The information about grant programs is offered free on the sites of government agencies and nonprofits... and is not copyrighted.
So, when a member of Aidpage (you in this case) knows about specific programs and websites, it is expected this information to be shared here on Aidpage - either as simple and quick web links or even as re-posting of the full text information taken from the original source (assuming it is not copyrighted).
This does not preclude you from offering paid grantwriting and consulting services to whoever might be interested.
But we definitely expect posting of the information itself. That's the minimum level of "helping" we expect on Aidpage - free information from other members. This is what other members do every day.
Please, take this seriously... if you want to maintain your Aidpage membership.
Good thing most people put their trust and faith in other people. That's why... and how... we still have families, friends, churches, nations, and sites like Aidpage (people helping people, remember!).
Just imagine all people distrustful of other people. Even God would not want to help such a sorry bunch of self-centered folk.
By Jeffrey D. Barnett (a Marine officer and Iraq War Veteran):
"Before my deployment [to Iraq] I was disposed to always be active. Whether it was with work, hobbies, reading, social activities, or other things, I did not like to be idle. Now I am sometimes content to sit idle with only my thoughts. Watching the ocean, sitting in my front yard with my dog, driving at night: moments when I can contentedly reflect on life alone. Adding a few friends and a pleasant discussion to this activity is now probably my favorite pastime. I now place a much greater value on experiences, while before I almost exclusively valued achievement. And I don’t necessarily mean grand, individual achievements, but also group achievements through things like playing poker or gaming with friends.
Now, I certainly enjoyed experiences before Iraq. Going to the movies to see the latest Will Ferrell film was just as gratifying then as it is now. However, my perspective on activity has changed, and now I am content to relax and just let things happen rather than relentlessly steer every activity towards an ultimate goal. I still steer towards goals, and be sure that I am still relentless, but I now have a far more balanced desire for simple experiences. This has given me a much deeper appreciation for my experiences and those who share them with me, because I know they are just as mortal as I am.
The second change runs slightly counter to the first, causing disconnect with others: After experiencing real chaotic violence and seeing how ugly humanity can be it’s difficult to get excited about some things the rest of the world views as important. For example, about a year after I returned from Iraq a new video game was released and heavily criticized in the media for brief scenes of semi-nudity, I remember feeling frustrated that some of my friends were deployed at that time and probably facing worse circumstances than I had, yet America was in a tizzy over whether its children should be exposed to alien buttocks. At the end of the day, after you’ve seen school children walk in a single-file line past the dead body of a man executed at gunpoint, it’s difficult to care about the social degradation caused by bare buttocks in a video game."
"... XMRV had been discovered in people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, a malady whose very existence has been a subject of debate for 25 years. For sufferers of this disease, the news has offered enormous hope. Being seriously ill for years, even decades, is nightmarish enough, but patients are also the targets of ridicule and hostility that stem from the perception that it is all in their heads. In the study, 67 percent of the 101 patients with the disease were found to have XMRV in their cells. If further study finds that XMRV actually causes their condition, it may open the door to useful treatments. At least, it will be time to jettison the stigmatizing name chronic fatigue syndrome.
The illness became famous after an outbreak in 1984 around Lake Tahoe, in Nevada. Several hundred patients developed flu-like symptoms like fever, sore throat and headaches that led to neurological problems, including severe memory loss and inability to understand conversation. Most of them were infected with several viruses at once, including cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr and human herpesvirus 6. Their doctors were stumped. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s presumed bulwark against emerging infectious diseases, dismissed the epidemic and said the Tahoe doctors “had worked themselves into a frenzy.” The sufferers, a C.D.C. investigator told me at the time, were “not normal Americans.”
When, by 1987, the supposed hysteria failed to evaporate and indeed continued erupting in other parts the country, the health agency orchestrated a jocular referendum by mail among a handful of academics to come up with a name for it. The group settled on “chronic fatigue syndrome” — the use of “syndrome” rather than “disease” suggested a psychiatric rather than physical origin and would thus discourage public panic and prevent insurers from having to make “chronic disbursements,” as one of the academics joked.
