INDIANAPOLIS, IN--(Marketwire -07/09/12)- The Meadows Community Foundation (MCF) announced today the development of a 70,000 square foot Health & Wellness Center in the Avondale Meadows Community on Indianapolis' northeast side. The nearly $20 million facility is part of a 100-acre neighborhood revitalization within the Meadows area.

A groundbreaking celebration for this event and facility is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 10th at Avondale Meadows near 38th Street & Meadows Drive.

The new Avondale Meadows Health & Wellness Center will include an 18,000 square foot health clinic operated by HealthNet and a 32,000 square foot YMCA. The Center will provide early learning classrooms for children, as well as youth mentoring and family programs. In addition, the facility will serve as headquarters for the United Northeast Community Development Corporation (UNECDC) and the Meadows Community Foundation (MCF).

John Neighbours, President of Meadows Community Foundation (MCF), said:

"The Avondale Meadows Health & Wellness Center will be unlike any in the country. Cutting-edge urban healthcare combined with state-of-the-art fitness and education programs will be transformative for this neighborhood and for the broader Indianapolis community. This health and wellness facility increases the recent investment in Avondale Meadows to nearly $70,000,000. Moreover, the building will be environmentally sustainable with an expected LEED Silver designation."

Avondale Meadows has been designated a Medically Underserved Area (MUA) by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. The Avondale Meadows Health & Wellness Center will assist more than 16,000 people who live in the area and are at or below the federal poverty level. Funding partners include the City of Indianapolis (New Market Tax Credits), the United Way of Central Indiana, IU Health, the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis, Methodist Health Foundation, Health & Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Chase Bank and Purpose Built Communities.

The groundbreaking ceremony will include an overview of the new Avondale Meadows Health & Wellness Center and brief remarks from several prominent community partners and supporters including Booker Thomas of HealthNet, Eric Ellsworth of the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis, Greg Giornelli of Purpose Built Communities, Ellen Annala of United Way of Central Indiana and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.

"This innovative health and wellness center will provide outstanding services and resources to the Avondale Meadows Community," said Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard. "The holistic redevelopment approach demonstrates how public, private and non-profit entities can work together to achieve revitalization and stability in a community, and our success will serve as a model for other cities."

Avondale Meadows is one of several developments around the country that have partnered with Purpose Built Communities based in Atlanta, Ga. The organization -- founded by Tom Cousins, Julian Robertson and Warren Buffett -- seeks to reduce crime and rebuild and redevelop neighborhoods in economically disadvantaged communities. The Avondale Meadows development closely follows successful models established in Atlanta and New Orleans.

LINKS TO OTHER PURPOSE BUILT COMMUNITIES:

Original post:
Avondale Meadows Community Revitalization Successfully Continues With Addition of New Health & Wellness Center

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8wbe9KH9wA

09-07-2012 14:39 65 may no longer be the magic number when it comes to retirement. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux has more. For more CNN videos, check out our YouTube channel at Or visit our site at

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65 no longer the American retirement age - Video

Many of us think of retirement as the point at which weve made it financially. Retirement arrives, and its time to put our finances on autopilot and cruise through the rest of life, enjoying our hard-earned money.

Its not that simple, though. If you want to make sure your money lasts and that your assets are properly protectedand your spouse is protected tooyou need to continue to manage your money throughout retirement. Here are three financial moves that you shouldnt neglect during retirement:

1. Rebalance your portfolio. Even in retirement, you might still need to rebalance your portfolio. The economic situation is always changing, and the markets are always responding. While you dont want to completely overhaul your portfolio in the midst of retirement, it doesnt hurt to tweak it occasionally, and periodically assess what your portfolio is doing for you. Make sure you have the income streams you need, and reallocate assets as needed.

2. Consider life insurance. It seems strange to buy life insurance during retirement, especially since your kids are likely grown up. However, life insurance isnt just about making sure the kids are taken care of if you pass on while theyre young. Its about taking care of any dependents, and that includes your spouse. If your spouse would suffer from the lack of pension income if you passed on, or if you have other obligations, such as a mortgage that it would be nice to pay off with the life insurance, consider a policy that protects your spouse.

