Friends in the work

Guest blog post by Christian Paige, educator, keynote speaker and spoken word poet. The StriveTogether national Cradle to Career Network Convening last week was nothing short of amazing. The event was a metaphor for me. I had the privilege of opening and closing the convening with spoken word performances honoring two leaders who have made significant…

Welcome to Seattle! Help students discover paths beyond high school this week

Guest blog post by Kristen “Avery” Avery, college and career success director, and Alejandra Pérez, college and career success coordinator, at the Community Center for Education Results. Welcome to our fellow cradle-to-career colleagues coming from all over the country to join us for this year’s StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network Convening. This is an exciting…

Eastside Pathways welcomes all to StriveTogether’s 2018 national convening

Guest blog post by Stephanie Cherrington, executive director of Eastside Pathways. Eastside Pathways and our partners extend a warm greeting to the community organizations, individuals and leaders from the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network. We’re thrilled to welcome you to Seattle, a city known not just for the Space Needle, Starbucks and the rain, but also for…

Youth commission’s student member shares importance of youth voice in moving the work forward

Guest post by Esmeralda Castillo, District 3 representative of the San Antonio Youth Commission. On Oct. 3-5, 2017, I had the incredible opportunity to attend StriveTogether’s 2017 Cradle to Career Network Convening in Phoenix, Arizona, as the District 3 representative of the San Antonio Youth Commission (SAYC). Managed by the P16Plus Council of Greater Bexar…

Measuring civic infrastructure development: Reflections from the StriveTogether evaluation

Guest post by Justin Piff, a senior director at Equal Measure in Philadelphia, Penn. Despite national and international attention on collective impact since 2011, few individuals and institutions have articulated what it looks like or ought to look like in practice. In 2015, Equal Measure and StriveTogether set out to understand how civic infrastructure —…

From ‘dropout factories’ to record-high graduation in Tacoma, Washington

Guest post by Eric Wilson, president and CEO of Graduate Tacoma, a StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network community partnership in Tacoma, Wash. In 2010, just more than half of Tacoma students were graduating. Front-page headlines in USA Today pronounced Tacoma schools “dropout factories.” The incoming superintendent declared the 55 percent graduation rate “shameful” for the 30,000-student school district. That…