For the community of Austin, Minnesota, collaboration is everything. Sustainable change means putting aside competition to work together. When the First United Methodist Church in Austin approached Austin Public Schools (APS) with a donation to support young children, the school district didn’t simply keep the opportunity in-house. Instead, APS gathered community partners to hear their…
What would it look like to truly put students at the center? This is a question that leaders from more than 100 communities gathered to answer at the February Students at the Center convening in Houston, Texas. This unprecedented event — hosted by Coalition for Community Schools, Communities in Schools and StriveTogether — answered a…
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Guest post by Victor Cedeño, director of networks and education policy with Generation Next, a cradle-to-career partnership in Minnesota. This past June, I had the opportunity to attend the StriveTogether Expert Convening in Las Vegas. I was honored to be invited but was even more excited for the opportunity to learn from other communities. As it…
Adriane Johnson-Williams, founding facilitator for the Seeding Success partnership in Memphis, Tenn., is exploring what it looks like to truly do the work of collaborative action. Through stories of challenging conversations and genuine relationship building, she shares her experiences working to change behaviors and practices in pursuit of better and more equitable outcomes at scale.…
Adriane Johnson-Williams, founding facilitator for the Seeding Success partnership in Memphis, Tenn., is exploring what it looks like to truly do the work of collaborative action. Through stories of challenging conversations and genuine relationship building, she shares her experiences working to change behaviors and practices in pursuit of better and more equitable outcomes at scale.…
In August of 2015, StriveTogether, in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, launched the StriveTogether Leadership Program. This nine-month program is an in-depth training for the six cradle to career partnerships participating in StriveTogether’s Accelerator Fund in Annie E. Casey’s Results Based Leadership, a practice that has changed social outcomes for communities across the…
Continuous quality improvement (CQI) has become a hot topic for many of us in the social sector. While continuously improving seems like a rather easy concept to understand, CQI requires more than just acknowledging the significance of these words. Instead, it requires ownership of the concept by both individuals and communities. I have learned the…
We have the honor of working with communities all over the country looking embrace the concept of collective impact and establish cradle-to-career civic infrastructure to achieve better outcomes for children. Unfortunately, the energy around this work has led to a new political challenge in many communities: jockeying among partners to become the backbone[1]. In one…
This blog post is from the StriveTogether archives. Learn more about our approach to collective impact here >> We recently hit the benchmarks of having over 150 communities reach out to us and 80 communities having completed the Site Readiness Assessment to join the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network. As we start our discussions…