added benefit is that these youth develop a greater understanding of child development that will assist them later in life as they become parents themselves.

The WC4Ks program has already trained 300 middle-school-youth, and expects to train an additional 200 more in the next few months. As the Department of Children and Families and the family support partners said in their application: “the middle school youth who participate gain life long skills, their parents are grateful for the support, and the agencies noticed a tangible difference in the families they were concerned about”—a win, win, win!