Northern California Grantmakers

On May 22, 2012, Northern California Grantmakers hosted a special briefing at San Francisco City Hall with Mayor Ed Lee and children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund. The program, sponsored by the Rosenberg Foundation, Mayor Ed Lee’s Office, and NCG was a festive event that included guests from NCG’s membership, San Francisco government and school district officials, and non-profit leaders such as the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial.

Ms Edelman, who was the first African American woman admitted to the Mississippi state bar delivered a sobering, yet inspiring talk on the state of children in this country and encouraged everyone in the room to do their part to change the plight of youth, particularly Black and Latino youth, in this country.

Here are a few bleak statistics that Ms. Edelman shared:

• A public school student is suspended every second
• A high school student drops out every 8 seconds
• A public school student is corporally punished every 20 seconds
• A child is arrested every 21 seconds
• A child is born into poverty every 34 seconds
• A child is abused or neglected every 47 seconds
• A baby is born without health insurance every 87 seconds
• A child is killed by a firearm every 3 hours – more than 7 a day – and is killed by abuse or neglect every 5 and a half hours
• Every minute a baby is born to a teen mother and every 3 minutes to a mother who had little or no prenatal care. Every 9 hours a baby’s mother dies in childbirth. Black babies are 4 times as likely as White babies to have their mother die in childbirth.

Ms. Edelman, who was in town to share her work with The Black Crusade for Children, ended the presentation with a call to action noting that these statistics will only get worse without the help of all. The Black Community Crusade for Children (BCCC), a program of the Children’s Defense Fund was organized “to confront a deepening crisis faced by Black children and is calling on America to take action against a toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparity, violence and massive incarceration that is sentencing millions of children of color to dead end, powerless and hopeless lives and threatens to undermine the past half century of racial and social progress.”

Her appeal included four requests. That we stand up for children by:

1) Not missing the boat in achieving positive outcomes for youth; the time is now
2) Knowing that we are all in this together; therefore we are on the same boat
3) Not believing the naysayers who will tell you that the problem can’t be solved
4) Realizing that Noah’s ark was built by amateurs, not professionals; therefore we must not rely on leaders to fix the problem, but grassroots organizing efforts.

In the words of Ms. Edelman: “If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much. “

For more information about the program, please visit NCG’s events calendar.

What Counts and What Works: People, Practice and Policy
September 11 – 14, 2011

At this year’s annual conference members of Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families (GCYF) will explore pressing and emerging social and economic trends impacting children, youth, and families, but also the role that private philanthropy plays in lifting people in our communities to survive and thrive.

The conference includes several “track” options with concurrent sessions for participants, including:

• Early Childhood Track – designed to explore programs, services and strategies serving young children during a critical developmental period characterized by rapid changes in social and emotional development and learning;

• Youth Track – designed to explore the programs and systems serving the diverse and rapidly changing needs of youth, especially vulnerable youth, and strategies to engage and empower them to reach their full potential;

• Family/Community Track – designed to explore the wide-range of supports and services aimed at improving social, economic, and health outcomes for children, youth, and families, and especially low-income families; and

• Cross-Cutting Issues Track – designed to explore the complicated issues that impact communities, and how public and private sectors can work together to maximize their impact and transform public policy and social programs.

Participants are invited to select from the optional Pre-Conference Institutes as well: Place Matters-Strengthening Communities Through Place-Based Philanthropy or Innovative and Comprehensive Strategies for Improving Outcomes for Boys and Men of Color.

NCG members are very active in the planning of this year’s GCYF conference, with Lise Maisano from S.H. Cowell Foundation (who is also a Board Member!) serving along with Nicole Taylor from East Bay Community Foundation as co-chairs of the conference.  NCG CEO and President Colin Lacon and NCG Director of Communications and Member Services Julia Indovina are on the conference Host Committee and Planning Committee, respectively.

Visit the GCYF conference website for information on registration and to view the entire conference program >>

Update

Since publishing this blog post, GCYF has announced a reduced registration fee for its Napa Vally offsite session.

Throughout the conference there will be four off-site sessions conducted throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area that will build on the conference theme and content while taking advantage of the local culture and expertise.

Through tours, presentations and special activities, each half-day session will showcase diverse and innovative philanthropic and nonprofit initiatives working to strengthen supports and services for children, youth, and families. Read full description for each off-site session below.  Pre-registration is required for each.

OFF-SITE 1: OAKLAND
Title: Youth Learning to Lead in Business, Community, and Civic settings

OFF-SITE 2: SAN FRANCISCO
Title:  Public private partnerships = kindergarten readiness: San Francisco’s Preschool For All and Family Resource Center Initiatives 
 
OFF-SITE 3: NAPA VALLEY *
Title: Living Together, Worlds Apart: Innovative Strategies to Strengthen Neighborhoods

*This off-site session entails an additional $60 registration fee.  Those interested in this session should register as pre-registration is required. 

OFF-SITE 4:  SAN FRANCISCO
Title: Making the Transition to College: What districts and community colleges can do and students’ perspectives on what works.

Learn more about the conference offsite sessions >>

NCG member Blue Shield of California Foundation (BSCF) has launched “Dialing Down the Drama,” a multi-media site dedicated to the legacy of the BOM (“Boss of Me”) campaign.

The BOM campaign provided BSCF with “new opportunities and challenges…[as they] explored youth relationship conflict and ways to defuse it.”

The goal for the “Dialing Down the Drama” legacy site is “to inform external audiences, including funders, youth organizations, and violence prevention advocates, about the challenge of pioneering a ‘for youth, by youth’ program, and managing a campaign that gauges success in part by youth engagement.”

Blue Shield Against Violence Director Bess Bendet elaborates on the site launch:

We at Blue Shield of California Foundation hope you find the information provided on the site useful in your efforts to find new ways to help teens dial down the drama in their relationships …

We believe that it is important to share our best practices and lessons learned — what worked and what didn’t work – to maximize our investment in BOM and further its impact.

The “Dialing Down the Drama” site includes a research report on the BOM campaign; a teen perspective on violence; information on how the BOM campaign worked; BOM campaign videos, radio spots and posters; and BOM evaluation summaries and reports.

Check out “Dialing Down the Drama.”