Grantees in the Spotlight
Youth Villages: Lifting Life Prospects After State Custody
Every year, over 25,000 young people “age out” of foster care in the U.S., even larger numbers of leave the system before turning 18, and nearly 100,000 youth leave juvenile justice facilities. Young people departing state custody have a harder time than their peers getting an education and finding work, and are more likely to fall into poverty and homelessness. With support from the Edna McConnell Clark and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations, MDRC is conducting a rigorous evaluation of the intensive services that EMCF grantee Youth Villages provides these youth in its Transitional Living program.
According to an MDRC policy brief, this program “may be one of the most promising models now operating at scale.” The evaluation, with final findings expected in 2015, will be important for both policymakers and practitioners seeking better futures for these vulnerable youth.
Read the policy brief.
CIS: Creating Community on the Reservation
Communities in Schools CEO Dan Cardinali describes in the Huffington Post his visit to the Gila River Indian Community’s Vechij Himdag Alternative School in Arizona― an example of how Communities in Schools leverages partnerships to overcome educational inequities in diverse communities.
Read more.
At the Foundation
The Power of Partnership
EMCF President Nancy Roob describes the progress of the True North Fund, a public/ private partnership created to leverage federal funding from the Social Innovation Fund, and welcomes 12 co-investors joining us in this venture. The True North Fund "has implications for private philanthropy and public policy beyond the field of youth development,” Roob writes, “because it is testing whether a new kind of public/private partnership can channel more resources more effectively to programs that work, and propel them to a scale on which they can make a serious dent in some of our nation’s most pressing social problems.”
Read the President’s Letter.
Issues in the News
Disconnected Youth at an All-Time High
“Nearly six million young people ages 16 through 24 are neither working nor in school,” reports PolicyLink, a national research and action institute. “This is both the highest absolute number of disconnected youth and the highest share of youth that are disconnected over the entire 24-year period for which data are available.”
Read the report.