NYRA Freedom

ISSN 1933-5229

Volume 2, Issue 7

August 2, 2002

Contents:

Introduction Note (Added Afterwards)
Welcome Note
Editor’s Note
News and Opinion
Chapter Highlights
Get Involved
Upcoming Events
Community Speak
Classifieds

Introduction Note

This issue was published on August 2, 2002 on a NYRA Freedom dedicated website NYRAFreedom.org. Due to the lack of traffic to the website, NYRA decided to continue its email-based editions of the publication. Because the original format of this issue was web-based, some information may seem out of context as it may be discussing things related to the website which is no longer in existence.

Thank you and enjoy.

Welcome Note

Welcome to the home of NYRA Freedom, the official publication of the National Youth Rights Association, the largest organization part of the youth rights movement. Please check our sections and keep checking back for updates.

Editor’s Note

Hey!

Welcome to the 1st web based issue of NYRA Freedom! We at NYRA are very excited to be taking this publication another step on the path of future success. Once we get our membership system up and running with good income, this publication will become avaialable in print monthly as well with many more things we can offer our members. Currently I am working on developing a good system for archiving old issue of NYRA, and those will soon be available on this web site.

We just setup a bunch of new sections for NYRA Freedom, which will allow you to more easily navigate this web site for the specifics you are looking for. If you have any suggestions or anything you would like to contribute, let us know. One section of our publication is called Community Speak. It allows any reader of our publiction to voice their opinion on anything related to youth rights or NYRA. Check out the section for details!

If you have any interest in working on this publication, please drop me a line at NYRA@jambolt.com.

Thank you for your continued interest in NYRA, and I hope we will see you active with us in the near future!

Best,
Brad White
NYRA Freedom Editor-in-Chief

NYRA Staff Briefs

This section is dedicated to letting you know the latest information on what is going on in each department of NYRA!

NYRA Board Report

No report filed

President’s Report

Much of my time recently has been spent preparing for the election. Finding candidates, getting statements from them, and setting up the voting system. Cory and I spent all day on July 27th working on setting up the ballot, from morning till late at night. I organized everyone’s statements and Cory set that up. I wrote pro and con statements for all the slogans and explanations for all the bylaw items. I formatted and organized everything to be put up on the page. Plus I wrote and designed the e-mail ballot.

After many hours of work on the NYRA page and voting page, it needed to be redone in response to security complaints. The system now needs to be entered in manually, so it will require more of my time, but it is secure and should have all of the same positive features of IRV.

I attended classes at the Foundation Center on writing grant proposals and making budgets for grant writing. Both classes were very informative and prompted me to begin work on a new approach to our 2003 budget, we will define our activity around two big projects. One is the NYRA conference, and another will most likely be emancipation, though other options are being considered.

I have been working on planning the 2003 NYRA Youth Rights Conference. I have talked with Chris, and Denis, and others about how we should work this conference. There is much contention between people, but Chris has informed me he plans on compiling everyone’s ideas into one proposal.

I have set up a new mailing list for the heads of NYRA Chapters only to find that the e-mail listed for the heads of NYRA-Madison and NYRA-Middle Georgia College are not valid. This is worrisome.

I have been working with Stefan from NYRA-TV. He is still waiting to hear back from the mall.

I have spoken with Cory about NYRA-North Dakota. He says the chapter is up and running, though they have not fufiled any of the requirements for being an official chapter. Cory says he and the others from the chapter were never told what the requirements were, and he stated he was dissatisfied with the level of help from the CFR Committee. He said that NYRA-ND has formally incorporated as a subsidiary of NYRA. The system is set up so that if 501(c)3 is established for NYRA, then the entity of NYRA-ND benefits from our status as well. I encourage Chris to talk with NYRA-ND on setting up financial stuff. They seem to be on the ball. I did inform Cory of the application and the charter fee. He said he will get it in.

NYLC has informed me that a third drinking age debate, which seemed possible last i spoke with them, won’t happen. This is disappointing, but more than compensated by the $400 check I just recieved for speaker fees.

A person from UC-Berkley called me. He is starting an organization that will advocate for the rights of 18-25 year olds. Tbe first issue his group will work on is lowering the drinking age, and he wants to work with NYRA. He will be in DC next week and I have set up a meeting with him, Christopher and I.

On Saturday Dave Varney and I are going to the Smokin’ Grooves concert outside of DC to do some recruiting. On August 8th, Dave Varney and I are going to the Van’s Warped Tour to do some recruiting. Same venue as Smokin’ Grooves.

Later in August, i forget the actual date, is Ozfest at the same venue, and it is likely we will recruit there too.

Signed – Alex Koroknay-Palicz

Recruitment and Chapter Formation Committee Report

Things have been quite slow. There were only 4 intents for this month, for whom I had have contacted, but no intial response. I am working with Alex who is trying to start a possible chapter. I sent another letter to Cory, but for some reason he hasnt responded. Its been kinda of off balance, but things at the CFR are centralizing. I think the off balance was to the fact that i was ensuring that we recruited many to delegate various of chores to get more people involved. The end result we have had to resignations in the last few months and only one committed coordinator. So its back to basics again.

