We are at a pivotal moment in our country and in our work. Thanks to funding available through the American Rescue Plan and more, we have access to resources and the will to not just meet the present moment, but to make significant progress toward addressing racial equity and economic mobility for children and families.…
Infrastructure holds communities together: roads, bridges, an electricity grid. But what about the connections that we can’t see? Relationships, collaboration, goal setting and data sharing are part of a community’s infrastructure, too. These pieces are called civic infrastructure. Civic infrastructure joins leaders from across a community — from education, business, health care, housing, philanthropy and…
The city of Chicago is home to over 1 million youth ages five to 24 — 69.3% of them identify as Black or Latine. Of those, more than 20% live at or below the poverty line. When politicians, advocates and other adult experts develop programs, they fall flat and fail to achieve the long-term social…
Join us in conversation with Colin Groth, StriveTogether’s executive vice president of strategy and development, as he shares how the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network got to where it is today and why he’s passionate about the work. What drew you to this work, and what motivates you to stay in it? In my…
How can the collaborative improvement approach change the way communities work together to get to better results for every child? Heidi Black, StriveTogether’s senior director of innovation, collaborative improvement, shares what it means to change systems, how to get started in this work and her hopes for the future, including insights she presented at the…
March is the month that our country has committed to celebrating and honoring women’s history. As a new month begins, I’m reflecting on the barriers and obstacles women face every single day, the sheer resilience and grit we muster to battle through them, and the that women comprise the greatest percentage of leaders at all…
I was recently reminded of a poem by Wendell Berry that resonated strongly because it describes the very nature of our work. Berry is one of my literary heroes, we’re both Kentucky natives and University of Kentucky graduates. As an English major, I read much of his poetry and fiction. And I find myself returning…
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…
For hundreds of years, sailors have used the North Star to help navigate. The North Star is the only bright star whose position relative to a rotating Earth does not change. In many ways, the North Star was more instrumental for navigation than their individual daily tasks of washing the deck, measuring water depth and…
Emmy-winning journalist and self-proclaimed Democracy junkie Maria Hinojosa’s words stung like a paper cut, conjuring up my memories of growing up Black and invisible in a semi-rural white community. As she kicked off the fourth day of the 2021 Annual Convening, I found myself relating to the powerlessness she described of young Latinx children who…
Going further together Listening to Heather McGhee break down “zero-sum” thinking and its crippling impact on our nation at the 2021 Annual Convening underscored for me the importance of the Cradle to Career Network. “We’re all on the same team.” If we are going to change the “zero-sum” thinking that has been holding back all…
