Future of Imus charity ranch questioned
Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:38:53 GMTBy DEBORAH BAKER, Associated Press Writer
RIBERA, N.M. - Don Imus's banishment from the public airwaves also deprives him of a critical platform to raise money for the sprawling Imus Ranch, where children with cancer and other illnesses get a taste of the cowboy life.
Before he was fired last week for calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos," Imus pointed to the northern New Mexico ranch to make his case that he is "a good person who said a bad thing."
With Imus out of a job, some wonder whether the pipeline to charity money will eventually dry up.
Just as corporate sponsors backed away from his radio show, "I think you'll see a similar effect on the charity, where the corporate donors will find a less hot-button charity to support," said Trent Stamp, president of Charity Navigator, a New Jersey-based charity watchdog group.
Imus said he and his wife Deirdre are round-the-clock surrogate parents to the youngsters who spend a week at the property, nearly half of whom are from minority groups and 10 percent are black.
"There's not an African-American parent on the planet who has sent their child to the Imus Ranch who didn't trust me and trust my wife," he said on his show. "And when these kids die, we don't just go to the white kid's funeral."
Kansas horseman Rob Phillips says he still plans to give the ranch proceeds from a 500-mile charity race he's staging this fall. But Phillips worries that without Imus's radio forum, the ranch and other charities will suffer.
"He had a capability to get on the air and raise a tremendous amount of money for these causes," Phillips said. "I don't see anybody else doing that."
Stamp said donations may increase in the short term because of the heightened attention — "the celebrity factor ratcheted up to a new level."
The Imus show's annual two-day fundraising radiothon, benefiting the ranch and two charities that refer children to it, had raised more than $2.3 million as of Friday, according to Deirdre Imus, who hosted Friday's show.
But in the long term, Stamp predicted the firing would cause "irreparable harm."
The ranch's list of contributors is not public information, but it has relied heavily on corporate contributions.
The Reader's Digest Foundation gave $1 million seven years ago, Imus has said, and American Express made a one-time, $250,000 donation nine years ago. Neither company is a contributor now, representatives said.
General Motors Corp. said Friday it would continue donating Chevrolet Suburbans for the ranch.
The Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey provides the doctors, nurses and "child life specialists" who attend every ranch session.
"While there is no excuse for these comments, we cannot overlook all of the good he has done for families of Bergen County and across the nation," the medical center said in a statement.
The nearly 4,000-acre ranch, at the foot of a mesa about 50 miles from Santa Fe, features a re-creation of the main street of a 19th-century Western town, a swimming pool, an indoor horse-riding arena, an outdoor rodeo arena, and barns.
Kids between 10 and 17 who have cancer or serious blood disorders, or who have lost siblings to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, spend seven days at the ranch — in the summer, when Imus would broadcast from a studio there — at no cost to their families.
They do daily chores, learn to ride and care for horses, and help feed cattle, sheep, buffalo, chickens, goats and donkeys.
They stay in the main ranch house, a 14,000-square-foot adobe hacienda that the Imuses describe as an "architectural masterpiece."
The menu is vegan: no meat, fish, poultry or dairy products are served.
It's an expensive operation. The ranch hosted 90 children from March 2005 through February 2006 and spent $2.5 million — or about $28,000 a child — according to its most recent federal tax filings.
That's at least 10 times what the Make-A-Wish or similar camps spend on kids, largely because the Imus operation is a year-round, working cattle ranch, Stamp said.
The ranch is at the edge of Ribera, one of a string of tiny villages along the Pecos River. Residents say the ranch closes itself off from the community, although Imus has given money to a local medical clinic and to a project to renovate a dilapidated school building into a community center — which he also publicly prodded Gov. Bill Richardson to support, calling him a "fat sissy" on the air.
Ignacio Lovato lives within a mile of the ranch but says he has never visited. "You can't go in there," said Lovato, who occasionally watched the Imus show.
"Sometimes he was kind of funny, and sometimes he would say things he shouldn't say," said Lovato, downing a hamburger in La Risa Cafe. "I really don't think he's a good person."
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Associated Press writer Barry Massey in Santa Fe contributed to this report.
Study Abstinence classes dont stop sex
Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:16:13 GMTBy KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Students who took part in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.
Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes that were reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes. And they first had sex at about the same age as other students — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.
The federal government now spends about $176 million annually on abstinence-until-marriage education. Critics have repeatedly said they don't believe the programs are working, and the study will give them reinforcement.
However, Bush administration officials cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the study. They said the four programs reviewed — among several hundred across the nation — were some of the very first established after Congress overhauled the nation's welfare laws in 1996.
Officials said one lesson they learned from the study is that the abstinence message should be reinforced in subsequent years to truly affect behavior.
"This report confirms that these interventions are not like vaccines. You can't expect one dose in middle school, or a small dose, to be protective all throughout the youth's high school career," said Harry Wilson, the commissioner of the Family and Youth Services Bureau at the Administration for Children and Families.
For its study, Mathematica looked at students in four abstinence programs around the country as well as students from the same communities who did not participate in the abstinence programs. The 2,057 youths came from big cities — Miami and Milwaukee — as well as rural communities — Powhatan, Va., and Clarksdale, Miss.
The students who participated in abstinence education did so for one to three years. Their average age was 11 to 12 when they entered the programs back in 1999.
Mathematica then did a follow up survey in late 2005 and early 2006. By that time, the average age for participants was about 16.5. Mathematica found that about half of the abstinence students and about half from the control group reported that they remained abstinent.
"I really do think it's a two-part story. First, there is no evidence that the programs increased the rate of sexual abstinence," said Chris Trenholm, a senior researcher at Mathematica who oversaw the study. "However, the second part of the story that I think is equally important is that we find no evidence that the programs increased the rate of unprotected sex."
Trenholm said his second point of emphasis was important because some critics of abstinence programs have contended that they lead to less frequent use of condoms.
Mathematica's study could have serious implications as Congress considers renewing this summer the block grant program for abstinence education known as Title V. The federal government has authorized up to $50 million annually for the program. Participating states then provide $3 for every $4 they get from the federal government. Eight states decline to take part in the grant program.
Some lawmakers and advocacy groups believe the federal government should use that money for comprehensive sex education, which would include abstinence as a piece of the curriculum.
"Members of Congress need to listen to what the evidence tells us," said William Smith, vice president for public policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, which promotes comprehensive sex education.
"This report should give a clear signal to members of Congress that the program should be changed to support programs that work, or it should end when it expires at the end of June," Smith said.
Smith also said he didn't have trouble making broader generalizations about abstinence programs based on the four reviewed because "this was supposed to be their all-star lineup."
But a trade association for abstinence educators emphasized that the findings represent less than 1 percent of all Title V abstinence projects across the nation.
"This study began when were still in their infancy," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. "The field of abstinence has significantly grown and evolved since that time and the results demonstrated in the Mathematica study are not representative of the abstinence education community as a whole."
The four programs differed in many respects. One was voluntary and took place after school. Three had mandatory attendance and served youth during the school day. All offered more than 50 hours of classes. Two were particularly intensive. The young people met every day of the school year.
Common topics included human anatomy and sexually transmitted diseases. Also, classes focused on helping students set personal goals and build self-esteem. The young people were taught to improve communication skills and manage peer pressure.
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On the Net:
Abstinence study: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/impactabstinence.pdf
