The Helen Bader Foundation on Monday committed a three-year, $300,000 grant to The Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Milwaukee Succeeds public / private initiative, the GMC has announced.
The mission of the partnership – the Bader Foundation sits on the Milwaukee Succeeds Executive Committee and Leadership Council – is to improve education in Milwaukee.
"All of us in Milwaukee have a stake in providing promising futures to our city's most vulnerable young people, so they can start on a path to a healthy, productive adulthood," said Daniel Bader, president of the Helen Bader Foundation in a statement.
"Milwaukee Succeeds offers an opportunity to work outside of our silos and begin to target long-term, data-driven positive results for our children and young adults, as well support the future economic well-being of our community."
The grant is part of the Bader Foundation's Community Initiatives program, which supports various quality-of-life programs for greater Milwaukee's vulnerable populations.
Milwaukee Succeeds has selected boosting reading proficiency among third graders as its first major area of focus. According to a statement, "The group will examine current programs and strategies addressing the issue, explore short-term and long-term strategies and identify what role Milwaukee Succeeds can play in improving the outcomes."
"It is an ambitious goal, but one that Milwaukee Succeeds members thought was critical in the early educational achievement of our city's youth," said John Schlifske, chairman and CEO of Northwestern Mutual and one of the partnership's chairs.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
