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(applause)
Secretary Solis: Good afternoon, everyone.
And thank you, Raymond, for that wonderful introduction.
It's good to see so many young people and all of
you here today.
It really is exciting.
So just right off the bat, I want to recognize all of the
incredible people in the room.
So give yourselves a round of applause.
And welcome to the White House!
Welcome to the White House.
(applause)
Thank you, again.
(speaking in Spanish)
for being here and being a part of this great effort.
I want to thank you for setting the example of showing your
friends and families that it's possible through hope and hard
work to achieve many great things.
And a big, big thank you to all of the community and business
leaders that are here today.
Because I know that every single day you give up so much to do to
help enhance our communities.
But particularly in helping our young people because that really
is something that all of us should be concerned about.
It matters to the inner city youth who grew up in towns where
they may not have had a parent who was present for him or her
that could have or may have been lured into a gang or some
negative activity.
It makes a big difference for those that are just coming out
of juvenile detention also to know that there is something
else available for them.
That they also have choices.
So it's really important that those of you that are here can
help to provide that additional expertise, motivation,
guidance and leadership.
And many of you here have been doing that for a long time.
You have a special calling, as we say,
to give people hope and inspiration,
but especially our young people right now.
Because I don't think I need to remind that you the statistics
out there show a very grim outlook for young people whether
you are coming out of college or high school or if you are
looking for work and you are seeing so many things reported
negatively in the media about you,
about images about young people, I think that that in and of
itself is cause for us to do something, to take some action.
So I want to tell you that it is very,
very important that especially at this time
that we come together.
And we come together with a particular focus on those
underserved communities, because it's something that
the President and I truly believe in.
And I say that from the heart, because as someone who also grew
up in a low income community, I didn't even know that at the
time we were so-called poor but technically through government
statistics and census figures I was one of those family members.
I was also someone who grew up with a very hard-and-fast work
ethic because of what my parents taught me.
And they were both working real hard.
I didn't get to spend a lot of time like a normal child,
I would say, because I had to spend time helping to raise my
brothers and sisters.
There were seven of us.
And mom and dad both had to work and what
they said meant something.
So if you had a job to do at home, you did it.
And if you didn't, you were going to see them later on.
(laughter)
So I knew best right there that Hilda was
going to pay attention.
And when my mother would say my name in Spanish,
I really got worried.
(laughter)
Because it's pronounced Eelda, not Hilda,
so I knew something was up then.
But I learned so much from my parents about the value of work
and work ethic and especially for young people.
Because I think about when I was growing up we had to work harder
and look harder for summer jobs.
Summer jobs, and that is what my talk is today,
about how important that first summer job is.
And I bet you every single one of you here has a story
about maybe your first job and what that meant to you.
And what that meant for someone to come out and actually give
you a chance to start something anew.
And what it meant to take home maybe that first paycheck.
I'll never forget what it meant to me.
And I went home so proud showing my mom and dad,
and it was for two weeks of pay and at that time it was for I
think a total of maybe $30 a week.
But at that time it meant the world.
It meant millions for me.
But the best part about it was that I had a job.
I had a summer job working as a recreational aid and probably
one of the few Secretary of Labor's that can tell you that,
that actually worked helping young students in the
neighborhood from low income backgrounds have
outside activities.
Recreational activities.
But I was supposed to be a supervisor.
And here I was not too much older than them but giving
them hope, inspiration, telling them how important it was to be
involved in physical education activities.
And being inquisitive and learning new things and getting
along with different people.
I even was exposed to a summer job working in a library.
You say a library?
Well, I was working at my high school library at the time.
And, boy, it opened up a whole new catalog of things for me
because I started to explore all the books and all the markings
and the Dewey system if you could even remember that,
some of you in the room.
Antiquated system, but it works.
And people would actually have to come to me and ask me, well,
where is this subject matter at?
And I had to memorize all of that.
So I knew people had to, they relied on me and it meant a lot.
So having a job as a young person even at the age of 14,
15, 16, it meant a lot and I now how important it is right now.
That's why the President and I and others in the cabinet are so
strongly behind this summer jobs initiative.
And it is about not asking the government to do more,
because we have already asked.
Now it's about us returning that.
And there are many of you in this room,
corporate and funders and other folks here,
even nonprofits who can open up your door,
and I'm not saying your pocketbook, your door,
because if you have an office or you have a setting that can
allow for more slots to be made available for this Summer Youth
Employment Initiative, then I would ask you to please do the
right patriotic thing and to stand with us.
Last year we were able to do this.
We got about 90 positions available that were paid
for young people.
And I'm happy to say that this time around our goal
is to hopefully get 250,000 young people out to work.
And about 90,000 of those positions will be paid for.
Some will be working in the federal government with the
Department of Ag and Interior.
But a lot will be out in the private sector.
And in fact, we have about a hundred employers that have
already stepped up to the plate.
I have met individually with different mayors of local cities
that run these programs as well.
And they want to be a part of it.
And the beauty is you don't have to do much.
All you need to do is agree to be a part of this initiative and
we will list your agency, your nonprofit, your business,
and we will then make it easier for young people to be able to
download this information and find out where the nearest job
is in their neighborhood.
What a good way of getting the message out to young people.
And that's the challenge right now.
And I just want to tell you very quickly last year we had
a conversation with -- maybe some of you know this one
entrepreneur Jamba Juice.
Jamba Juice.
Who knows Jamba Juice?
Who hasn't had Jamba Juice?
(laughter)
It's pretty good.
It's a very, very good product.
Well, we met with the CEO there, actually visited their facility,
but then came away thinking how could we as the Department of
Labor help them with their future workforce.
Well, they found out about our Job Corps Program that we run at
Treasury Island and it's a group of young people that get trained
in culinary arts.
These are skilled, credentialed young people and the government
helps to pay for those credentials.
But the beauty is these are students that have
had a tough life.
They come from some of the roughest neighborhoods.
But that shouldn't be something that you write off.
Because many of them want that second chance if only
given that opportunity.
Well, it turns out that Jamba Juice decided that they were
going to make slots available last year and they did.
So they hired 2,700 young people last year and they
cooperated with us.
So they're going to do it again this year.
But more importantly what they're going to do is join
in partnership with us with the Job Corps Program.