Additionally, its worth noting that your life insurance policy can be used by your heirs to pay funeral expenses and estate taxes. Before you shrug off the value of life insurance during retirement, consider those who will be left behind when you pass on.

3. Estate planning. During retirement, you need to keep up with your estate plan. Consider the items that will protect you and your assets. This includes setting up power of attorney and health care proxy situations so that you are properly taken care off and your wishes are followed if you become incapacitated.

You can also use trusts and other financial arrangements to ensure that your money passes smoothly. The structure of your estate and assets matters when your assets are transferred to heirs. Review these items regularly (at least once a year) to ensure that everything is in order.

Part of estate planning and smart finances during retirement also includes regularly checking your beneficiaries. You want to make sure beneficiary information is up to date because the information on your retirement accounts, pensions, bank accounts, and insurance policies supersedes what you have in your will. Regularly review your beneficiary information to make sure the money is going where you want it to go.

It doesnt take a lot of time each year to review your financial situation and make updates. Being on top of your situation will help you improve your finances and ensure that your retirement years truly are your golden years.

Jeff Rose is a certified financial planner and U.S. combat veteran. He blogs at Good Financial Cents and Soldier of Finance.

Read more:
3 Financial Moves to Make During Retirement

By Glenn Ruffenach

Yes, working beyond your planned retirement date might be the best way to secure your financial future. But you might not have to work for as long as you think or fear.

A new study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College looks at how much longer households have to work beyond age 65 to be prepared for retirement. The finding: Over 85% of households would be prepared to retire by age 70. Put another way, many Americans who now fear they will have to work forever could enter retirement after working between one and six years beyond age 65, depending on the size of their nest eggs.

The results paint a different picture than recent opinion surveys, which find that people anticipate that they will have to work much longer, the report states.

The study is titled: National Retirement Risk Index: How Much Longer Do We Need to Work? The National Retirement Risk Index measures the share of U.S. households at risk of being unable to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living in retirement.

Currently, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-2009, just over half 51% of todays working households are at risk, according to the center. But an important assumption in calculating that number is that people retire at age 65. If people were to work longer, the percentage at risk would fall. Thus the question, as outlined in the report: At what age would the vast majority of households be ready to retire?

By estimating target replacement rates (retirement income as a share of wage-adjusted lifetime income) and calculating the age of readiness (the age at which a households projected replacement rate equals its target replacement rate), the center estimates that:

While the numbers suggest that todays workers will need to work longer than their parents, the study concludes, workers today are also healthier and better educated, generally have less physically demanding jobs, and can expect to live longer. In short, working longer is feasible for most households, and it does not mean working forever.

Read this article:
Is 70 the New Retirement Age?

One of the most memorable medals from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics wasnt actually issued until 16 months later. On December 6, 1993, Sylvie Frchette received the synchronized swimming gold medal shed initially been denied because of an error entering a judges score.

Sylvie Frechette with her silver medal which was eventually upgraded to gold. (The Canadian Press) It was a long-awaited gold for Frchette, and one made even more special by the tough circumstances she battled through to claim it; she lost her grandfather a few months before the Olympics, and her fiance and business manager, Sylvain Lake, committed suicide in their shared condo just a week before the Games. Frchette somehow managed to fight through those personal tragedies and give the performance of her career in the Barcelona pool.

Yet, that wasnt even enough at first. Frchette turned in a strong performance in the preliminary round of the solo competition, and she was rewarded for it with judges scores ranging from 9.2 to 9.6 all except one. That score, a shockingly low 8.7 for one of Frchettes compulsory scores from Brazilian judge Ana Maria da Silveira Lobo, stood out not just as an outlier, but as an accident.

Da Silveira Lobo had meant to give Frchette a 9.7, but misentered the score, pressed the wrong button when she tried to change it and couldnt explain what went wrong to the Japanese assistant referee, making the score permanent. Protests from the Canadian team were ignored, and that put Frchette at a huge disadvantage heading into the final. It didnt dissuade her from putting on an incredible show, though.

