January 2008 AACOG Region Newsletter

At the December 2007 semi-annual meeting of the AACOG Area Council and Board of Directors, the board elected Medina County Judge James Barden as the new Chairman of the 2008 Board of Directors. San Antonio River Authority Chairman Louis Rowe was selected as the Vice-Chairman. The 2007 Annual Report was also distributed at the meeting.

The next Board of Directors Meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 in the AACOG Board Room, 8700 Tesoro Drive, Suite 100, San Antonio. For a list of all AACOG Board Members and 2008 Board Meeting Dates, click here.

AACOG welcomes "The Grantsmanship Center Training” to San Antonio. We would like to invite you to participate in this one-of-a-kind workshop, widely recognized as the “gold standard” of grants training. It will be held January 28, 2008 thru February 1, 2008 from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The workshop will take place at the AACOG office located at 8700 Tesoro Drive, Al J. Notzon III Board Room, Suite 100, San Antonio, Texas 78217-6228.

This program comes to us from The Grantsmanship Center (TGCI), the world’s oldest and largest fund development training organization. Since 1972, TGCI has trained more than 100,000 staff members of nonprofit and government agencies around the world.

Read this entire article.

For more information about this training, call Cora Kimble at (210) 362-5243 or click here.

Senior citizens who are interested in serving as advocates for Texas seniors can register their candidacy as a representative to the 12th Texas Silver-Haired Legislature (TSHL) in Austin, Texas. The Silver-Haired Legislature is elected every two years and works directly with the Texas Legislature to promote senior citizen issues and concerns and to enact laws that will help senior citizens. Candidates must file for election by February 29, 2008 at 4:00 p.m.

Read this entire article.

For more information about the TSHL elections, call Elena Hernandez at (210) 362-5274.

Article courtesy of Joe Ramos, AACOG Government Services Manager

AACOG has scheduled two preliminary meetings for Tuesday, January 8, 2008, from 1-4 p.m., and Wednesday, January 30, 2008, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The meetings will be held in Classroom 6 across from AACOG's Al J. Notzon III Board Room, located on the first floor of 8700 Tesoro Drive, San Antonio, TX 78217.

In order to address the Housing of Urban Development's (HUD) monitoring issues, the Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA) has recommended modifying the scoring process to a full objective criteria-scoring process. These preliminary meetings are intended to bring everyone up-to-date on these scoring issues and to begin exploring new objective scoring criteria for the region before any formal RRC meetings are held in early spring 2008 to finalize the scoring criteria for the AACOG region for the 2008-2009 funding cycle.

For more information about these meetings, contact Joe Ramos at (210) 362-5212.

As part of U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Mike Leavitt's focus on prevention, HHS Assistant Secretary for Aging Josefina G. Carbonell has announced participation in a demonstration designed to help seniors stay healthy. Nine Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC) programs and an Administration on Aging (AoA) Older Americans Act Information and Referral (I&R) program will participate in the Medicare Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration.

The CMS Medicare Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration is designed to evaluate whether health promotion and disease prevention programs currently offered by national private insurers and employers can be delivered by the Medicare program to encourage beneficiaries to engage in healthy lifestyles and practices that can help them maintain and improve their health and reduce the need for health care services for preventable illnesses, injuries, or complications. For more information about the Senior Risk Reduction Demonstration and the AoA programs participating, please visit: http://www.aoa.gov/press/pr/2007/December/12_19_07.asp

Civic Ventures has opened nominations for the 2008 Purpose Prize, a major initiative that invests in U.S. residents over 60 who are leading a new age of social innovation domestically and abroad. Several winners, including former Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode and former Florida Secretary of Aging Conchy Bretos, credit their government expertise for preparing them to take The Prize.

The Purpose Prize provides five awards of $100,000 and ten awards of $10,000 to people over 60 who are taking on society's biggest challenges. It's for those with the passion and creativity to discover new opportunities, the experience to come up with practical solutions, and the determination to make lasting change.

For the first time in 2008, nominees may include U.S. residents whose work is affecting the lives of people outside the U.S. as well as domestically.

Winners in 2007 have developed new ways to help children succeed in life through reforms to the education and foster care systems, and new methods to save lives through improvements in hospital safety, newborn care, and search-and-rescue efforts.

Who will take the Prize in 2008?
Make your nomination now at www.purposeprize.org.
Nominations will close on March 1.