So any of you employers in the room right now that are looking
for skilled people to work for, please call the Department of
Labor, DOL.gov.
Go online and talk to us.
But the Summer Youth Initiative is the one that I think is most
important for you to understand.
Just think of what that will mean if we can put people,
young people to work right now.
It will mean that we'll have less criminal activity out in
the streets.
It will mean that we'll have these young people build up
their resumé.
Put things in their application.
And hopefully get hired up again in the following year.
And that's what's really important right now.
All I can tell you is, and the short and the long of it is that
if I didn't have the opportunity to be exposed to some of these
programs, Summer Youth was one of them,
and also the JTPA program which now is known,
something that is administered through
the Workforce Investment Act.
I am probably one of the few Secretaries of Labor
that actually went through the program.
And guess what?
I'm proud of it.
Because all of those experiences helped me to do the job that I
do now with President Obama trying to relay how important
it is to provide these kinds of services and incentives.
But to also give back.
And that's what I think is good about the summer jobs
initiative, that we give back, and that people understand that
and that it is also a reward for companies,
nonprofits that participate with us.
So I want to ask you to go on DOL.govsummerjobsplus and make
a note of it.
And I challenge you before you leave today to please sign up
and be a part of our effort.
We have so much to offer and to do with you at the Department of
Labor, please consider working with us.
We are your compadres and your amigos and amigas.
So thank you, very much, for having me here this afternoon.
And have a wonderful conference.
And I want to salute the student from Rio Hondo College,
Mr. Francisco Garcia whom I believe is here somewhere.
There he is. All right.
I served at a trustee at that campus so something must be
good coming out of there.
That's great.
Thank you.
And congratulations.
(applause)
Patty Stonesifer: So thank you to Secretary Solis for putting up a straightforward
opportunity for everyone to assist youth in this country.
I think we should jump right into our panels and we'll start
with one led by John Bridgeland.
John is the former head of the Domestic Policy Council under
President George W. Bush and a tireless advocate for youth.
And the panel that he is leading will address the council's
challenge to identify ways that communities can do more and more
effectively to address their biggest challenges.
But before they begin, and as they come on up,
we have a very special message from our First Lady Michelle
Obama, our honorary Co-chair of the White House Council for
Community Solutions that we'll be sharing on the screen.
So --
The First Lady: Hello, everyone.
I'm First Lady Michelle Obama.
One of the most beautiful things about America is that each of us
has the opportunity to do our part to strengthen our
communities and our country.
That's the inspiration behind the White House Council for
Community Solutions.
My husband created this council because he understands that the
best ideas often come from people like you,
leaders who are working hard in your communities to help
us solve some of our nation's most pressing challenges.
And today I want to speak with you about
one of these challenges.
Right now nearly 6.7 million Americans between the ages of
16 and 24 are out of work or out of school.
These young people are disconnected from their
communities and unsure of what's ahead and they're at risk of
falling behind or slipping through the cracks,
but we know that each of these young people has potential
that's just waiting to be realized.
So it's up to each of us to reach back,
lift them up and help them achieve their dreams.
The council has found a variety of innovative strategies to do
just that.
These include successful programs that provide young
people with concrete job skills, leadership training,
peer-to-peer mentoring programs and increased
educational opportunities.
We can see strategies like those at work all across the country,
including in my hometown of Chicago.
This is the Gary Komer Youth Center.
It's located just a few minutes away from where I grew up.
It's a thriving, inspiring, beautiful place for young
people to learn and grow and expand their imaginations.
And it all started with a vision and passion of one person.
Like me, Gary Komer grew up on the Southside of Chicago.
He worked hard and became a successful businessman known
around the world.
But he always wanted to give back to his hometown.
So he rallied his community and brought the center to life.
Today we can see the results.
Young people are dancing and singing, cooking and gardening.
They're even recording their own albums and documenting their
activities on camera.
And 94% of the center's high school seniors this year have
been accepted into college.
Success like this is possible because these young people
believe in themselves and they are surrounded by committed
staff and volunteers who do as well.
Miguel: Basically every single program here is,
there is a youth development component to it and they have,
like I said, sound studio and they have a big gym,
two-story art room and, yeah, and there is always
room for more.
So when youth have an idea, they can obviously bring it
up to the table.
Maurice: I did grow up in this neighborhood.
I grew up not too far, a couple of blocks away,
and I remember when they first started building
this youth center.
So it's amazing to see the inside of it now.
It's like, it changed the whole look of the neighborhood.
It changed the whole perception of the neighborhood.
The First Lady: Miguel and Maurice are part of an organization called
Public Allies.
This organization has a special place in my heart.
Back when I was beginning my career I served as Public Ally's
Executive Director in Chicago.
I still strongly believe in its mission of developing the skills
and passions of a new generation of leaders for our communities.
And I'm so proud that leaders like Miguel and Maurice and so
many others will continue to lift up their communities for
years to come.
So whether it's developing leadership skills through Public
Allies or providing a safe place to learn and explore at the Gary
Komer Youth Center, there are so many ways for us to engage
America's young people.
Maybe it's connecting them to jobs and job training.
Maybe it's helping them graduate high school and
apply to college.
Or maybe it's addressing issues like teen pregnancy,
youth violence, or drug and alcohol abuse.
We all know that no one succeeds all by themselves.
We succeed because of all those people who help us and believe
in us along the way.
Our families, our teachers, our coaches, our mentors,
all those folks who encourage us when we're struggling and cheer
us on when we succeed.
So I want to thank you all for believing in our young people.
Thank you for backing up that belief with action.
And thank you for all your hard work every single day and for
everything that you'll do in the years ahead.
(applause)
John Bridgeland: So come on up.
Take those four seats.
I'll speak from here until I get a seat.
What a gift to the nation to have a First Lady and a
President who care so deeply about opportunity youth and
understand so deeply what it's going to take to help
reconnect them.
John mentioned there was darkness earlier.
I just wanted to say what a source of light it's been to
have the wonder woman Patty Stonesifer in this extraordinary
council that's been working so hard.
And the opportunity youth who we've listened to all across the
country and their hopeful voices.
Communities across America are innovating to address public
challenges from reducing teenage pregnancy and youth gang
violence, to helping students graduate from high school and
college and find decent jobs.
