History Of Wal-mart

Walmart presents $10000 challenge gift to support Art Literacy upgrade

The Beaverton Education Foundation this week announced that it received a $10,000 challenge gift from Walmart to help support the Art Literacy program’s digital transition by the end of spring semester.

For 30 years, the Beaverton Art Literacy program has introduced and provided instruction in the fundamentals of art and art history and offered studio art experiences to thousands of students each year. The program, taught by volunteers at nearly every elementary and middle school in Beaverton, must transition from slide projector systems to digital presentations, as Kodak discontinued manufacturing slide projectors in 2003 and will end parts support this year.

This digital transition project, which will help support 40 schools including, 14 Title I locations, has an estimated cost of $35,000. The total program, fully implemented at all 40 middle and elementary schools, has an estimated cost of $67,000.

All funds raised will be used to purchase multi-media projectors and laptops for the Beaverton schools participating in the program, helping to ensure equity for all of Beaverton’s students.

“The Art Literacy program has been the primary and often only pathway for art instruction in Beaverton’s elementary schools for the past three decades,” said Kristine Baggett, executive director of the Beaverton Education Foundation. “The Art Literacy program is a great treasure for our students and delivered by a passionate and committed cadre of volunteers. Our community benefits from this program on so many levels."

The update to the digital age will ensure that thousands of students continue to have access to the artistic process as well as the critical, cross-over skills that are developed and honed through a discipline-based art education, she said.

“It is imperative to maintain equity and modernize across the Art Literacy programs of Beaverton by ensuring that all schools are able to make the digital transition,” Baggett said. “The Art Literacy program has worked diligently to convert all 122 topic boxes to PowerPoint presentations and is now in the final phase to upgrade the technology."

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World Facts: History of Walmart

The history of Walmart can be traced back to the 1940s when Sam Walton began his career in retailing at J.C. Penny. In 1943 Walton met the Butler Brothers who owned the retail chain Ben Franklin Stores. On May 9, 1950, Walton purchased a store from Luther E. Harrison in Bentonville, Arkansas, and opened Walton's 5 & 10. Thus, the Ozark Mountain town of 2,900 residents would become the headquarters for the world's largest retailer. At some point Sam Walton made the decision to achieve higher sales volumes by keeping sales prices lower than his competitors by reducing his profit margin. By 1960, he had eleven Walton's stores. Inspired by the successes of other discount department store chains, Walton opened the first store in his own discount chain in Rogers, Arkansas that year. Responsible for the purchase and maintenance of signage, Walton's assistant, Bob Bogle, came up with the name "Wal-Mart" for the new chain. By 1967, the company grew to 24 stores across the state of Arkansas, and had reached $12.6 million in sales, and by 1968, the company opened its first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma. In 2005, Walmart had $312.4 billion in sales, more than 6,200 facilities around the world, including 3,800 stores in the United States and 3,800 international units, and employing more than 1.6 million associates worldwide. In fact, their U.S. presence had grown so rapidly that there were only small pockets of the country that remained further than 60 miles away from the nearest Walmart. Approximately 138 million customers visited Walmart stores each week all over the world. Their corporate philanthropy efforts also assisted the U.S. hurricane relief efforts with $18 million in cash donations. In March 2006, Walmart sought to appeal to a more affluent demographic, with the opening of a new supercenter in Plano, Texas which was intended to compete against stores that some viewed as more upscale and appealing. The new store features wooden floors, wider aisles, a sushi bar, a coffee/sandwich shop (with free Wi-Fi Internet access), a Subway, and higher-end items such as microbrew beer, expensive wines, and high-end electronics. The exterior sports the less-common hunter green background behind the Walmart letters instead of the trademark blue. Over the last decade or so Walmart has become involved in thousands of lawsuits for a variety of reasons. The majority of the suits are class action lawsuits in which employees are suing for unpaid wages. They have also run into many discrimination cases in which employees are suing for being profiled out of money or out of jobs. For instance, there were two separate cases, one in 2004 and one in 2005 in which African Americans were suing two different Walmarts for denying them jobs based on race. These became so popular that the reverend Jesse Jackson spoke during both of the proceedings. There are also many lawsuits in which women are suing Wal-Mart for discriminating against them. In one article written in 2004 USA today mentioned 32 different lawsuits that involved women suing Walmart. All of this has not affected Walmart financially however, according to Fortune 500, Walmart still had $351 billion in revenue ($11 billion in profit) in 2007, a new high for the corporation.