Despite Frchettes remarkable performance in the final round, the inadvertent preliminary 8.7 meant she finished second behind American swimmer Kristen Babb-Sprague. Even with her taking the still-impressive silver medal, it must have seemed like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune were still dragging her down. Frchette had a powerful ally in her corner, though, and that led to a remarkable ending to her 1992 Olympic odyssey.

That ally was Dick Pound. Long before he was the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency and embroiled in countless conflicts with figures from sports ranging from hockey to cycling, Pound was a major Olympic power broker. He competed for Canada in swimming at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, then went on to several prominent roles with the Canadian Olympic Committee and eventually became its president. Pound was elected to the International Olympic Committee in 1978 and went on to take some of its most prominent roles, including negotiating the television and sponsorship deals that were crucial to making the Olympics the modern sporting force they are.

He was an IOC vice-president at the time of the 1992 Games and was soon to be seen as the front-runner to succeed president Juan Antonio Samaranch (that job eventually went to Jacques Rogge). It was no secret that Pound was one of the most influential figures in the IOC, and he put that influence to work to get Frchette the medal she had been robbed of by a technical judging mistake.

After 16 months, those efforts paid off. The international swimming federation, FINA, gave their blessing to awarding Frchette a gold medal, and the IOC eventually concurred. She finally put the long-awaited gold around her neck on December 6, 1993 in front of 2,000 supportive fans at the Montreal Forum. It wasnt the end of the line for Frchette, who made a remarkable comeback after two years away from the sport and was part of the Canadian synchronized swimming teams silver medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, but it was an amazingly upbeat finish to her tragedy-marred odyssey.

Whats perhaps most interesting about Frchettes story is the precedent it set. The IOCs decision to admit to a judging error and give Frchette a gold medal was a remarkable one; it meant Babb-Sprague was allowed to keep the initial gold she picked up in Barcelona, and both are considered gold medalists in the official books. Its a difficult situation to deal with, as downgrading a gold-winning performance 16 months after the fact would also be problematic, so the organization chose to attempt to rectify their mistake by boosting the athlete hurt by it without diminishing the one who benefited from it (a different approach from the one the IOC had taken in cases of positive drug tests, such as the 1988 one that saw the 100-metre gold medal stripped from Ben Johnson and given to Carl Lewis).

Whether one views the move to offer dual gold medals as laudable or disingenuous, its almost official IOC policy now, and has come up in subsequent Games, most famously when Canadian figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were awarded gold medals after the fact (to join the original winners, Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze) in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics following a significant judging controversy.

The rest is here:
Sylvie Frechette's long wait for the gold she deserved

Spencer Platt/Getty Images; SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages

Economic discontent and substantial dissatisfaction with Barack Obamas performance in office are keeping Mitt Romney competitive in the presidential race but not by enough of a margin to overcome Obamas stronger personal profile. The result: A dead heat in voter preferences at the midsummer stage, with the prospect of an epic battle ahead.

While most Americans continue to disapprove of Obamas handling of the economy, thats not his only problem. More than half fault him on health care and immigration as well. Sixty-three percent say the countrys headed in the wrong direction, an unhelpful view for an incumbent. And among groups, hes losing swing-voting independents by a record 14 percentage points.

See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.

Yet Romney faces significant challenges of his own in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. His supporters are more apt to be against Obama than explicitly for Romney a negative vote that can be less compelling than an affirmative one. His supporters are less strongly enthusiastic than Obamas. While Obama is vulnerable on the economy, Romney is weakly rated on having offered a clear economic plan. And Obama leads on a range of personal attributes empathy, standing up for his beliefs and, especially, basic likeability.

Obama also continues to prevail in expectations: Despite his troubles, this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that Americans by 58-34 percent expect him ultimately to defeat Romney and win a second term. Thats Obamas best on this gauge to date (previously measured against the Republican nominee), a sharp difference from last October, when, with economic discontent at a higher pitch, 55 percent thought Obama would lose. Today, even among Romneys supporters, a quarter think Obama will win.