Call them community hope spots, places where leaders from all
sectors come together around a shared vision, sobering facts,
research-based solutions and the will to do the hard and grinding
work to govern together, align resources, dedicate staff,
and hold themselves accountable year after year to achieve what
many now call collective impact.
With the help of many of you -- and I would like to single out
council member Michele Jolin and Paul Schmitz who have led
this whole community collaboratives effort,
and Willa Seldom of Bridgespan.
A dozen communities were identified that moved their
public problem solving needles more than 10% and more than a
hundred that were making important progress in this
direction, places like Milwaukee,
Cincinnati and Boston.
In addition to the efforts represented by this
extraordinary panel today the White House Council wanted to
highlight a few other examples of community collaborations such
as the Philadelphia Youth Network that in the face of a
crippling high school dropout crisis launched Project U-Turn,
a collaboration of the mayor's office, school district,
service providers, family court, child welfare system,
advocacy groups and local funders.
Did I get them all?
That kept more students on track,
increased available slots in alternative and accelerated high
schools and boosted high school graduation rates significantly.
Thank you, Jenny Bogoni -- are you here today?
-- for being with us today and for your extraordinary work.
Thank you, Jenny.
(applause)
In the late 1990s a group of 60 leaders came together and
created the Community Partnership for Families
of San Joaquin, a collaborative that brings local family
services under one roof.
An extensive survey showed that participants realized a more
than 25% reduction in arrests, child protective service
interventions, unexcused absences and school suspensions.
In crime-ridden north central Stockton, crime dropped 65%.
Thank you, Robina Asghar, who is also supposed to
be with us today.
Robina?
There you are.
(applause)
Thank you, so much.
See these hope spots?
The largely rural county of Herkimer, New York.
And I called them yesterday to make sure I got their
name correctly pronounced.
Herkimer, New York, had multiple changes of poverty,
underemployment and youth entering costly and ineffective
residential facilities.
Motivated by a common vision, the county brought together more
than 50 key stakeholders to improve service coordination.
Since 2002 the number of youth in foster care has fallen 55%
and residential care days have dropped by 32% helping both
youth and the county.
Thank you, Darlene Haman for being with us today.
Darlene, are you here?
There you are.
Thank you.
(applause)
What is distinct is that individual organizations
are no longer just focused on outcomes for the people they
serve but on coordinating with other groups to achieve
community-wide outcomes.
Read all about it, an in-depth case studies of each of the 12
collaboratives that affected dramatic needle-moving change
as well as the community collaboratives toolkit can be
found at the website serve.gov.
So many people worked so *** it for so long and it lifts
up these wonderful stories.
Please, please take a look at it and be equally inspired.
We also at the same time found the dramatic numbers around this
population of disconnected youth,
more than 6.7 million young people who are disconnected
from the two institutions that give them the most hope for the
future, school and work.
We also discovered, because we are trying to wake up
policymakers that the cost to the nation,
$93 billion annually, 1.6 trillion over their lifetimes,
and so the cost of an action is high,
but what we really found was the extraordinary unfulfilled
potential that these young people represent.
So the purpose of today's panel is to bring these
two worlds together.
The communities that are innovating to address public
challenges and the opportunity youth who are part of the
solution but also need their help.
We will focus on understanding the elements of and barriers to
overcome to achieve collective impact.
And will highlight both prevention and recovery to
ensure generations of young people do not become
disconnected in the first place and to help reconnect those who
have become disconnected.
Their bios are in your program.
But here today is an extraordinary group.
They are Mary Lou Young, President and CEO of Greater
Milwaukee United Way, whose work has had both global reach on
four continents and transformative effects in
reducing pregnancy in Milwaukee.
Next we have Nancy Zimpher who is a key leader of the Strive
Partnership in Cincinnati and is now Chancellor of the State
University of New York whose own journey began from a one-room
schoolhouse in the Ozarks to overseeing the nation's largest
comprehensive system of higher education.
Next, if I can see you, There she is.
Lucretia is the Executive Director of the See Forever
Foundation, Maya Angelou Schools whose work is fulfilling that
see forever dream for many low income youth who are graduating
from high school and having success in college.
I am going to go to the very end before I come to Jim Shelton.
Next we have David Kennedy, the Director of the Center for Crime
Prevention and Control at John Jay College in New York City.
Whose innovative approach to addressing gang violence known
as Operation Cease Fire or the Boston Gun Project resulted in a
dramatic drop in youth violence in Boston and replication in
cities all across America.
And finally our own Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary of
the US Department of Education and formerly of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation who many call one of the most
innovative officials in our government and has a title
to match it.
Please welcome this extraordinary panel.
(applause)
I'd rather be down there with you, but since we can't be,
I want to start with you, Mary Lou.
What are the key components that made your extraordinary effort
in Milwaukee so effective?
What are the elements of the secret sauce?
Mary Lou Young: Well, I will talk a little bit about Milwaukee,
John, but I also want to talk about what,
what works in all communities in general.
First of all, we have an initiative in Milwaukee to
reduce teen birth by 46 percent by 2015.
And we are ahead of our goal to meet that, that goal.
So we are very proud of that.
But let me tell you, I think the most important thing is you need
a committed community.
There needs to be community will around an issue,
and usually it is a combination of things
that come together simultaneously.
In 2005 Milwaukee was cited as having the second highest teen
birth rate of any city in the country, second to Baltimore.
Simultaneously with that, our business community was doing a
lot of studies on why was the cost of health care for their
employees increasingly higher in Milwaukee than it was in
other midwest cities.
And at the same time, the united way was uncovering data that
found that teen pregnancy while it was at catastrophic levels,
71 percent of teens were impregnated by men 20 years
of age or older.
So it was a point I think in time when the
community said enough.
Enough.
We need to do something about it.
And we need to do it for the long haul, and that is very,
very important.
Because there will be many obstacles and challenges and
barriers and policy changes that can get you off track.
But when you make a commitment in a community
wide collaborative, you have to say you are doing
it for the long haul.
There is a lot of trust building that happens.
You need a neutral party to convene a community wide effort.
And I am privileged to run the United Way.
I will tell you in many communities the United Way
can be that neutral party convener.
We have multiple stakeholders, we have no hidden agenda,
we help the under served, and we have a history of
doing incredible outcomes.
And to that point, you also need a third party that will do your
measurement and evaluation and report out to the community.
