Wow Zone Radio Show

Episode #23: From Homeless to Helping Kids Find Their Way Out of Poverty with Ann Higdon

See the video of this 2009 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #23

Airdate: 3/2/10

From Homeless to Helping Kids Find Their Way Out of Poverty

 

Ann Higdon knows the despair of going nowhere. Homeless as a kid, she grew up with no love for learning and little hope. It took just one teacher's kind words to drive Higdon to try harder and finish school.

Through the years, she has convened a chorus of professionals to similarly inspire high school dropouts in Dayton, Ohio. Ann's organization, which includes three charter schools, helps area dropouts earn their diplomas while training for jobs in health care, construction, computer operations, and manufacturing. In 2009, a ranking of the 62 public schools in Dayton, OH placed the ISUS schools as 2nd, 4th and 15th highest in performance.  Find out how Ann uses her passion to fuel her enlivening encore career.

Ann founded Improved Solutions for Urban Systems (ISUS) in 1992 to develop more effective ways to educate and train underachieving, dropout and court-involved youth. 

The ISUS concept is high school plus.  For a student, the plus means industry certification, apprenticeship, college credits, real work experience and a life changing perspective.  Students alternate between hands-on, academic and post-secondary coursework. Both student and community outcomes are crafted to be impactful. 

Before ISUS, Ann created the public/private partnership in Ohio that replaced food stamps with smart cards.  She managed large national demonstration projects supervising a staff of up to two thousand in twenty-three cities, has been a newspaper columnist, and co-hosted a popular WDAO radio talk program, The Hidden Face of Reality. 

Ann is a former New Yorker and the mother of four adult children.

 

Episode #22: Turning Personal Tragedy into a Force for Global Good with Elizabeth & Stephen Alderman

See the video of these 2009 Purpose Prize Winners

Episode #22

Airdate: 2/23/10

Turning Personal Tragedy into a Force for Global Good

Liz and Steve Alderman turned tragedy into triumph eight years ago after losing their son to terrorists on 9/11 in the Twin Towers. Liz says, “Peter was too young to have decided whether he wanted to leave his mark on this earth.  We have decided to leave a mark for Peter.”  

The Peter C. Alderman Foundation’s mission is to heal the emotional wounds of victims of terrorism and mass violence by training health care professionals and establishing clinics in post-conflict countries around the globe. In just three years, foundation-trained physicians and other personnel, such as psychiatric nurses, village elders, midwives and Peter Alderman clinics, have touched more than 55,000 people – including children from the post-conflict countries of Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan.

According to Liz and Steve, this is just the beginning.  Tune in to be inspired and touched by these self-described “ordinary” people.

After the agonizing loss of their son on 9/11, a segment on Nightline documenting the mental anguish of refugees helped Liz and Stephen Alderman begin to turn anger and devastation into healing - for themselves and, eventually, for nearly 100,000 victims of violence, terrorism, and torture around the world through the Peter C. Alderman Foundation (PCAF). 

Since 2003, more than 200 indigenous doctors and other health care professionals from 21 countries have been trained by PCAF – on four continents – and they in turn have trained countless health care workers. PCAF has also opened nine Peter C. Alderman Trauma Treatment Centers in Africa, Asia and Haiti. 

Liz Alderman is a former Special Education Teacher and Co-chair of the Memorial Committee for Families of September 11th.  Stephen Alderman, MD, is the former Chair of the Radiation Oncology Departments at Roosevelt-St. Luke’s Hospital, Catholic Medical Center and White Plains Hospital Center.

 

Episode #21: Fighting Illiteracy One Couple at a Time with Nasrine Gross

See the video of this 2008 Purpose Prize Winner

Episode #21

Airdate: 2/16/10

Fighting Illiteracy One Couple at a Time

 

 

When Nasrine Gross grew up in Kabul, she had books, attended school, and her mother was a member of Parliament. 

Today, eight out of 10 people in Afghanistan are illiterate, with women having virtually no access to education. So, she became an advocate for women's rights in the face of oppression from Taliban rulers. 

After the fall of the Taliban in 2002, Nasrine came up with a simple, but radical idea: teaching literacy classes in tents and homes in a socially acceptable format – with couples as her students. Since women require their husband's permission or presence to do most things, men are invited to learn to read as well.

Gross now lives nine months of the year in a small village outside Kabul and has graduated nearly 500 students ages 15 to 82. She has also expanded her classes to cover math, health, family issues and political education. Meet this extraordinary woman and find out what drives her.

Nasrine left her home in Kabul after high school to attend American University in Beirut, where she met and married an American. After raising their son she returned to activism for women's rights.

Her first book, Memories of the First Afghan Girls' High School, was published in 1998, at the height of Taliban power. Three more books, on women in the Koran, women running for political office, and Afghan peace building responsibilities have followed. 

In 2001, she helped draft the Declaration of Essential Rights of Afghan Women, which laid the foundation for the section on women's rights in the present Afghan constitution. Prior to the 2004 Afghan elections, where 25 percent of the seats in the House of People would be filled by women, Nasrine ran a training seminar for female candidates.

She is the founder of Kabultec in the U.S., and its sister organization, The Roqia Center for Women's Rights, Studies and Education in Afghanistan.

 

Episode #20: Fun, Funds & Fulfillment for the Rest of Your Life with Jeri Sedlar

Episode #20

Airdate: 2/9/10

Fun, Funds & Fulfillment for the Rest of Your Life 

 

Jeri Sedlar doesn’t want you to fall into the traditional retirement trap. She knows that when it comes to life planning for your future, one size does not fit all.  After years of research she’s discovered the top reasons, or what she calls drivers, of why people say they work beyond the money.  Jeri is America’s “rewiring® expert”.  She’s provocative, fun and grounded in “realistic optimism”.  Tune in as Jeri helps you identify your drivers so you can select work and life activities that will give you fun, funds and driver fulfillment for the rest of your life.

Jeri is an expert on the realities of an aging society that is healthier, more educated and more vibrant than any other generation ever in history.  As co-author of Don’t Retire, Rewire! and Senior Advisor to The Conference Board on the Mature Workforce, Jeri travels the country inspiring individuals and organizations to "get creative" and rewire their thinking and action when it comes to planning for the future.  With today's global economy and aging workforce, her mission is to ensure that both individuals and organizations discover how to leverage the opportunities created by The New Retirement model.  Jeri is also the former Editor-at-Large of Working Woman magazine and for ten years was a partner in her own executive search firm.