Broadband. What is it really, and why do broadband access and equity matter for young people, families, and communities? This blog accompanies the Forum’s primer to help policymakers, young people, and advocates understand the issues and recent developments, and strengthen equitable digital access for all young people.
Blog by Mishaela Durán, President & CEO
This piece is featured in the 1/24 The 74 Newsletter
When I first saw West Side Story, one moment brought me back to my high school principal’s office. The Jets were singing, “We ain’t no delinquents, we’re misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good!”
I could have said the same thing when my principal was suspending me for truancy. He told me I would never amount to anything.
“Wow,” my young colleague said, his voice echoing off the high marble walls in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. “I didn’t know what to expect when I came here, but now that I have done it, I realize this is what I have wanted to do my whole life: share my story with people who can make a difference.”
I live for these moments, working in partnership with Opportunity Youth United to help Opportunity Youth—young people ages 16 to 24 who are not connected to school or the workforce—meet with their elected officials. Of all the advocacy activities we do, these are the most likely to change hearts, minds, and policies, and have been the most important driver of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign’s greatest successes: securing a cumulative $195 million additional federal funding for Opportunity Youth programs over two years; securing $518 million in the COVID recovery packages; and potentially billions more in the Build Back Better Act making its way through Congress.
Readiness Projects Blog by Katherine Plog-Martinez, Consultant, The Forum for Youth Investment
A blog from Pamela Cantor, M.D., Linda Darling-Hammond, Merita Irby, and Karen Pittman on the Essential Guiding Principles for Whole-Child Design.
On April 20th, the jury returned their verdict – guilty as charged on three counts for the murder of George Floyd. Moments before the judge read the verdict, my heart was pounding, hoping for the “best”, but fearing more of the same– a country that consistently fails to hold those who murder Black bodies accountable for their crimes. And knowing that my hope for a guilty verdict – even as it was realized – does not represent justice. As Brittany Packnett Cunningham has consistently reminded, justice would be George Floyd still alive. The fact that this was not justice was amplified by the murder of another child, Ma’Khia Bryant, at the hands of police mere minutes after the verdict was read. The brokenness of our systems is breaking our children, especially Black children, and in turn our future.