The Health Resources and Services Administration has a new funding opportunity. Up to
$375,000 will be awarded for demonstration projects to improve health care access in
rural areas. RFP deadline: October 16. For more program information, click here.

This program awards up to $10,000 for collaborative initiatives that support the vision
objectives in Healthy People 2010, which address examinations and prevention, eye
diseases, injury and safety and vision rehabilitation. Deadline: August 29, 2008.

This National Council on Aging program is offering funds to help multigenerational and
civic engagement projects document effective local approaches and impact. Deadline for
concept paper: August 1, 2008.

Schools can be more than vibrant places for learning, they can also be year-round hubs
that connect families and communities to resources and services. This brief from the
National Human Services Assembly looks at schools that doing just that and outlines
what it would take to make school-linked services available in a greater number of
communities. For more great tools, check out the National Assembly's Family
Strengthening Center.

How can we improve the odds for young people? This Forum for Youth Investment Ready by
21 webinar examined the major child and youth development frameworks and offered
real-world experiences of how a coordinating a framework can improve youth programs and
policies -- and outcomes for children and youth.

This toolkit from Next Gen toolkit is designed to help organizations collect and use
local survey and focus group data about frontline youth workers to make the case for
investing in workforce development. The tools include a guide, survey and focus group
instruments, data entry and analysis worksheet and a sample presentation. (Find more
resources in the July 2008 Next Gen Bulletin, now online.)

Run to Vote combines the sport of track and field with your pledge to vote in 2008. A nonpartisan voting drive led by students and teachers from Granville Central High School in Stem, North Carolina, the Run to Vote team is traveling through 48 states to register people to vote, and collecting pledges to participate in the election this November. For every person that registers to vote or pledges to vote, one of the teachers, or volunteers from the team, will run the equivalent lap on a quarter mile track. Through July 5, 2008, the team has run 814 laps, registered 153 people in 18 states and collected more than a thousand citizen pledges to vote.

The National Partnership has an inspirational new video highlighting victories such as the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. "We're making more progress all the time, including the first-ever expansion of the FMLA; paid family leave for New Jersey workers; paid sick days for those in the District of Columbia and more," said the National Partnership.

To make positive change for kids, you need to know where things stand, what’s working and what needs to be improved. The annual KIDS COUNT Data Book offers both data and context for 10 indicators of child well-being—and drills down to a state and local level. This year’s essay offers a “roadmap for reform” in juvenile justice. CFK summer intern Maria Allen attended the June 2008 launch event in DC and has this overview.

This is an updated version of the 2007 Children's Bureau packet; it offers (1) guidance for service providers in exploring protective factors with families, (2) tipsheets in both English and Spanish, (3) ideas for engaging the community in strengthening families and other tools to prevent child abuse and neglect.