[...]
It’s amazing to me that anyone could look at these patients and not see that this is an infectious disease that has ruined lives,” Dr. Mikovits said. She has also given the disease a properly scientific new name: X-associated neuroimmune disease."
The Army Wounded Warrior Program (AW2) is the official U.S. Army program that assists and advocates for severely wounded, injured, and ill Soldiers, Veterans, and their Families, wherever they are located, for as long as it takes. AW2 provides individualized support to this unique population of Soldiers, who were injured or became ill during their service in the Global War on Terrorism.
Wounded Soldiers are eligible for a wide array of benefits in order to help them recover physically, prepare financially and build their skills for a rewarding career. AW2 Advocates will ensure that AW2 Soldiers, Veterans, and their Families are connected with these benefits and services, which span:
The Boston Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital will announce today the launch of a $6 million program to treat the rising number of men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries and to encourage reluctant veterans to seek services.
The players hope to take a crucial role in trying to diminish the stigma many veterans feel about asking for help for a mental disorder. Pitcher Tim Wakefield has filmed the first of a series of planned public service announcements in which he implores veterans to get treatment. “Being on a team means never having to face a challenge alone,’’ he says.
The unusual Home Base Program will include a clinic at Mass. General to evaluate and treat veterans and to counsel family members, who can suffer when a veteran abuses alcohol or has angry outbursts. It will also provide training for psychiatrists in the community and expand research into post-traumatic stress and combat brain injuries.
The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has founded a national suicide prevention hotline to ensure veterans in emotional crisis have free, 24/7 access to trained counselors.
To operate the Veterans Hotline, the VA partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Veterans can call the Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), and press "1" to be routed to the Veterans Suicide Prevention Hotline.
Here we go again - about the Health Care Reform... and why we need it:
"...the part of America's health care system that consumers like best is the government-run part.
Fifty-six to 60 percent of people in government-run Medicare rate it a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale. In contrast, only 40 percent of those enrolled in private insurance rank their plans that high.
...68 percent of those in Medicare feel that their own interests are the priority, compared with only 48 percent of those enrolled in private insurance.
...Until the mid-19th century, firefighting was left mostly to a mishmash of volunteer crews and private fire insurance companies. In New York City, according to accounts in The New York Times in the 1850s and 1860s, firefighting often descended into chaos, with drunkenness and looting.
So almost every country moved to what today's health insurance lobbyists might label 'socialized firefighting.' In effect, we have a single-payer system of public fire departments.
We have the same for policing. If the security guard business were as powerful as the health insurance industry, then it would be denouncing 'government takeovers' and 'socialized police work.'
...The truth is that government, for all its flaws, manages to do some things right, so that today few people doubt the wisdom of public police or firefighters. And the government has a particularly good record in medical care.
Take the hospital system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health system in the United States. It is fully government run, much more 'socialized medicine' than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.
A study by the Rand Corporation concluded that compared with a national sample, Americans treated in veterans hospitals 'received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.' The difference was particularly large in preventive medicine: veterans were nearly 50 percent more likely to receive recommended care than Americans as a whole.
'If other health care providers followed the V.A.'s lead, it would be a major step toward improving the quality of care across the U.S. health care system,' Rand reported.
...But the biggest weakness of private industry is not inefficiency but unfairness. The business model of private insurance has become, in part, to collect premiums from healthy people and reject those likely to get sick - or, if they start out healthy and then get sick, to find a way to cancel their coverage.
A reader wrote in this week to tell me about a colleague of hers who had health insurance through her company. The woman received a cancer diagnosis a few weeks ago, and she now faces chemotherapy co-payments that she cannot afford. Worse, because she is now unable to work and has to focus on treatment, she has been shifted to short-term disability for 90 days - and after that, she will lose her employer health insurance.