With a 47-47 percent Obama-Romney contest among registered voters, the overall results point to a sharply defined race: On one hand Obama, the more personally popular candidate, with a larger and more energized partisan base, yet weak performance scores; on the other Romney, his opportunities to capitalize on Obamas vulnerabilities complicated by his difficulties in capturing the publics imagination.

Helpful to Obama, given the economy, is the fact that in deciding their vote, Americans by 51-33 percent are focused more on what hed do in his second term as president than on what hes done in his first. Among registered voters who are more concerned about what Obamas done so far, Romney leads by 18 points, 55-37 percent. Among those more focused on what hed do if elected to a second term, by contrast, Obama leads by 59-36 percent, a 23-point margin. It marks why hes trying to point ahead (Forward is the campaign slogan); Romney, back.

ROOM Theres room to move: One in five of Romneys current supporters, and one in six of Obamas, say theres a chance they could change their mind and support the other candidate. Very few, though, say theres a good chance they could shift a mere 4 percent of Obamas supporters, 8 percent of Romneys.

That suggests that more than changing minds, the contest likely is to be about motivating turnout and here Obama has an edge. Among registered voters, half of his supporters (51 percent) are very enthusiastic, vs. 38 percent of Romneys. It can matter: Strong enthusiasm is a measure on which Obama crushed John McCain in 2008, and on which George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004. Still, while lagging, Romneys strong enthusiasm has improved by a dozen points since spring.

Link:
Dead Heat for Obama, Romney in Voter Preferences

By Talbot Boggs, The Canadian Press

(Special) - Confidence is a key ingredient to success in many areas of life, including finances.

Canadian women are achieving more and more financial and business success today, but many still do not have the same level of confidence as men in their knowledge and ability to make important saving and investing decisions.

More than one quarter of working women in Canada now are the sole or primary income earners in their households, says a poll by Investors Group. Forty-three per cent of working women believe they are more knowledgeable than their partner about personal finance and investing topics, yet men are more likely to take the primary responsibility for personal finance and investing matters (46 per cent compared to 38 per cent of women).

Confidence may be a contributing factor - fewer than half (48 per cent) of women feel confident in their knowledge and ability to make saving and investing decisions compared to 58 per cent of men.

Part of the explanation for that lack of confidence may lie in the fact that many women around the world acquire financial knowledge through informal instruction and from other people.

This was one of the main findings of a study into how women are educated about finances by Barbara Stewart, a Chartered Financial Analyst specializing in counselling and portfolio management.

"Over half of women said that their most valuable financial knowledge was principally acquired through informal instruction and real stories from other people and not from text books, newspapers or financial institutions," says Stewart. "Taking the time to give someone a focused message about money may be enough to change a life for the better. These messages can directly build confidence, which is the fundamental element that will drive a lifetime of rich accomplishments."

Stewart has come up with list of some money-related lessons and practices that are common to successful women around the world.

The first is to determine the lifestyle that you want - where do you want to live, in what kind of house and how much money do you need to live there, and what kind of people do you want to work with? "Figure out what you really want out of life because you become what you think about," Stewart says.

Continued here:
Confidence key to women's financial success

Copyright 2010. The Associated Press. Produced by NewsOK.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Oklahoma City Public Schools will open the doors to a new school this fall, and as many as 700 students could enroll.

But the doors are digital. The classrooms aren't in a building.

The district is opening a virtual school, a project that has been in the works for more than a year. The new school will be called Innovations K-12 Virtual Institute.

This is something that can really help a lot of students, said Verna Martin, associate director of secondary schools for the Oklahoma City district.

Starting this fall, state law requires all school districts to provide online courses when it's educationally appropriate.

Growing popularity

In Oklahoma, online learning is growing in popularity.

About 4,500 Oklahoma students took online courses in the 2010-11 school year, according to Evergreen Education Group, a national education consulting firm.

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Oklahoma City district to open online school

We've seen it many times before: A yoga teacher, after six months or six years, decides to give the gift of yoga to an unserved or underserved community. She or he sets up a non-profit organization to use yoga and mindfulness to help one or more of these groups become a healthy and resilient community. That is how the Give Back Yoga Foundation (www.givebackyoga.org) got started, with a phone call in 2007 among Beryl Bender Birch, her administrative assistant Lori Klein, and me, her student.