For the month of August, I have and will continue to do a follow-up on previous chapter intents, and engage others.

The committee shall meet twice a month the 1st and 4th Sunday at 6-7pm on Sundays. Each meeting will begin with a Region Report( outlines progress on a regional/state scale), then a National CFR Report (outlines progress on a national scale), and finally a Chair report ( this report is critical its normally is his or her instructions from the President) then will proceed with old business, into agenda items (which should consist of chapter intent requests) and recruiting ideas. The first meeting will discuss and ideal plan for achieving our goal of getting a chapter up in each state by year end, yes i might have said March 2002, but Sept 11th prevented that, but we wil get it done. And we shall find events to recruit and plan events.

Signed – Christopher Coes

Fundraising Report

Danya Steele is no longer on the committee. She has resigned from the Board of Directors and sought to revoke her membership with the organization as a whole. Because of that, she has been removed as co-chairperson of the Fundraising committee. At this time, no replacement has been named.

Because of the absense of Danya, Alex Koroknay-Palicz has requested that all grant writing materials be returned to him. He will now take over, as President and Executive Director of NYRA, all grant writing activities. He has taken several classes on grant writing and will begin almost immediately in securing funds from governmental and foundation grants and trusts.

Some talk has been done between members with ideas on fundraising and myself. These have been productive talks. I hope that in the next two months we can begin offering merchandise for sale online and accept credit cards. We are currently working with the Office of the Treasurer to do this.

At this time, this is a one person committee, so getting things done will take time, considering the present chairperson has two other jobs that take up the bulk of his time allotted for NYRA and he is not too excited about being the lonely chairperson of the fundraising committee. He will work, until apointed to another position, to raise funds for NYRA, no matter what hi level of enjoyment in that position may be.

Signed – Chris Manley

Publicity Report

This month was another month of a lot of inactivity. We had Alex attend an intern luncheon which he seemed to enjoy. We also got a check for $400 for Alex for Alex’s attendance at a conference in which he spoke on lowering the drinking age.

We are still working on a way to promote the web NYRA web site in which to gain more exposure, but at this point we feel that the only way to accomplish this is to gain further exposure of NYRA and have more information updated daily or every other day to keep people coming back as most of the data on the site is static.

We also setup the NYRA official logo which will hopefully be around for a long time, since we finally have a really good quality logo.

We tried setting up an interview with Alex and then an in person interview with Christopher for a NYC public radio station for a student working there. They wanted an in person interview, but Christopher could not make it to the city to do it.

We added Ryan Bolz to the Publicity Committee, and he is currently acting as a writer for NYRA Freedom, and hopefully within a month with seeing him being dedicated to the freedom, I will move him up to Managing Editor to take a lot of my responsibility.

Signed – Brad White

News and Opinion

Youth Rights Presidential Updates

No Monthly Column Submitted

Chapter Highlights

NYRA-North Dakota

We just started, and just incorporated as a corporation underneath the National branch. The President is myself (Cory Withers), the secretary is Chelsey Honcharoff, and the third board member is Henry Jorde. Our bylaws will have conditions for creating more board offices, so by next year the number of board members will probably be more. Our first meeting is on August eighth in which we will pass our version of the bylaws. Which are based on the National framework, but targeting our local needs. We are unsure the number of people who will show up for the first meeting, but the word is out, and we will be taken in members immediately. I’ll be the resident agent for the Corporation as well. I think most of our positions will be set up in a cabinet form with positions like treasurer and such (that aren’t required by state law to be board members) will be filled mostly by minors. We already have potential nominees for most of the positions. We have a website up on tripod (although we are looking for an alternative that doesn’t have popups, my ISP will shut me down if I host it myself, I’m already pushing it hosting one site). The url (for now) is http://nyrand.tripod.com.

I can’t provide much more information at this point. The actual listed address for the corporation is 808 18th street NW. Which is our residential address for all three board members. If you can think of any other information that you need that I can provide, let me know. I’m not entirely sure what you had in mind.

Get Involved

No information currently available

Upcoming Events

No information currently available

Community Speak

Welcome to Community Speak! This section is for anybody to send in their opinion on things related to youth rights and NYRA – exactly like a “Letter to the Editor” section of any other publication.

Currently there are no articles in this section.

If you wish to voice your opinion, send an email to: community@nyrafreedom.org.

Classifieds

No classifieds currently listed.

Any member of NYRA in good standing can have their own classified listed in this section for free. We will post almost any advertisement for a member if space permits, but please make sure it will be of some relevance to our members. We will not accept any amount of money for any advertisement in our publication – so if you want to send NYRA a check with an advertisement, we’ll take the donation, but will not post your advertisement unless you are a member. Please send all classifieds to: classifieds@nyrafreedom.org.