Bob and Nalini Lasiewicz

My husband and I produced the international film and video production tradeshows, 'ShowBiz Expo' for ten years, held annually in Los Angeles and New York. In 1993, we sold the business and I launched a small non-profit, the Lasiewicz Foundation, to provide PR, marketing and organizational support to human rights, civic participation, peace and media literacy projects. The motto for the Foundation is ''Providing Opportunities for People Who Care.''

For six years, I managed two programs to assist the war-torn region of former Yugoslavia. Our 'Bosnia Briefings' and 'Convoy Bosnia' projects raised funds and awareness of life saving refugee programs and helped the pro-democracy, human rights and independent media workers in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. In 2000, I turned my efforts towards local issues and launched the 'Neighborhood Project'. We researched neighborhood participation projects in other cities and lobbied for a successful launch of experimental ''Citywide Network of Neighborhood Councils'' here in the City of Los Angeles. We created this website in January 2001 to facilitate communication for people interested in setting up a neighborhood council in our local area.

Within six months, I produced the first Silver Lake Neighborhood Council community Workshop at the Silverlake Recreation Center which drew over 100 members of the community, many of whom joined the initial working committees. I Chaired the first Communications Committee and produced several outreach events including a six-month schedule of Outreach tables which resulted in signing up over 600 new Stakeholders, several who were eventually elected to the first Governing Board. For a year, our committee published a monthly Community Calendar of SLNC meetings and local events and handled the publicity chores. I also recruited 23 Silverlake residents to attend the first Congress of Neighborhoods, hosted by Mayor Hahn and we followed-up with a report back to the SLNC community with a public presentation of the information and ideas we had collected.

Changes and a New Home

My family (husband Bob and son Evan) sold our home in Silverlake in the summer of 2003 and have settled into a new community, for us, in nearby La Canada Flintridge. We love our new home and the abundance of family friendly parks, excellent schools, charity groups, cultural and social activities. The Foundation activites have moved towards supporting youth arts and tutoring programs. Our pilot project is an afterschool music ed. series in an elementary school in Whittier (So. Calif.)  The parents Council and PTA raised funds and we solicited a grant from a local arts foundation.  This first series is unique in that we have retained two Master Teachers and we are paying four interns from the early childhood program at a local college.  These interns are the Apprentices and it is our hope that by gaining experience in the classroom, these students will be motivated to pursue a career as early childhood music specialists.

The funding for arts education across the country has been decreasing, but we in California have also seen a tremendous drop in young people going into teaching and especially arts instruction, as a career.  Our project demonstrated a model that can be used in Whittier and elsewhere to fill in the gap. 

Our current area of focus is the Tutor Project.  In 2007, we provided PR and marketing support to a live webcast from the 15th Annual National Tutoring Association conference in Denver, CO. This one hour session will offer case studies on successful peer-tutoring via preparatory and summer transition programs at high school and college campuses, featuring integration with NCLB (No Child Left Behind). Panelists will share proven strategies for building support for peer-tutoring. Innovative approaches to peer-mentoring offered by non-profits, after-school, business and community groups will also be covered. In addition to the NTA, this series is presented in association with Fielding Graduate University, School of Educational Leadership and Change

 In 2012, we worked with Crossroads of Learning on a national research poll, the Tutor Pay Survey.  The data from this project will be used to help Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL's) and high school tutoring programs with research useful to admintrative. 

 is building a team of partners and an Advisory Board to expand several existing initiatives into a comprehensive high-school peer-tutoring support program. The first focus will be the development of peer tutoring training and learning center resources to support the expansion of peer tutoring activities throughout the United States. There will be a combination of virtual and location-based activities to provide distance training for peer tutors, trainers and center administrators as well as a library of program development materials and consulting programs to support adoption and management of programs. A learning community of practice will further support individuals who work within, and schools who wish to set up, peer tutoring programs. This will include reference materials, webinars, a professional journal, videos, manuals, etc.  After the program builds membership, it will become self-sustaining through sponsorship by technology and education materials providers and others who wish to reach the members.

Email us:
LasiewiczN@aol.com