Marian Wright Edelman's Commencement Speech at Colorado College

“I love my role model, Sojourner Truth, who was an illiterate but brilliant slave women who could not stand slavery or second-class treatment of women, but she never lost an opportunity to speak out and one day she got heckled by an old white man who stood up and said he didn’t believe anymore about her anti-slavery talk than for an old flea bite. She snapped back at him, and said, “That’s all right. The Lord willing, I am going to keep you scratching.” I think if we can all remember that if there are enough fleas biting the biggest dog, and there are enough of us who keep coming back when they flick some of us off, we will get gun safety regulations, we will end child poverty. You just have to bite whenever you see injustice, and if enough of us join that flea corps for children, the flea corps against gun violence, the flea corps against child poverty, we will transform our nation and make it un-American for any child to be poor, for any child to be illiterate, for any child to be unsafe and unable to grow up in our rich land.”

                                                -Marian Wright Edelman

              It’s commencement season and we should each have the right to circulate at least one commencement speech.  I’m choosing Marian Wright Edelman’s earlier this month at Colorado College. 

Like all commencement speeches there are a few unavoidable clichés, but Marian remains a brave and original thinker, in whom the passion for social justice has never diminished. She offers the graduates the seven lessons she shared with her three sons.  They are worth a read.

You can find both the video and the printed transcript  @ http://www.coloradocollege.edu/commencement/  

New Brookings Study of Suburban "Cul De Sac" Poverty

Just when you think you finally are beginning to understand the issues you’ve worked on for much your career, new research comes along that turns everything you thought you knew upside down and serves as powerful reminder to look beyond conventional wisdom. That was the experience I had while preparing to keynote a Brookings Institution session last week on suburban poverty.

The occasion was the publication of an important new book by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube called Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.  @ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/opinion/cul-de-sac-poverty.html?hp&_r=0

 Most of us have mental images of poverty concentrated in urban areas and hard to reach rural communities. But what the authors found is that  one in three poor Americans now live in the suburbs and that the pace has been growing so fast that in a number of regions- like Chicago, Houston, Seattle -  the rates of poverty in the suburbs are now actually greater than the rates of poverty in the city.

But the authors also found that anti-poverty programs haven’t evolved accordingly. “Policies to help poor places – as opposed to poor people – haven’t evolved much beyond the War On Poverty’s neighborhood-based solutions.”  Federal programs designed for urban areas, ranging from Community Health Centers to Promise Neighborhoods – are ill-suited for suburbs where poverty is more diffuse and services scattered.

Americans living in poverty have always found themselves to be vulnerable, voiceless, and often invisible to policymakers. As poverty has dissipated from our cities to our suburbs that has become even more the case. Kneebone and Berube have written an original and important book that gives voice to their needs.

Community Wealth Partners celebrates the spirit of "Dream Forward"

Last week Community Wealth Partners held a reception to celebrate the launch of its new name (changed from Community Wealth Ventures) and its new “Dream Forward”  icon.   

The event reunited several generations of colleagues and partners diverse in their interests but united in their belief that nonprofit organizations must commit to not only their own sustainability and scale, but to the multi-sector collaborations necessary to ensure that we solve problems at the magnitude that they exist.   

At a time when our national politics seem more polarized and paralyzed than ever, nonprofit and community organizations continue to achieve impact on issues such as hunger, education reform, and environmental protection.  Community Wealth Partners, under the leadership of our president Amy Celep, has been studying how organizations make the shift from incremental to transformational change.   The growth of Share Our Strength and its No Kid Hungry campaign has also been an important source of learning and best practice.

To learn more check out our new website @ http://communitywealth.com/

What We're Learning At State Level About How to Get Things Done

           The Boston Globe is publishing a series about Washington called “Broken City: Politics in An Age of Paralysis.” But while political pundits debate whether the President and Congress can accomplish anything on behalf of the American people, we’ve been proving that outside of Washington change is possible, especially at the state and local level, even on behalf of vulnerable and voiceless children.

