In December, Kalonji decided to pursue his passion and founded his own non-profit agency, Kalonji’s Knowledge Korner.  The program will function as a summer and after-school youth mentoring program for our community here in North Nashville.   The first phase is expected to begin in June as Kalonji partners with friends & colleagues to offer a two-month summer program.

Over the past few months Kalonji has been actively working to getting all the pieces in place.  Part of that of course is a website.  We set up a basic site for the organization in January, but were never truly happy with it.  Well, over the past few weeks I’ve been redesigning the site and the new site is now live!

www.kalonjisknowledgekorner.com

On the site you will find various aspects:

• read the 4 Kornerstones page for an overview of the program framework
• a blog where Kalonji will post from time to time with news & education/technology related news
• a “Get Social”  graphic area to connect to his various online spots.   He now has a new Twitter account so while there is not much there yet we expect to get him up and running over the next several days
• you can sign up for E-mail receipt of the blog posts if you’d rather it come directly to your inbox
• and what would a non-profit organization be without the Donate option?

Yours truly is his webmaster and social media strategist.  However, my master plan is to teach Jihad how to use all of these technologies so that he can eventually take over.  Admirable goal for a 12-year old huh! I’m also going to be helping with the incorporation of genealogy & local history research with the kids as a way to promote information literacy.  No surprises there right?

Kalonji also spoke at Cumberland University last week for their Black History Month Vigil – read his blog post about it.  We hope you will continue to stay abreast of his activities and let us know if you have thoughts, suggestions, and/or ideas for activities & collaborations.

It is located in a gorgeous old home on Belmont Avenue.

Picture of the Chess Center building

And, the space is divided into areas for play, for learning, and they even have a small library.  It was fun to watch some of the regulars play even though I couldn’t follow along.   One of the members set Kaleya & Jihad up on a computer to do a chess tutorial.  Kaleya knows how a few of the pieces move so she was actually explaining them to me.  Jihad was doing his own thing – he didn’t need me at all

Jihad snacks

Jihad and Kaleya play

You know me…I had to take some pictures in their library.

a view in the libraray

cool chessboard

my librarian self loves the classification

The  club is open two nights a week and a few hours on Sunday afternoon so we will likely join after the holidays.  Kalonji wants the kids in his mentoring program to understand the rules and ways of the game as a way to further stimulate strategic thinking skills.   There may be more chess reported here on the blog in the near future  :-).

This design was created by Just For You DigiScraps and the name of the layout is “Dear Old Dad”

Yeah!! This degree has been many years in the making for him. What’s next? He plans to pursue his Masters of Arts in Teaching and Learning w/ Technology.

Today is my husband’s birthday and he’s not even here so we can celebrate

He’s down in Florida playing soldier for a week (He’s in the Air National Guard reserves). I love you Kalonji and Happy Birthday! See you when you get back home!