You need to provide year round tasks for all of the members so
that they have actions and to work against and goals.
You need well thought through and communicated strategies.
You need a logic model.
You need a public awareness campaign.
That is something we have been very good at in Milwaukee.
Our leadership of our teen pregnancy prevention initiative
is co-led by the Commissioner of Health.
And it is also led by the publisher of
our local newspapers.
So we get a lot of good educated press that dispels the myths
from the facts and talks about what the reality is,
what we are doing about it, where we are having success,
and where we are not.
We also engage youth in our community in a shock advertising
campaign that we refresh every quarter.
And they are the audience.
It is not you and I.
It has been as controversial as bill boards that have a pregnant
teen boy on them to mannequins in department stores where we
have a pregnant mannequin saying that prom night is not really,
should be not a due date, it should be a date that
you look forward to.
I think also the collaborative if you do it well,
you realize how it intersects with so many different things.
Teen pregnancy is the catalyst for poverty.
Milwaukee is the fourth most impoverished city
in the country.
Teen mothers are 50 percent less likely to graduate from
high school.
So if you look at education, you look at poverty,
you see teen pregnancy.
And I think when you do it right,
you can communicate how those, those things intersect
throughout your community and have a lot of success
in all of them.
And most importantly, in any collaborative,
you need to remember it is not about, it is not about you.
It is not about the United Way.
It is not about our customers, our donors, our funds,
our programs.
It is about reducing teen pregnancy.
As an adult, I am responsible for the
children in my community.
They need to be kids first and parents second.
And that is the most important thing.
Thank you.
John Bridgeland: Thank you.
(applause)
Better.
Nice to be with you all.
Lucretia, you have worked with low income youth here
in Washington, D.C.
Those who have been formerly incarcerated,
those who have dropped out.
How do you take the secret sauce,
the elements that Mary Lou just mentioned and apply that to such
a heterogenous population?
Lucretia Murphy: Well, in D.C., we are at the very beginning of our
collaborative work, Raise D.C. is what we are calling it.
My co-chair De'Shawn Wright, Deputy Mayor for Education
is here this afternoon.
And part of what I think has been useful is that as a
community, we are able actually to leverage and elevate the
heterogeneity of the population.
And with that, then also it is a call for action for more people
to be involved.
So it -- the first piece I think what we have embraced as a city
which is very helpful is to look at prevention and recovery.
So the idea is that we are also elevating the fact that as we
want to create a stream line that gets young people from
zero to 24 with an education and career,
we are not going to let go of the young people who are
struggling today.
We are not going to say, well, you know, too bad,
find your way.
But to really try to figure out what we do for the young people
who are currently out of school.
And they are out of school in different ways and they are
connected to different things which is another reason why,
why I feel that the work that we do through the See Forever
Foundation across the continuum is very important.
We do have to have other partners to make it successful
and that is what the collaborative brings
to this population.
Because just as some young people are struggling because
they are out of school because they are pregnant,
some young people are 22 and out of school and don't quite fit in
the adult system, don't quite fit in the high school system.
And you need to be able to leverage the multiple systems,
the multiple players, in trying to be able to
serve this population.
And also to have the people wrapped around them,
who provide the support services although that
is so soft of a word.
Because we do know for example in DC,
that while we are trying to tackle family homelessness,
we don't have a strategy for youth homelessness.
So our youth kind of sleep on couch to couch or bed to bed.
And the school system can't address that,
but the health and human services agencies can and
other non profits.
So the complexity of the population and the heterogeneity
of the population really calls for a collective impact in order
to significantly address the needs for those young people
who are currently out of school.
John Bridgeland: Beautifully said.
We are glad you are here in the district, Lucretia.
Youth gang violence is an intractable problem.
And David, yet you have done extraordinary things through
Operation Cease Fire and Boston Gun Project.
Tell us about what were the elements of those efforts
that made it successful.
And then the more difficult news,
why did it dissipate over time?
David Kennedy: Not an intractable problem.
Shall I continue?
John Bridgeland: You are a model for panelists.
Okay, Nancy.
(laughter)
David Kennedy: So that is actually a good place to start because I,
I have been doing this stuff long enough now that
the most important shift in our sort of social policy world I
think is the move from thinking that all of these sorts of
things can't be fixed, which is where we used to be,
to realizing that actually they can be.
Or if not fixed, then dramatically,
importantly effected.
And the particular things that you map on to any particular
substantive problem are going to be different.
But I think you have already heard the shape of what
fundamentally has been learned about this,
which is that you need two things.
You need a very clear data driven logic model,
evidence based strategy.
You know, I think anything I am involved in,
everybody needs to be able to show up for work on Monday and
know exactly what they are doing.
And there has to be a reason to think that is going to work.
If it is not working, it has to be faced and adjusted.
But the days of this what I think of how I spent my summer
vacation social programming, here is what I did.
That is, that is over.
Right.
We don't do that anymore.
And the second thing is that for most of these problems,
you can't do it alone.
And so you need the right parties with the right
capacities to do the work that, that logic model says needs to
be done.
And when for many of the things, so there is the work I know the
best is in public safety and community safety.
But the really good news in that area is that over and over and
over again, when you really unpack it,
it is a whole lot easier than we think it is.
And what we found in Boston was that gang violence which was
being treated as intractable was actually being driven by half a
percent of the young men across the city and even most of them
didn't like what was going on.
And when you got the right folks in criminal justice and programs
and communities to engage with that half of a percent in the
right way, particularly, as we ended up thinking by giving what
we thought of as an honorable exit.
If you don't like what is going on,
if you don't know how to be safe,
because nobody is making it safe for you to get out,
The first thing we need to do is make people safe.
And give them the cover they need to step away from
situations that they don't like.
Which is typically true of homelessness and over
incarceration, being abused by older men.
You know, most of these things the people that we see as the
problems are at least half victims and very often
more than that.
And it turned out that the right kind of engagement with
that half a percent was extraordinarily effective.
And the second question you asked was why did it fall apart?
Which it did.
And the answer was that those of us who were driving it did not
pay the kind of attention that we ought to have to
institutionalization and sustainability.
And I think again I see this in all sorts of areas where it has
turned out you, you can -- you said move
the needle ten percent.
I don't get out of bed for ten percent.
