Marguerite W. Kondracke, President and CEO of America's Promise Alliance, Speaks at YMCA National Advocacy Days
March 27, 2006
I’m pleased today for the opportunity to speak to you about our very urgent work together.
Thanks most of all for the work you do in your communities on behalf of America’s young people
I had the privilege of serving for many years with Clark Baker on the board of the YMCA in Nashville. So I know how important Y’s are to building stronger communities and families.
I was asked to speak to you today about civic engagement and community development. In other words, I was asked to preach to the choir. I don’t have to tell you about civic engagement. As America’s oldest and largest community-based organization, you helped pioneer it. With 600,000 volunteers, you know how important it is for us to be energetically invested in the well-being of our young people.
An Urgent Need
What I CAN tell you is that the work that all of us here are about has never mattered more, or been more urgent. Our young people today are at risk — and not just those you often hear described as “at risk.” Our future as a nation is at risk. Our sense of national community is at risk. In a faster, flatter, ultracompetitive world, you can draw a straight line between how well we equip our children for success and the success of America in the 21st century.
Our children must be prepared to lead our country. But they’re not ready. Instead of stepping up, we’re falling behind.
30% of our students do not finish high school.
70% of our 8th graders score below proficiency in math.
Babies born in America are less likely to see their first birthday than babies born in 27 other nations, including Cuba.
Every day, in 50,000 American households, at least one child goes hungry.
One in 11 of our young people report attempting suicide.
In 1961, John Kennedy confidently stated that the torch had been passed to a new generation — a torch, he said, that could truly light the world. As you can see, we are in danger of dropping that torch. Our children are not doing as well as they deserve and our nation’s future requires. For our country to flourish, we must prepare our children to thrive.
A National Wake-up Call and a National Responsibility
There is reason for hope and even confidence. Much great work is being done — by the YWCA, by other partners of the national alliance I represent, by community leaders across America. But we need to do so much more. We need a national wake-up call. We need to awaken everyone that the responsibility for preparing our young people belongs to ALL Americans. As a nation, we need to make children and youth an urgent, sustained priority. If we pull together, as we have at other times of national testing, I am persuaded we will meet this challenge.
The Alliance: Achieving More Together Than Alone
This need to pull together was the impetus behind America’s Promise – The Alliance for Youth, which I am proud to serve. Our founding partners recognized that our nation’s best hope for preparing our youth to succeed lay in building strong national partnerships that reach every level. Now, as the nation’s largest cross-sector alliance for young people, we bring together mayors, governors, community leaders, business, nonprofit groups, faith groups, foundations, parents, teachers, young people themselves, and media. We create partnerships with them and between them.
Together, we can create greater impact for America’s youth than any of us could achieve alone.
The mission is too big for any one sector. Government alone can’t do it. Nonprofits can’t do it all. Schools can’t do it. But all of us can do it together. In fact, it is the only way we can succeed.
The Five Promises
Our work focuses on ensuring that ALL of our young people receive the five essential resources that both research and experience show they need to thrive. We call them the Five Promises because, for Americans, that is what they have always been.
You will quickly recognize them because the YWCA has long been involved in providing all five.
-
Caring adults: To thrive, children need positive relationships parents and other family, with teachers, mentors, coaches, youth volunteers, and neighbors.
-
Safe places: at home, at school, in their neighborhoods.
-
A healthy start: Good healthcare, good nutrition and exercise, healthful habits and healthy role models.
-
An effective education that builds marketable skills.
-
O pportunities to help others: Every child and youth needs and deserves opportunities for volunteering, leadership and service, and to develop a sense of personal responsibility for the larger society.
Here’s what we know about the Five Promises from research: The more of them that are fulfilled in children’s lives, the more likely they are to become successful, productive adults.
This is not just warm fuzzy stuff. We can actually quantify the difference our investments of time, energy and money make. We know that putting just one at-risk young person on the right path saves $2 million for taxpayers. Dr. James Heckman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, estimates that the return on investment for early childhood development efforts is 17%.
Give a child these five fundamental resources, and he or she is 5 to 10 times more likely to stay in school, avoid drugs and alcohol, stay free from trouble with the law, and contribute to the community. Empirical research shows that, as more children receive the Five Promises, we see higher college or post-secondary enrollment…
improvements in school readiness…
better proficiency in math and English…
lower juvenile crime rates…
fewer children as victims of crime…
fewer teen pregnancies…
fewer childhood suicides…
and more civic engagement by young people. In other words, the investment we make together in young people comes back to us in the form of young people who do the same for succeeding generations. In that way we build stronger communities, and we keep America’s Promise for others, as others kept it for us.
Our Five-Year Goal
According to Gallup research last year, over 54 million young people in America — that’s over 60% — were NOT receiving all of the Five Promises. Our country can do better and must do better.
Over the next five years, our Alliance has set an ambitious goal. We are committed to changing the lives of 15 million under-served young people through the power of the Five Promises. When we reach that goal, we must do even better in the decade that follows. Our commitment is not only to reach more children, but to do more for those we are already serving — for those who are receiving one or two promises but need more. We will not rest until every child has every promise.
A number of our Alliance partners have already made sustained commitments to help us reach our 15 million goal. And many of those commitments involve the cross-sector collaboration that is the best way to get results.
For example, the Corporation for National and Community Service is working with MENTOR to double the number of mentors for children, from 3 million to 6 million.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable are working with the education community to improve graduation rates and double the number of technology, engineering and math graduates by 2015.
