Stories create and sustain our unique and shared cultures. These stories become a set of data that informs our beliefs and values – and influence the systems that perpetuate the disparate and inequitable results kids and families of color and those experiencing poverty face across our country. Clint Smith kicked off the second day of…
StriveTogether President and CEO Jennifer Blatz opened the 2022 Cradle to Career Convening with a bold vision to place 100 million young people on a path to mobility in the United States. The Cradle to Career Network already reaches one in seven young people ages 0-24. Its work to change lives by changing systems is…
Improving economic and social mobility in our communities is complex work and cannot happen in a vacuum. As the philanthropic sector continues to grapple with the best way to address these layered challenges, the default is often a siloed approach that provides restricted programmatic support to generate outputs rather than a broader collaborative approach to…
Home is sacred. Home is safe. Yet as we heard from Matthew Desmond, author of “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” and Terri Ludwig, president of Ballmer Group Philanthropy at Tuesday’s keynote plenary at the Roots to Rise 2021 Cradle to Career Network Convening, home is, far too often, out of reach…
Northfield Promise, a StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network member in Northfield, Minn., launched a Racial Equity Team in late 2019 to create an equitable environment for young people and families. Despite the obstacles of 2020, they made important strides in their first year. Here are three key insights from their work: Start with youth. The…
Last month, the Spartanburg City Council unanimously approved a resolution to acknowledge systematic racism and apologize to Black community members for the persistent inequities caused by past city policies. The resolution was led by councilmember Meghan Smith, who serves as director of college/career readiness at Cradle to Career Network member Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM).…
We can learn a great deal from Cradle to Career Fresno County’s approach to securing $10 million to support their local response to COVID-19. This is was the first time Fresno C2C leveraged federal funding, tapping into the more than $2 trillion set aside by Congress as part of the CARES Act that provides direct…
Transcript Jennifer Blatz, president and CEO of StriveTogether: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar. I’m Jennifer Blatz and I’m the CEO of StriveTogether. And I’m very excited about today’s conversation with Cecilia Muñoz about her new book, More than Ready: Be Strong, Be You and Other Lessons for Women…
Jennifer Blatz invited women of color from the Cradle to Career Network to join her and Cecilia Muñoz for a candid conversation about leadership. Muñoz was the first Latinx to lead the White House Domestic Council and is the author of a new book, More than Ready: Be Strong and Be You … and Other…
This piece was originally published in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Last week, we saw demonstrations in the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota, and downtown Louisville. Since then, collective voices have raised across the country with the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor respectively – two African Americans whose lives were stolen in…
The coronavirus has made inequities in America starkly visible. Virtual learning doesn’t help children without a laptop or wi-fi at home. Stay-at-home orders don’t help parents without housing or jobs that allow them to work remotely. Everyone is vulnerable to the public health threat posed by COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but communities…