I am going to tell you.
John Bridgeland: You are a good man.
David Kennedy: We can do way better than that on a lot of these things.
But getting the right answer, is one important demand.
Making sure that is built into the life of our cities and
organizations and institutions is,
is an equally important and separate problem.
And start thinking about it from the beginning.
John Bridgeland: Wonderful, David. Thank you so much.
Nancy, we hold up Strive Partnership as sort of the model
for the country, again and again and again.
Tell us about the barriers that you had to overcome to make
Strive as successful as it has been.
And second, we have Scott Cowan.
You know and wonderful efforts being led in a couple of
communities on higher education.
Tell us what you are doing at SUNY to have collective impact
that help young people and particularly disconnected youth.
Nancy Zimpher: Well, I think, I wanted to say first that we did
not know that we were doing collective impact in Cincinnati.
When we started, we didn't even have a fire storm,
it just evolved particularly through the university community
that we really needed more students coming to college
ready for college.
And we didn't really want to sit there and say,
so if you would just send us smarter students,
we would do a better job.
We had this reality that the universities in our Cincinnati
and northern Kentucky community were actually the institution
preparing the teachers who were teaching the kids,
who were coming to college ready or not.
I just want that to sink in.
Because there is in the whole of education,
a lot of finger pointing.
And in 2003, when our conversations began to evolve,
the K-12 system was really in the barrel.
And most everybody else wasn't.
And so how did we build enough trust and relationship to say in
an authentic way, we are from the university, the United Way,
the Greater Cincinnati Foundation.
And we are here to help.
No, we are here to own.
So one of the concepts that always has meant a lot to me
is this notion of shared vulnerability.
Because, you know, my institution's graduation
rates weren't so hot either.
And I kind of had to say that in order to build some trust across
the table to what might have been K-12 partners.
And even though, in our community Success By 6 was
hugely successful, our statistics on kids coming to
kindergarten ready to learn were still pretty abysmal.
So we did use data, but we didn't arrive at that right
off the bath.
We just sort of struggled with we have got some major leaks in
the pine line.
And frankly, we thought like a lot of the completion agenda
that we could solve this from sort of high school to college.
And then we said, well, maybe we need to look at middle school.
And well, then maybe elementary school.
And then because we had a really great children's hospital in
Cincinnati, we got into prenatal work.
So it is cradle to career, but it is really pre-cradle to post
career I suppose.
So let's see if I can get a couple of cliches
out on the table.
We were a thousand points of light,
but we were not working systemically together.
As Jeff Edmondson who is either nodding or sinking down in his
chair because he really led Strive at that time and now
leads the Strive National Network,
we were program rich but system poor.
And that kind of stuck with us.
We were looking at two communities across the state
line, so we used to talk about the Ohio River not being the
Great Wall of China.
We were bursting through jurisdictions to come to
common cause.
So I think it started with a vision that we could seal the
leaks in the education pipe line from cradle to career,
every step of the way.
I think it came from a respect for data.
We got a lot of training from Six Sigma,
because we have a lot of manufacturers in that area.
And we taught them some things about Six Sigma,
they taught us some things about it.
We learned to organize the early childhood community so aptly led
by the United Ways of America.
To sit in a room and we would close the door and throw away
the key until they came out with a focused set of interventions
and then convince the funding community that investing in an
evidence based solution might be better than here is my last
cliche, spray and pray.
So all of that, over now almost ten years,
has led to gains from ten percent to even 40 percent
in some of the metrics and indicators we are tracking.
So I grow where I am planted and now find myself in New York
State by choice leading one of the most complex and distributed
higher education systems in the country.
And have through a series of conversations joined with the 64
campuses of the SUNY system, to make sealing the leaks in the
education pipe line a mantra for our entire system.
So now learning from Strive and what Ben Hecht and Living Cities
has helped promote or experiment with in other cities across the
country, we are trying community by community to launch
collective impact discussions much the way Lucretia is now
doing in, in D.C. And I am now climbing a hill I thought I
never would climb again in my own community of Albany to see
if disparate parties can come together to make a difference
in sealing the leaks in the education pipe line.
There is no quick way.
John Bridgeland: Wonderful, Nancy.
As she said earlier, it is 150th anniversary of the Moral Act
that created public land grant colleges and universities.
Wouldn't it be great if we could use that occasion to
propel higher education to help opportunity youth all
over the country?
Jim Shelton, a lot of people in this audience have literally,
there are waiting lists of young people in their programs who are
desirous of getting, getting help.
You have some extraordinary reach and big levers in government.
How do we effectively pull these big levers in government to
scale community collaborations that are effectively connecting
and reengaging in opportunity youth?
Jim Shelton: Sure. I mean, being at the federal government level,
you are a long distance from people who are actually doing
the work.
So there are really three things that we really need
to pay attention to.
First is the conditions.
The first is the conditions.
Have we created the policy environment that actually
makes it not only possible, but easier to do this work.
What we all know is that collaboration
is actually difficult.
And it is even more difficult if you are trying to fight rules
and regulations in order to get there.
Which brings me to the second thing, incentives.
We have programs that have resources tied to them,
some competitive, some that flow by a formula.
Some of those things actually encourage you to collaborate.
Many of them especially in the past have not done that.
In fact they have done the opposite.
Where people have felt like they had to work in their individual
silos or they couldn't share data,
they couldn't share funding.
And in not being able to do those things,
we have actually defeated our own success.
The third part of that, though is that the capacity.
Communities have been trying to figure out how to collaborate
for a long time.
And what we have seen is a change over the last several
years where, one, folks have figured out how to focus on
outcomes and what that looks like.
And we can get behind that.
People have figured out how to actually share
information and data.
And we can get behind that and make it easier to do.
And people have figured out that they are solving problems that
other people have solved before.
And what we have not done as effectively as we could have
been, is highlighting those effective programs and practices
and making them accessible to other folks that are
doing that work.
When we do those three things well and then do things like
today and using the fact that we can convene as government
to bring people together to demonstrate that not only is
this possible, but in fact if you do it,
it is the way that it should be.
I mean, one of the great things about this movement is that for
anybody who has been in a for awhile,
you always had this fantasy.
All right.
You had the fantasy that you could get together with the
other folks that were trying to do the same work and you could
all agree and work together.