            Last week Colorado Governor Hickenlooper signed “breakfast after the bell” legislation so that thousands of school kids will now have a stronger chance of succeeding in thanks to getting  nutritious food.  It had bipartisan support in the Colorado General Assembly. A day before the L.A. school board voted unanimously to support alternative and more accessible school breakfasts. Maryland approved a $1.8 million increase in Maryland Meals for Achievement.

            Such accomplishments at the state level are not accidental.  Unlike members of Congress, Governors have the action orientation of executives and are not fighting to preserve a legislative majority that determines everything from committee assignments to office space.  They don’t check with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell before deciding what to do.  That’s not to say there isn’t partisanship at the state level, or that it never hinders our work, but at least there are places where it is kept in check.

Share Our Strength made the strategic decision to shift our focus to where children actually live, learn and play, thus our state-based No Kid Hungry campaigns.  That doesn’t mean advocacy at the federal level is unimportant. To the contrary, upcoming battles to preserve SNAP will be vital. We’ll work for the SNAP Ed funding so important to Cooking Matters.  But national organizations working with governors, doing community organizing and providing technical assistance to local governments are few and far between.  Share Our Strength’s efforts there stand out.

There are leaders – Democrats and Republicans - who get things done. Sadly, few are in Washington. In the end our work in the states will not only help feed a lot of children, but may also show there are times and places when Democrats and Republicans can work together, to the mutual interest of each, and on behalf of the larger public interest.  If so, we’ll accomplish something even greater than ending childhood hunger. The glow of that achievement, and others built upon it, could light a path toward ending the polarization that paralyzes politics and government today.

Remarks To National Head Start Association Announcing Partnership to Reach 10,000 Head Start Parents with Cooking Matters At The Store

            Yesterday I spoke at the closing session of the 40^th annual conference of the National Head Start Association, following inspiring remarks by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  A summary of my comments follow below.

NHSA REMARKS

            Thank you Yasmina Vinci for that very kind introduction and congratulations on all that you’ve achieved here this week. It is an honor to be in a room of advocates and champions for how to care for, mentor and bring along the generation of young people who will be our future.

            I recently heard some good advice along those lines from my eight year old son, who is in second grade and as we were walking to school bumped into his pre-school cousin Audrey .  They got into a conversation that my wife Rosemary and I could not quite hear, but when he put his hand on her shoulder to console her about something, we leaned in from behind and heard this wisdom from a second grader to a pre-schooler: “Listen, just enjoy the naps while they last.”   

            Here’s another bit of advice we’ve found to be true: if you want to make a difference in the lives of kids, then partner with National Head Start Association.  And so today Share Our Strength is announcing just such a partnership which includes a grant of $100,000 to ensure that 10,000 Head Start parents get Cooking Matters At the Store, our signature program for ensuring that moms and families have the information and resources they need to prepare healthy meals for growing children.  This will empower families by teaching them more about reading nutrition labels and unit pricing, so that they can make healthy and affordable choices for their meals. This is just a start.  We hope to grow the program in 2014 and 2015..

Cooking Matters at The Store is a critical component of our No Kid Hungry campaign. Hunger in America is a solvable problem. This is not Syria or Sudan or sequestration. Children are not hungry because of lack of food or lack of lack of food programs, but because of lack of access.  21 million children get a free or reduced price school lunch and all 21 million are also eligible for breakfast, but only 11 million get it. What does that tell you. It says that these children are not only vulnerable but voiceless.  You are there voice.

            This is an extraordinary time to be raising your voice on behalf of those who are voiceless. With so  many Americans in poverty or struggling and so many kids at risk.  Our focus at Share Our Strength and our window into this space is around the impact of food and nutrition and what we are seeing affirms the vital role that early investments here as well of course as in education and head start plays.

Every day we are learning and proving that while there are investments some think we can’t afford to make, we actually can’t afford not to make them when it comes to the education of our children. We can’t have a strong America with weak kids. We can’t have a healthy economy with unhealthy kids. We can’t have an America prepared to compete in the world without children prepared to learn.  Head Start and Cooking Matters are a big part of that solution.

