Program Targets Childhood Poverty

The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jun 2, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY - Delegates will consider how communities can work together to become more self-sustaining during the Sixth Congress of the American Dream Practitioners on June 13.

The group of Pasco community leaders and other residents is seeking to help children living in poverty.

Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. in Room C-204 at Pasco-Hernando Community College's west campus, 10230 Ridge Road.

The congress is open to the public. Most area child services agencies will send a delegate to represent their program.

Topics will be:

•Morning Star Fishermen by founders Hans and Sigrid Geissler. The east Pasco-based program teaches people locally and around the world to raise their own protein, in the form of tilapia, and to use the byproducts to grow vegetables in organic gardens.

•Roots In The City by director Marvin Dunn, retired psychology professor from Florida International University and a black Florida historian. The project is based on the idea that modern society alienates people from their roots and often leads to the decay of the inner cities. Roots In The City plants community and vegetable gardens, among other ecological projects, to generally improve the lives of central city residents and to give them employment opportunities.

•Keynote speaker Ardian Zika, a Wachovia bank vice president, will tell how he found "the American dream." Zika was 17 when he came to this country in 1997 as a refugee from Kosovo, part of the former Yugoslavia. His parents sent him to finish high school in Louisiana because they feared he could be pressed into Serbian military service to fight the war in the Balkans. At the time, dictator Slobodan Milosevic had gained control of Serbia, another former republic of Yugoslavia, and engaged in ethnic warfare in the province of Kosovo. The Zika family, ethnic Albanians, were threatened by discrimination under Serb rule.

•United Way 211 by Becky Scaroato, the project's manager for the United Way of Pasco County. Dialing 211 connects people with community services and volunteer opportunities.

•The Marine Corps Reserve's Toys for Tots of East Pasco by lead organizer Bob Loring, who also founded the American Dream Practitioners.

The day also features awards and other recognitions and a networking lunch. Online links for more information are: www.toysfortotspasco .org; www.morningstarfishermen .org; www.rootsinthecity.net; and national.unitedway.org.