Well, now we know it is possible and our public resources can get
behind that.
John Bridgeland: We are so lucky to have him in government.
Please stay.
(laughter)
Truly.
We have so much talent in the audience.
We want to integrate some key respondents.
So Patti is going to call on a number of them for,
for comments now.
Patti.
Patricia Stonesifer: So the way we are going to do this,
because we want to get keep on time and have lots of time for
open Q&A also.
Is ask our key respondents to stick to one sentence.
One response.
Because these guys have had so much interesting to say,
we want to make sure.
So Francisco Garcia is a college student at Rio Hondo College.
And he creates murals throughout California and Arizona.
Where, where is he?
Good.
Francisco, did you have some response to this panel based
on your experience?
Come on up to the mic.
Francisco Garcia: Yes. Can you repeat the question one more time?
Patricia Stonesifer: Just what is your response to what you have heard based on
your experience?
What does your experience tell you about collaborative work?
Francisco Garcia: Collaborative work?
I believe that collaborative work is really important,
especially working with the youth, mentoring the youth,
and providing resources in the schools,
like actually having mentors and youth liaisons working in the
school system with the youth so that the youth know that these
programs are available.
Patty Stonesifer: Good. Thank you very much.
So let's just keep moving through the folks that have
something to add to this.
Willa Seldon, are you here, the partner from Bridgespan who
helped us so much with our work?
What is your one take away or something you want to add to
this panel?
Willa?
Willa Seldon: I would say just the importance of basically
funding the backbone organizations to do the
work and making sure the communities are given the
resources to train and involve community members as a whole and
involving also our youth and their families and
the communities.
That's important.
Patty Stonesifer: So in case you didn't hear her, the critical nature of funding
for the backbone organizations.
And I can see our panelists nodding on that one.
Jeff Edmondson, we already mentioned,
is managing director of Strive.
Folks, it would help if you get to the mics.
Jeff, why don't you go ahead.
I'll repeat.
We know Jeff.
He is the person who started this idea before he knew he
had the idea.
Jeff Edmondson: I would just say it really comes down to data and how we use it.
At the community level, to set ambitious targets,
like David said, that are more than 10% and then keeping folks
focused on that target rather than wandering the wilderness.
And then, also at the programmatic level,
using data not just to prove things which is what we too
often do but using data to improve things so that the
data actually becomes a tool of getting better at how we support
children rather than a tool that beat people up.
Patty Stonesifer: Good. I think that was something that Gene Sperling
also reinforced with us which is great,
the important role of data and not using it to beat
but to encourage.
John Kenya, who was one of our very first people that we
reached out to as a council based on this fabulous article
about collective impact, what would you add to what you heard?
John Kenya: Patty, what I would love to do is amplify
Jim's point and also one of the council recommendations around
helping the federal government figure out how to simplify and
align funding requirements, eligibility requirements,
reporting requirements.
This work is so challenging just to get different people working
together across sectors at a community level.
And of course, federal funding is really, really important.
And the real creative players at this are able to stitch together
funding sources in really unique ways.
But particularly in rural areas and smaller cities where there
aren't a lot of resources, the ability to actually access
governmental resources in a flexible way is absolutely
really critical.
So I applaud the council for recommending that.
Patty Stonesifer: Good. Thank you, John.
And thank you for helping us get to this point of recognizing
this important lever point for more effectiveness.
Maurice Miller is the founder and CEO of Family
Independence Initiative.
He's also a council member and has,
in every time the council's spoken,
hammered home that there is more than one kind of collaborative.
So Maurice, what do you want to add to what we've
talked about here?
Maurice Miller: I think one of the most natural collaboratives is when families
come together to solve their own problems.
So because programs can't reach everybody,
all the success you see in America really has to do
with families and peers and friends coming together.
And it doesn't require a logic model.
And it sustains.
So those are the efforts that we want to really bring up.
I think All Hands on Deck, which is what our really charge was,
that it is involving families at looking at those solutions and
also resources and funding them.
Patty Stonesifer: And Maurice has some family leaders here that we'll be
talking about a little bit later.
So welcome to those heros.
Bridge, back to you.
John Bridgeland: Extraordinary to hear powerhouses from Francisco
to Maurice boil down their wisdom that they've written
and talked about for 30 and 40 years into one sentence.
(laughter)
Patty, you're good.
You are good!
Now we're going to have some fun.
We're going to open it up, this extraordinary panel,
to your questions.
So please, make your questions brief.
They will make their answers pointed and brief.
And we'll get as many as we can in the allotted time.
So questions?
Yes, Audria?
Audria: Hi. So even as we address the heterogeneity that was
just spoken about and the multiplicity of issues that
people spoke about really eloquently and the shared
vulnerability, how do we not let public school officials
in public school districts off the hook?
Because we know we need the pathways.
And the funding to do that work, a lot of it is in that system.
So the question is, how do we do all of this and yet keep that
front and center?
John Bridgeland: Wonderful question.
Lucretia or Nancy, you want to take it?
Nancy Zimpher: Go ahead.
Lucretia Murphy: One of the things we're fortunate -- fortunate I
say, but unfortunate others may say -- is that we have a
multiplicity of leaders of schools in District of Columbia
mix of charter schools and DCPS.
And we've been fortunate that our chancellor, Kaya Henderson,
who is over DCPS, owns the idea of recovery and owns the idea
that her system is responsible if students leave and also
responsible for getting them back.
And on the charter school side, a similar responsibility is felt
and shared.
And I think one of the things that De'Shawn Wright,
our Deputy Mayor, has also done is to elevate the fact that it
is actually a community problem when young people leave.
You know, so in our system, I think we have leadership that
makes the point that it's a community responsibility.
But also, if a student is leaving,
one of the mantra points that we've started saying -- we say
in our organization, but also in other schools -- is that we've
essentially pushed them out.
Right? Because when you talk to little kids,
the first thing they want to do is go to school.
So if they want to leave school, it's something that we did.
So I think that's one of the responsibility points that we've
taken on as a system in D.C., which then,
as we're building the Raise DC partnership,
it means that we're all focusing on that as a key
lever for change for us.
John Bridgeland: Nancy, you want to add?
Nancy Zimpher: Well, I just think there are some pretty big bureaucracies
coming together.
And I've often said, if I hear "it's all about the children"
one more time -- because it isn't.