As the writer James Baldwin said: “These are all our children and we shall profit by or pay for whatever they become.”  Let’s make sure that what they become is smart, and kind, and healthy, and wise, and that American does too.

Meet COMMUNITY WEALTH PARTNERS

Today Community Wealth Ventures changes its name to Community Wealth Partners, which reflects just one of many ways in which the organization has evolved toward greater transformational impact over the past few years.   See our new website and Dream Forward campaign @ http://communitywealth.com/blog/

In their landmark book BUILT TO LAST, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras describe one characteristic of successful companies as fidelity to core values but willingness for everything else to change.  Community Wealth Partners embraces precisely that balance.  Our dedication to the notion of creating the community wealth necessary to build stronger communities with more opportunity for all remains undiminished. As does our commitment to the critical building blocks of community wealth such as scaling and sustaining what works, building capacity, defining what success looks like, setting goals that are bold but believable, recognizing communications as strategy and advancing other insights we’ve developed.

But how we do the work has changed dramatically, as we’ve married our own experience with hundreds of clients over a decade and a half to our research about the characteristics of organizations that have succeeded in moving beyond incremental change to the truly transformational.  Increasingly the way we do our work is in partnership with clients and communities, meaning our commitment is not to deliver a report (that might sit on a shelf) but to deliver a transformational outcome that will change lives.  Like true partners our interests and our clients’ interest our aligned. We are not successful unless and until they are successful.

Throughout this evolution we’ve had the benefit of a partner of our own – our parent company Share Our Strength whose No Kid Hungry campaign led to rapid growth in impact, revenue, and size and established a trajectory based on aspiring to transformation that other nonprofit organizations have sought to follow.  The opportunity to learn from each other during this journey and to share what we’ve learned with you – is one of the assets Community Wealth Partners brings to every engagement.  That’s a process of change and growth that never ends. We hope you’ll choose to be part of it as well.

 

Upon Returning to Boylston Street After Boston's Worst Week

Saturday, April 20, 2013
 

Fate had our family far from Boston this past week. It was Nate’s spring break and we were out of the country.  The second blast occurred by the Starbucks I use as my Boston office. We’ve watched the last 6 marathons from that spot, just up the street from our apartment. That’s our connection.  That and friends who ran the race.

Today we returned and like thousands of others, walked over to the makeshift memorial at the finish line on still closed off Boylston Street.  A hushed crowd of families with children waited patiently to drop off flowers, flags, notes, photos, teddy bears and Red Sox caps. We stared down that empty, haunted avenue, where men in protective white suits could still be seen working on the sidewalk. Much of our vacation was spent glued to TV images of this spot. Even from 1500 miles away it was impossible not to feel connected to what was happening. 

I’d didn’t feel the same connection to the many comments about this proving how tough Boston is, or how the bombings showed what Boston was made of.  Certainly there had been no shortage of inspiring and heroic actions. But I’d never thought of Boston any other way.  After all, Boston is home to City Year, and Partners in Health, to Andy Husbands and Dan Pallotta, to Citizen Schools, and Facing History and Ourselves, to Gordon Hamersley and Jody Adams, to Cradles to Crayons and Project Bread, to Robert Lewis Jr. and Joanne Chang, to Jim and Karen Ansara and Ira Jackson.  If there was ever a city that had proven what citizenship means, what compassion looks like, what a social conscience can achieve, it was Boston before the marathon, not just after it.

But I believe people would have reacted the same way in New Orleans, Denver and Seattle, or in New Delhi, Dakar, or Singapore for that matter.  Moments of darkness shouldn’t blind us to the light in the rest of humanity. The impulse to single ourselves out for such qualities is natural.  But the impulse to recognize what we have in common with others, whether across the street or across the oceans, is even larger, and more needed now than ever.  

For too many here in Boston, the suffering doesn’t end with the end of the manhunt. The marathon’s digital clock can’t measure the years healing will take. For some life will revert to normal sooner than anyone thought possible, For others it never will. For the rest of us, here and around the nation, we go on, reminded about qualities of kindness and courage that will endure not because they surfaced in the aftermath of a few horrific moments but because they were there all along.