Apr 10, 2011

How I Made It: Keren Taylor, founder of WriteGirl

The nonprofit organization, now in its 10th year, pairs professional women writers in Los Angeles with at-risk teenage girls. Today, with Taylor as executive director, it has 150 women volunteers who mentor 300 teenagers.

The ability to write well opens doors, says Keren Taylor. “And writing is not only an academic and professional skill, it’s also a window into the way we understand ourselves as individuals and express who we are to the world.” (Gina Ferazzi, Los Angeles Times / April 6, 2011)

By Megan Kimble, Los Angeles Times

April 10, 2011

The gig: Keren Taylor is the founder and executive director of WriteGirl, a nonprofit organization that pairs professional women writers in Los Angeles with at-risk teenage girls. Now in its 10th year, WriteGirl serves about 300 girls from 60 high schools throughout Los Angeles. WriteGirl was named California Nonprofit of the Year last year by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Forging independent women: WriteGirl participants are 13 to 18 years old and come primarily from low-income neighborhoods. Many deal with physical and mental abuse, Taylor said. More than half are Latinas, some with parents who don't speak English. WriteGirl mentors help prepare these young women for college. Most important, she said, the program helps vulnerable kids believe in themselves. "The most powerful mentor you can have is your own self voice," she said.

Mightier than the sword: The ability to write well opens doors, Taylor said, which is why she focused her nonprofit on that craft. "To give young people confidence in that skill set is huge," she said. "And writing is not only an academic and professional skill, it's also a window into the way we understand ourselves as individuals and express who we are to the world."

Reading list: Taylor, 47, grew up in Vancouver, Canada, the youngest of four children. Writing was a big part of her life. She read hundreds of books a year — "Literally, I kept a list," she said. When she was in ninth grade, her English teacher recruited her to join an after-school project to read and assess a summer reading list. "What we found was that the books were all written by male authors and that they were predominately about male characters," Taylor said. "That was an important moment for me in realizing the importance of women's voices being heard by young people."

Boom, bust, boom: After studying international relations at the University of British Columbia, Taylor pursued musical theater in New York. "I wanted to be creative, but I realized musical theater was the most uncreative thing I could do. You're singing someone else's songs and dancing someone else's choreography," she said.

After two years of performing in Las Vegas, Taylor fell into online advertising sales during the dot-com boom. She was transferred to Los Angeles, then was laid off during the bust in 2001. "I was so relieved!" she said. "I got a severance package, so I had a few months to figure out what I really wanted to do."

Write stuff: Inspiration came quickly. In New York, Taylor had helped start a nonprofit literacy program for teenage girls — and loved it. So she whipped up a proposal to do something similar in Los Angeles and quickly landed a grant from the Bresee Community Center in Koreatown. "They opened their doors to me right away," Taylor said. "It's very hard for nonprofits or community groups to develop effective literacy programs for teens. You can get them to play sports or do music, but with poetry, songwriting, journalism, they say, 'I'm not a writer.' To have a fun way to lure teens into writing is what makes us unique."

Growing pains: Thirteen young women came to the first WriteGirl meeting. Today the organization has 150 female volunteers who mentor 300 teenagers. The nonprofit has published nine anthologies that have won 28 national and international book awards. Still, Taylor said, fundraising is a constant challenge. At the award ceremony with Schwarzenegger, Taylor joked to the governor's wife, Maria Shriver, that it would have been nice if the honor had come with a check. (It didn't.) "It's an odd moment: to be nonprofit of the year, to hit our 10-year mark and have our girls be thriving, yet still be struggling for money."

Mom knows best: Taylor attributes her own confidence to her mother, Anne Derewianko, a retired real estate agent who taught her four kids the value of education. It "was her soapbox," Taylor said."Whenever I confront a challenge, I have a voice in my head that says: You can do this. That voice was put there by my mother," she said. "But I was lucky, that's for sure."

megan.kimble@latimes.com

U.N., French forces hit sites in Ivory Coast

They attack the home of incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and the presidential palace in Abidjan, where his loyalists have pushed back against President-elect Alassane Ouattara's forces.

A fire rages at the naval base controlled by forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan after attacks by U.N. and French forces. (AFP/Getty Images / April 11, 2011)

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

April 10, 2011, 5:00 p.m.

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—

United Nations and French helicopters in Ivory Coast on Sunday attacked the home and presidential palace of the country's longtime leader, who has refused to step down since an election in November in which the U.N. says he was defeated.