It's all about the adults and their working conditions and
what we consider the classroom and the way we organize schools
which is kind of, frankly, owned by our community.
We often say the school is run by the bus, the bell,
and the banana.
And you know, there are structures that have been
in place for a long time that simply need to change.
And our work has been more successful when you can kind of
get that bureaucracy -- my own included -- at a common table
and talk practically about what will help people do
their jobs better.
I just don't think putting the bull's eye on K12 has really
effectively moved the dial.
And so it's a broader ownership that I see evolving,
that teacher's unions have to come to the table and rotating
superintendents have to come to the table and PTAs have to come
to the table and health and social service agencies.
Because we all have a stake in it.
And that, I think, will move the dial better faster.
John Bridgeland: Jim?
Jim Shelton: Just really quickly, Nancy talked about how everyone talks
about "all children" all the time.
And what we don't always talk about is the fact that,
in order to get to all children, you have to get to each child.
And so the latest competition that we put out,
the Race to the Top District, is built around that notion,
that you have to figure out how to reach each child,
some of which will be struggling,
some of which will be disconnected,
and figure out how you build in a system that will actually
personalize and accommodate each one of them.
You'll aggregate up in order to get the benefits of scale.
But if you start with that very basic notion and build the
system to do so, we can do that.
I'll stop.
John Bridgeland: Well done. Other questions?
Yes, in the back?
Audience Member: One question that's like really crazy is the fact
of young people who are actually incarcerated now,
who are about to come home now.
What type of successful collaborations or anything that
the community can do that can help them regenerate back into
the community?
David Kennedy: Don't lock them up.
(laughter)
John Bridgeland: Next question -- no.
Lucretia or David, do you want to elaborate?
David Kennedy: I think a lot of time that, in order to be as stupid as
we are about this, you have to be fantastically sophisticated.
There is no way on earth that any set of interventions can
deal with a country -- this is the point we have reached -- in
which we are releasing 700,000 people from prison every year.
And they come back to often very concentrated communities.
And then people who run re-entry programs on shoestrings are
expected to deal with this.
This is an outrage.
It's a tragedy.
It's un-American.
And there is no way to deal with it on the back end.
The only way we're going to be able to deal with this is to
deal with our public safety problems in ways that don't
involve locking so many people up in the first place,
which is demonstrably possible and has to be
the lead of the wedge.
And I will simply note that my State Governor, Governor Cuoma,
lead the news today by proposing changes in New York State law
that would eliminate statutory possibility for so many,
especially young men of color in New York City,
getting locked up for very, very,
very small amounts of marijuana, becoming part of the damaged
population that all the rest of us try to deal with for the rest
of their lives.
Good idea today.
Bad idea the rest of the time.
You really need to change the way we're dealing with the
pipeline here.
(applause)
John Bridgeland: Lucretia?
Lucretia Murphy: I'll just echo that,
not locking children up for children behavior is
the first step.
But I think one of the -- our cofounder, David Domenici,
has started an initiative nationally.
I think one thing that we do need to look at is the quality
of education while young people are incarcerated.
Part of what happens is they've already been out of school and
then they're essentially captive.
And you fail to take the opportunity to give them an
education, to catch them up, to build up their skills and help
them then create what they need to take back into the community.
That's our first failure.
So building up the quality of education,
the quality of their lives, improving their outcomes.
Decision making, development would be a critical first step,
creating for them the portfolio that they need to take to say
they've got these credits, they know this math,
they know this English would be a big step.
One thing that we're working on in the District -- and I can't
say it's the solution -- is to then start earlier with the
young people while they're incarcerated on their transition
planning with respect to education.
What school are you going to go to?
Who's the principal you speak to?
Which classes will you be enrolled in?
And that becomes a system strategy,
so you're not leaving a young person and his or her parent to
decipher what goes on throughout the education system.
But that's something that the systems,
the youth juvenile system, the education system,
the social services that are still wrapped around the family,
work together with the family and the young person to create
that plan when they transition in.
And then working on the difference between district
policy and district preference when young people come back and
making clear incentives for enrolling, supporting,
putting resources behind young people who come in.
And we have to acknowledge one of the fights we always fight
is the idea that why would you spend so much money on this kind
of program for these kind of kids?
They already demonstrated they didn't want to go to school.
They were locked up.
They're not really our best effort.
And if you've beat kids down, it's going to take a much higher
dosage to build them up.
So when they get into schools, another strategy that we're
working on -- the district is working on it,
we're working on it in our school -- is then building,
to Jim's point, very individualized service and
education plans for young people once they get back in school to
help with the challenges of re-entry,
to help build their educational plans,
but to also make sure their family and community supports
are well in line so they have the supports they need to really
turn around their opportunities.
John Bridgeland: Thank you, David and Lucretia.
One of the most influential leaders in America,
Bill Strickland.
Bill?
Bill Strickland: My thought would be to have you address in some
way sustainability.
You touched on it when you said, Bill, it's (inaudible).
Young people deserve the opportunity to have bright
innovative ideas be maintained over a long enough period of
time to make a difference.
(inaudible)
And these kids deserve institutional solutions.
And we, I think, have an obligation to figure out how
to sustain these efforts, not just create them.
Nancy Zimpher: I think one of the things we're learning is that the
more public we go as communities about the
challenges and what we're doing to solve the problem,
the more impossible it is to disconnect.
So I think the impact, the social impact that the myriad
of organizations can achieve has to be very, very public.
The media becomes your friend because it's a lot harder to
say, what are we going to do now, back away, say never mind?
So that's a form of sustainability.
And the second, I think, is the way in which we
invest dollars locally.
That's changing dramatically, when people see that they can
actually -- philanthropists and corporate foundations and
the federal government, that they can invest in results.
That's a way to keep people at the table and to sustain
the initiative.
Jim Shelton: Just really quickly, the ability to create an
infrastructure that supports this kind of work,
both the data infrastructure, the policy infrastructure that
allows you to pay people based on their outcomes,
to reallocate resources from things that aren't working
toward things that are working, the ability to braid funding
streams, those kinds of things that you can lock in into the
way people do their work and the incentives that they have to do
their work that way are the things that are going to lead
to long-term sustainability.
It may change shapes.
But if we can get those things in place,
then we can actually have a much higher probability of getting
things done for the long-term.