Beryl has had much experience giving back: Her teacher training program at The Hard and The Soft Yoga Institute she founded and directs includes a requirement to initiate a give back project. At the time I was a manager at the World Bank looking for a way to combine my experience in two decades of international development work with my desire to show appreciation for my yoga teachers who had given me so many gifts as I struggled with the stress of my work. The phone call led to the creation of a new non-profit organization to address the institute's service project requirement.

There are now more than 125 community-based organizations in this country dedicated to outreach through yoga and mindfulness to communities of abused women, prisoners, at-risk children and teens, veterans, cancer patients, and the homeless. At present, indications are that all these organizations combined serve 150,000 to 200,000 people. This is reason for celebration, as well as motivation to ask the following questions, which provided much of the motivation for the first annual Yoga Service Conference held at the Omega Institute campus in Rhinebeck, N.Y.:

How can we support and expand the work and good will of these worthy organizations? Can we find a way for some or all of them to work more closely together to enhance the reach and work of all? Can we find a way to train more yoga teachers so that they can serve their own communities with cultural competence and linguistic sensitivity? In other words, can we extend our reach by working together to serve more people every week in cost-effective programs?

While the numbers served now are impressive, given the talent and energy of the teachers working in these organizations, this number could be increased many-fold if more yoga teachers and yoga therapists came out of their studios and offices and made the practices of yoga and mindfulness accessible to vulnerable populations. I am keenly aware of the service commitments of these organizations and teachers and have enormous respect for them. They bring new perspectives in working with social service organizations, and they serve endlessly, often with ample room for fun. Some organizations, like Yoga Activist, believe yoga is an urban survival skill and work hard to keep it accessible to everyone. These organizations and faculty represent yoga's next self-transformation, away from the sleek and sexy (and privileged!) to the dogged pursuit of introducing yoga to unserved places and communities.

Excerpt from:
Rob Schware: Making Yoga Accessible to Vulnerable Populations

For years, yoga instructor Alice Van Ness has started her classes with a simple request - that students turn their cell phones off.

She brought that policy with her to Facebook, where she began teaching a weekly class at the company's Menlo Park campus in March. But it proved to be a hard policy to follow for at least one employee, who began tapping away on her phone in the middle of class. And after Van Ness shot her a disapproving look, the instructor found herself out of a job.

The 35-year-old San Carlos resident was fired last month after managers at the fitness contractor she worked for explained that saying "no" to Facebook employees is a no-no.

"We are in the business of providing great customer service," said her termination notice from Plus One Health Management. "Unless a client requires us to specifically say no to something, we prefer to say yes whenever possible."

But when it came to the Facebook employee using her cell phone - at the front of the room, in the middle of class - Van Ness refused to bend over backward.

"Hello - this is only Facebook," said Van Ness, whose firing cost her a teaching gig at Cisco too. "We're not talking about the U.S. government here. We're not talking about Russia is about to bomb us. We're talking about Facebook. Something can't wait half an hour?"

Facebook declined to comment. Representatives for Plus One Health Management did not respond to requests for comment. In its termination notice, the company suggested the Facebook incident was part of a pattern of strict behavior on Van Ness' part; she had previously asked a Cisco employee not to take photographs of the class while it was in session.

The incident highlights a growing tension in health studios, where students come to leave the world behind but often find themselves incapable of not checking their text messages, e-mails and - of course - Facebook. As smart-phone usage has grown, many studios have posted prominent notices asking students to leave them outside the studio.

But at a yoga class on a corporate campus, setting aside job responsibilities entirely, even for a few minutes during the work day, can be a stretch.

"Sometimes if you're in the tech industry, or have a serious attachment to your phone, you can't let Facebook go for an hour," said Michelle Michael, who owns Balance Yoga Studio in Woodinville, Wash., near Microsoft and other tech companies.

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Phone ban costs Facebook yoga instructor her job