The attacks on Laurent Gbagbo's residence and the presidential palace mark the United Nations' second military intervention, after similar assaults a week earlier.

The U.N. said Friday that forces loyal to Gbagbo used a cease-fire Tuesday as a ploy to consolidate and gain ground in Abidjan. After the cease-fire, Gbagbo's forces drove back soldiers loyal to his rival Alassane Ouattara in several areas of Abidjan, the commercial capital where the battle for power is playing out.

The attack Sunday, authorized by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, came after a request by Ouattara to neutralize Gbagbo's heavy weapons. In a statement released in Paris, lawyers said Ouattara's safety was in peril. They said pro-Gbagbo militants who control areas around the presidential residence and some other districts of Abidjan were an illegal occupying force and must be removed.

U.N. forces have a mandate from the Security Council to take any action necessary to protect civilians. The international forces carried out the attack after pro-Gbagbo militants fired at the lagoonside Golf Hotel, where Ouattara's government has been trapped by Gbagbo since December.

"We have resumed the operation aimed at neutralizing heavy weapons wherever they are found," U.N. spokesman Hamadou Toure said in Abidjan.

Since the election, Gbagbo has refused to step aside while Ouattara had himself sworn into office and appointed a Cabinet, gaining the recognition of the U.N. and international leaders.

After four months of halting negotiations, Ouattara's forces launched a national offensive to seize power.

Both sides have committed atrocities in the battle for control, according to Human Rights Watch, which recently detailed hundreds of rapes and killings in western Ivory Coast by forces loyal to Ouattara.

Ouattara has denied these and promised an investigation.

Gbagbo's spokesman, Ahoua Dan Mello, alleged the latest U.N. attacks were an attempt to assassinate Gbagbo.

After making swift gains across Ivory Coast a week ago, Ouattara's forces met with strong resistance from die-hard Gbago loyalists in Abidjan. On Tuesday, Gbagbo was reportedly surrounded in the presidential residence, but he said he would not cede power and his forces fought back, regaining control in some areas.

Ouattara's forces tried to breach the presidential palace Wednesday to remove him forcibly but were driven back.

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak decries 'falsehood, slander and defamation'

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak speaks out for the first time since his regime was toppled. On the same day, officials say he and his sons have been summoned for questioning about the violence during the revolt.

Egyptians shout anti- Mubarak slogans during a demonstration at Tahrir Square in Cairo today.(Amr Nabil / Associated Press)

By Amro Hassan and Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

April 11, 2011

Reporting from Cairo—

In his first public speech since he was forced from power two months ago, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday that he and his family were victims of a campaign by political enemies seeking to tarnish their reputation by exaggerating their wealth with false charges of corruption.

The pre-recorded audio address came the same day the Egyptian prosecutor general's office announced that Mubarak and sons Gamal — who many believed would have been his successor — and Alaa were summoned for questioning regarding the violence that left about 300 people dead during the revolt that toppled the regime on Feb. 11.

The legal move appeared to be an attempt by the country's ruling military council to appease protesters who have criticized the army for not moving swiftly enough to indict Mubarak and his inner circle. The ailing former leader, 82, has been under house arrest in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik. His financial assets have been frozen, and he and his family are forbidden to leave the country.

"I can't remain silent toward the campaigns of falsehood, slander and defamation and the continuous attempts to ruin my and my family's reputation and integrity," Mubarak said in the six-minute recording, which aired on the pan-Arab news channel Al Arabiya. He added that his critics were "questioning my integrity, stances and military and political history, through which I have striven for the sake of Egyptand its sons in war and peace."

The address and the prosecutor general's announcement were the latest in a dramatic reversal of political fortune for a man who had ruled Egypt for three decades. Mubarak's words echoed through a nation struggling to form a new democracy and move beyond the repression and corruption that defined an era in one of the region's most dominant countries.

Mubarak claimed that neither he nor any member of his family had foreign bank accounts. He said he would assist Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor general, in an investigation into the family's alleged financial holdings and properties around the world. Gamal Mubarak, one of the architects of the nation's economic reform, has long been accused of enriching himself at the public's expense through his connections to ruling-party insiders and international brokers.

Hosni Mubarak said he wanted to disclose his assets "so that Egyptians would be assured that their former president only possesses bank accounts inside Egypt and in one of the Egyptian banks according to the financial disclosure I've submitted." He concluded his speech by saying that he retained "the legal rights to sue those who intended undermining [my] reputation."