John Bridgeland: We're running out of time so I'm going to
give Mary Lou and Lucretia and David also the last word
around sustainability or anything else you want to
share very quickly.
Mary Lou, any final thoughts?
Mary Lou Young: I kind of echo what Nancy said.
The greater the public awareness,
the greater the community engagement,
the less likely you are to not continue
to drive towards mission and long-term sustainability.
We had a conversation earlier about how government's involved
in that.
Our mayor in Milwaukee has been part of this
since the beginning.
But I would tell you, any mayor in Milwaukee would want to be,
because it's successful, because we have all the
right players in place.
And there would be a community force to reckon with if we
didn't continue this engagement.
John Bridgeland: Anyone else with a final word?
David, quickly?
David Kennedy: I think we're all saying the same thing,
which is really very interesting.
The biggest single change that --
Jim Shelton: Collective impact.
David Kennedy: Collective impact.
-- we've seen in our work in the last couple of years is very
organized communities going to their elected and appointed
leaders and saying we want this particular approach that drives
crime down, keeps people out of prison,
and has these other good benefits.
And they're getting the responses, usually,
that they're used to getting, which is people sort of patting
them on the shoulder and saying, that's very nice,
we'll get back to you.
And their response has been, we don't think you heard
what we said.
And they're getting responses, so it's a big shift.
John Bridgeland: Thank you, David.
Lucretia, final word?
Lucretia Murphy: Yes. I guess for my final word, I do want to echo
what -- I can't remember who was it who said "All in For Youth".
I think that should go on our t-shirts, De'Shawn.
I think that's a great, great segment.
And I would like to thank John Bridgeland also for bringing
us all together and moving this forward.
John Bridgeland: Very, very nice.
Thank this extraordinary panel.
(applause)
But stay with us one more minute.
You still want me to go through, quickly, the announcements?
So Patti wants the White House Council for Community Solutions
to continue, but it will not.
(laughter)
So the encouraging news is that there are wonderful
efforts being launched.
And I've been asked to quickly highlight them,
if you'll bear with me.
First, in the final report of the council,
we make a number of recommendations that
are relevant to what you heard today,
including providing public and private funding to follow best
practice cross-sector community collaborations and many other
things that you can read about that John
Kenya also highlighted.
Second, this very exciting effort,
building on the work of White House Council,
the Aspen Institute intends to launch the Aspen Forum
for Community Solutions and the Opportunity Youth
Incentive Fund.
The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions will spotlight
communities that are successfully pulling
together to move the needle on a community challenge,
not just 10% but much beyond that,
and to educate national and local leaders about this
strategy as a possible solution.
The Aspen Forum will be launched with the generous support of the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
the Rockefeller Foundation, the Annie E.
Casey Foundation and others who have been at this work,
literally for years and years and years.
I would like to ask Elliot Gerson of the Aspen Institute
to stand and be acknowledged for this wonderful continuing work.
Elliot?
(applause)
And Walter Isaacson and the wonderful team there.
Third, Opportunity Nation.
Mark your calendars.
On September 19 of this year at George Washington University,
a coalition of more than 250 organizations representing
non-profits, businesses, community and faith based groups
and leaders from local, state, and federal government will
assemble to do many things to move the economic and social
mobile agenda.
But among them will be new data at the state and local levels on
Opportunity Youth, a Roadmap for Action,
to reconnect as many opportunity youth as possible,
working in partnership for YouthBuild, Jobs for the Future,
and The Forum for Youth Investment.
And to use the council's employer toolkit -- thank you,
xxBobby Silton -- to continue to connect businesses and
opportunity youth and to accelerate multiple pathways
of success, including career and technical education.
Opportunity is lead by the extraordinary Mark Edwards.
I would like you to rise, Mark, who is with us today.
Mark Edwards.
(applause)
Fourth -- what an outpouring.
In March, the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives
at Tulane University launched its initiative,
Reconnecting Opportunity Youth.
With funding support from AT&T,
this initiative is examining the challenges that opportunity
youth face, assessing services that are currently available to
them in greater New Orleans and analyzing strategies that enable
struggling youth to reach their potential and contribute to
their community.
The institute is developing a specific community action plan
to address the issue of disconnected youth in New
Orleans with a goal of creating an infrastructure of effective
sustainable and meaningful services and programs that will
prepare these young people for college and career.
Based on the outreach and research,
the Cowen Institute will initiate a city-wide
multi-sector collaborative to accomplishs systemic change and
significantly increase the number of young New Orleanians --
did I say that right -- who embark on pathways that lead
to careers and engage lives.
Hats off to our White House council member,
Scott Cowen for this extraordinary work.
Scott.
(applause)
And finally, the Torchlight Prize is another new initiative
that recognizes that some successful collaborations
are initiated by the community itself,
rather than structured organizations as Maurice Miller
has so well educated us.
This national award, launched by Family Independence Initiative,
honors informally organized groups of low-income people
who have successfully created initiatives that engage
disconnected youth and strengthen their communities.
The winners of the 2012 Torchlight Prize -- and please
hold your applause until all of them are acknowledged are --
this sound like the academy awards -- Black Dot,
established by young African American artists and culture
workers in Oakland and New Orleans who created cultural
venues, after school programs, community gardens,
and small businesses.
They establish themselves as a caring adult presence
in their communities, instilling cultural pride and strengthening
the community.
Second, Club Social Infantil.
Several Columbian families in East Boston came together to
create structured activities for their youth in the tradition of
Latin American xxnatieres or social clubs.
Meeting monthly, they organize events that have strengthened
family and community bonds.
Next, lu Mien families in Richmond and Oakland,
California came together to solve a gang violence problem.
They worked together to rebuild a cohesive community and,
with small personal donations, created a community center,
temple, scholarship fund to address the cultural disconnect
and lack of viable alternatives.
They were at the root of the problem.
Many youth are now college bound.
Representatives from these winners of the Torchlight Prize,
please stand and be enthusiastically applauded.
(applause)
Extraordinary stories.
So that concludes our panel.
We want to thank, again, these extraordinary Americans who came
together and shared with us their wisdom and hopefully can
be guiding lights to all of your efforts as we go out and try to
scale these efforts around the country,
including with our federal government.
Thank you, Jim.