She can keep her insurance if she makes Cobra payments on her own, but she can't afford this. In her case, her company will voluntarily help her - but I just don't understand why we may be about to reject health reform and stick with a dysfunctional system that takes away the health coverage of hard-working Americans when they become too sick with cancer to work.
...A public role in health care shouldn't be any scarier or more repugnant than a public fire department."
Here is what happens - when health care is considered a "business" as any other business...
Our health depends on our income - rich kids and grandmas are healthier than poor kids and grandmas.
Doctors are more loyal to their business partners - insurance and drug companies.
A case of cancer is a "business" case - to be decided by private insurance "death panels."
Private insurance "death panels" decide grandma's life or death.
You get to be healthy only when you have a steady job with a large enough employer.
No job, no income, no health care (why would we, as a society, "loose" money on non-productive individuals... we're not stupid... uhh?).
Sick people are "out of business", sorry - but, at least we (as red-blooded Americans) were warned - our smart ass mothers and fathers have always told us that life was not fair. I wonder who told them so - must be their employers.
I wonder too... why is it that our elected officials are stupid enough to opt out of the wonderful "business" based health care system. Why would they have their own goverment health care? Hmmm... why would they let government "death panels" decide life or death for their own grandmas?
"Long-term care constitutes a difficult and expensive challenge in any health system. But the American patchwork, full of cracks through which people fall, has a special problem with medical expenses of all kinds bankrupting couples. A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills. M. still helps her husband and, quietly, continues to live with him and care for him. But she worries that the authorities will come after her if they realize that they divorced not because of irreconcilable differences but because of irreconcilable medical bills... 'It's just crazy,' she said. 'It twists people like pretzels.' The existing system doesn't just break up families, it also costs lives. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That's one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour. In short, it's a good bet that our existing dysfunctional health system knocks off far more people than an army of 'death panels' could - even if they existed, worked 24/7 and got around in a fleet of black helicopters."
A computer company in Denmark which has made huge strides in employing workers with autism is expecting to begin work in the UK soon... read full article
Posted in SmileADay on Jul 17, 2009... modified on Jul 17, 2009
FlaGal,
Posting a video into a main post (new page) on Aidpage causes a problem with Internet Explorer. This is the reason you don't have much response on this page. Most people (who are with Internet Explorer) cannot load this page.
See this post... about how to post a video on Aidpage:
There is a new generation of smaller laptops called "netbooks" with prices like $300-$600... fully functional computers... like these here in Costco
I, personally, intend to start using one of those netbooks - very portable, inexpensive, and practical. You can see more of these on Amazon.com... or by just making a Google search for "netbooks"...
"Most everyone agrees that something is very wrong with the six-page federal form for families seeking help with college costs.
Created in 1992 to simplify applying for financial aid, it has become so intimidating - with more than 100 questions - that critics say it scares off the very families most in need, preventing some teenagers from going to college.
Then, too, some families have begun paying for professional help with the form, known as the Fafsa,a situation that experts say indicates just how far awry the whole process has gone.
"We're getting thousands of calls a day," said Craig V. Carroll, chief executive of Student Financial Aid Services Inc., whose fafsa.com charges $80 to $100 to fill out the form. "Our calls for the month of January are up about 35 percent from last year. There's been a huge increase in the desperation of families."
Last year, Congress ordered the form streamlined, but in the very same bill it added seven new questions. Critics say that even when all those questions are answered, the form does a poor job of assessing financial worth, both because it excludes assets like cars, boats, the family home and some family businesses, and because it does not factor in the high cost of living in areas like New York.
On the campaign trail, President Obama promised to eliminate the form - officially, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. And his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, talked about the problem at his confirmation hearing, saying, "You basically have to have a Ph.D. to figure that thing out."
But whether it will be replaced soon, and with what, remains an open question."
The last sentence is somewhat "cold" though - at least to me. I try not to see other people as "them"...
However, in practical terms, I can understand that living with integrity - no matter how other people respond - might be easier to achieve if we have the assurance that a higher being would take notice and keep an account.