A statement by the prosecutor general's office said Mubarak's speech would "not affect the investigation or the charges against him related to freezing his accounts or the travel ban against him and his family. This morning the prosecutor general sent a request to Mubarak and his sons to come for questioning, and the results will be announced in the coming days."

Mubarak's speech came after tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square on Friday, calling on the military council to speed up indictments against the former president and his aides, who are accused of corruption and misuse of power and violence during the 18-day revolution. About 1,000 protesters remained camped in the square, even after a raid by the army Saturday that left one protester dead and 71 injured.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Hassan is a news assistant in The Times' Cairo bureau.

Pizza restaurants feeling bite from consumer options

Sbarro is the latest to file for bankruptcy reorganization as supermarkets provide frozen and fresh alternatives to dining out.

By Gregory Karp

April 10, 2011, 6:55 p.m.

Reporting from Chicago—

It's almost as if America was losing its taste for pizza.

Sbarro Inc., the seemingly omnipresent pizza joint at mall food courts, filed for bankruptcy protection last week. That follows the Round Table Pizza Inc., the chain based in Concord, Calif., which filed in February. And the operator ofUno Chicago Grill, Uno Restaurant Holdings Corp., emerged from bankruptcy protection last summer.

Ranked among the largest U.S. pizza operators, they are Nos. 5, 10 and 11, respectively, with a combined 1,700 locations and $1.6 billion in sales, according to industry publication Pizza Today. Numerous smaller pizzerias also have slipped into financial trouble.

Pizza chains are dealing with the effects of a deep recession, higher ingredient prices and more competition from nontraditional channels, such as take-and-bake pizza from restaurants and supermarkets.

Many of the high-profile bankruptcy reorganizations of household-name pizza restaurant chains have individual causes that don't suggest a larger trend of consumers turning away from pizza, experts say.

"They're unique on a case-by-case basis," said Jeremy White, editor of Pizza Today. "There's not really a common thread among them."

Sbarro, with more than 1,000 locations in 40 countries, was saddled with crushing debt. And unlike many strip-mall pizza shops or stand-alone restaurants, it was dependent on foot traffic in malls and airports, which saw declines during the recession.

Its financial situation is also a reflection of how Sbarro was run, said restaurant consultant James Sinclair, principal of restaurant consultant OnSite Consulting Inc.

"This is not based on the specific product, pizza, but instead on how Sbarro ran their business, executed leases, created profitable items and managed their labor model," Sinclair said. "Sbarro is a stale and old brand that has not taken any steps to reignite their audiences and have not competed on the same level as their competitors."

A Sbarro spokesman said the company did not wish to respond to that criticism. However, Nicholas McGrane, the company's interim president and chief executive, said in a news release last week: "We are a strong company with one of the most recognizable restaurant brands in the world."

As for other pizza companies, family-run Giordano's filed for Chapter 11 because of troubled real estate investments.

In fact, real estate has been a problem for a number of pizzeria owners who bought at the top of the real estate market, said Tony Gemignani, who owns four pizza restaurants in the San Francisco area and a school for pizza restaurant operators.

"Fixed costs hurt a lot," he said.

Although some operators, including Sbarro, have cited troubles stemming from higher-cost ingredients, such as cheese and flour, that's not leading to bankruptcies, White said.

"It's a big deal, but it's nothing new," he said. "Food prices fluctuate truly like a roller coaster. If you've operated for any length of time, you've come to expect that."

Many successful pizzerias are getting into artisan pizzas, using wood- or coal-fired ovens, organic and locally sourced ingredients and unusual toppings.

Another big shift in the pizza business isn't what consumers are buying, but where they're buying it. The number of ways to buy pizza has increased, said Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of food-service strategies at WD Partners.

"The pizza segment is made more challenging for traditional restaurants by close substitutions," he said.

They include supermarkets, which not only sell frozen pizzas but fresh, ready-to-bake pizza. Warehouse clubs sell very large pizzas for about $10. Meanwhile, some non-pizza restaurants sell flatbreads, which can be a close substitute for pizza.

"It's not so much that people are fleeing pizza as a meal option," Lombardi said. "Their number of eatings is being spread over a growing array of different channels."

Fierce price discounting and coupon offerings by the top three players — Pizza Hut Inc., Domino's Pizza Inc. and Papa John's International Inc. — have also squeezed other pizza sellers.

"Some play the coupon game, but it's hard for people to be able to compete in that market," Gemignani said. "If you keep lowering prices and discounting prices, you're going to lose in the end. The volume just isn't there."

business@latimes.com

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