What we're reading at Tipping Point this week......February 21, 2008

Poverty is Poison by Paul Krugman
NY Times; February 18, 2008

"...neuroscientists have found that many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?ex=1204174800&en=0fe16bf6d26ac6cc&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Tipping Point Grantee, WISE, featured in SF Chronicle, February 16:

"A preschool in San Francisco. An Aztec restaurant in Oakland. A pest-control outfit in Vallejo. A massage studio in San Jose. These ventures, which seemingly have nothing in common, share a crucial reason for their existence: Women's Initiative for Self Employment, a Bay Area nonprofit marking its 20th anniversary this year.

A microenterprise training and microlending organization, Women's Initiative has helped low-income women start or expand more than 1,600 businesses in Northern California."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/16/MNUFV3EO3.DTL