To raise awareness about the status of children in America and the power of the Five Promises to make a difference — that national wake-up call I mentioned — we have undertaken several focused, sustained initiatives. We believe they will move us toward keeping every promise for every child. I’d like to tell you briefly about three of them.
100 Best
Last year, we launched the annual 100 Best Communities for Young People competition. It gives national recognition to communities for their outstanding efforts on behalf of young people that involve multi-sector collaboration. It puts a bright spotlight on the just the kind of community building that our young people so badly need. One of the important things about this competition is that it’s not just about where your community is now. It’s about where you’re going and what you’re doing to get there. It’s about progress, not perfection.
In just the first year, nearly 1,200 communities got involved. In many cases, young people themselves helped develop their community’s application. I believe we have representatives from some of the winning communities here today. Would you please stand so we can recognize you?
One especially exciting thing about the 100 Best is that it not only raised awareness, it raised the bar. Besides the coverage on the Today Show and in Newsweek and USATODAY, we saw newspaper editorials from communities that DIDN’T win. They challenged their readers and their leaders to do more to make their community a great place to grow up. The word-of-mouth has surpassed even our optimistic hopes. The challenge has gone out. This year, we look forward to many times more applications from communities of every type and size.
I want to extend that challenge to each of you. If your community wasn’t on the list, ask your colleagues why not when you’re back home. How can efforts you’re making now be even stronger by involving partners from the business community or local government or faith groups or other nonprofits?
And if you’re interested in learning and sharing ideas about what works with other communities, including those on the 100 Best list, I’d like to invite you to the regional forums we’re hosting across the country this year.
Every Child, Every Promise Report
In the fall, we’re releasing an unprecedented report on the state of our youth, called “Every Child, Every Promise.” It will be the most comprehensive report ever compiled on the well-being of young people in this country. It will measure how well we are keeping the Five Promises. It will set meaningful benchmarks we can use to measure progress. It will include the voices of young people themselves, as revealed through independent research, on what they believe they need to be successful, what they’re getting now, and where the gaps are. And it will include the bottom-line business case for investing in youth from early childhood to adulthood — with new findings on the quantifiable ROI for our society. I think you will find this report a valuable resource you can use to inform efforts in your community, build support, and sound the wake-up call.
Katrina’s Kids
Our third major new initiative is called Katrina’s Kids. It’s an enormous, multi-sector effort by our Alliance to ensure that the young people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita receive the support they need — both now and in the future.
I think you will be proud but probably not surprised to learn that the YMCA is playing a critical role — just as you have been involved from day one in the hurricane recovery efforts all along the Gulf Coast.
Let me tell you about Houston, where the YMCA is our core partner in the first local Katrina’s Kids initiative. In Houston there are 22,000 displaced young people from Louisiana and Mississippi. Most are there to stay. Their old networks of support — caring adults, safe places — are gone. Right now, their schools meet many of those needs. But when summer comes, how can we make sure Katrina’s Kids get the essential resources they need to thrive?
Our partners realized the place to start was the Alief neighborhood, where there are more kids displaced by Katrina than in any part of Houston. One of the critical “glue” institutions in Alief is the YMCA. This summer — thanks to the efforts of the YMCA and other partners — Katrina’s Kids will have safe places to learn and play, with caring adults around them. They’ll have healthy meals and checkups. They’ll have mentors to help them be ready for school and to learn from by example. They’ll have opportunities to learn the value of helping others.
What’s especially exciting to me is where this partnership in Alief can go. After this summer, we can replicate this effort in other neighborhoods, not just in Houston but wherever Katrina’s Kids are.
More than that, this initiative can become a model for other efforts to deliver the Five Promises, not just in the wake of disasters but all over America, all the time, and especially to those most in need. You and other local partners can play an outstanding part in this community-building effort. You can help show America the real power of our alliance for youth to lead and to make a difference.
Public Policy, CDBGs, Learn & Serve America and the Specter Amendment
Public policy is part of the solution — and no small part, either. I want to speak to that for a moment.
I share your conviction that, even in a time of tighter budgets, federal funding for community development — that is to say, funding for and by us, the people — should stay strong. Government should support initiatives that strengthen the service ethic in this country. It should challenge and encourage us to respond to our communities’ needs.
(While I’m on this subject, I want to mention that America’s Promise is producing a Federal Funding Guide as a web-based resource for community-based organizations to locate and tap into federal funding streams. I believe you can find information on the Guide out in the lobby.)
Community Development Block Grants are a great example of how federal funds can give local people both the resources and the flexibility to respond to local needs. They have been especially important in helping communities keep the Five Promises to their young people through after-school programs and in many other ways. The relief work after Katrina — where you and others were on the front lines — demonstrated the effectiveness of these grants in the hands of nonprofit organizations. The grants not only support communities. They engage communities.
For that same reason, we share your support for AmeriCorps and Learn & Serve America. In the past 10 years, AmeriCorps has drawn more than 400,000 Americans into public service. These volunteers are serving, among others, more than 2 million children and youth. They have helped recruit and train more than 600,000 new community volunteers. Learn & Serve America takes service learning to young people through schools and community and faith organizations. We know that, for every dollar invested in this program, communities receive four dollars in return.
On that note, I was gratified last week that the Senate last week overwhelmingly passed the Specter-Harkin Amendment. The amendment increases discretionary spending for education, health, labor and social services by $7 billion — back to their 2005 levels. It also gives great flexibility to the Appropriations Committee to spend these dollars where they can do the most good, from mentoring and after-school programs to services for the elderly.
A Recommitment to Cross-Sector Collaboration
In ways like these, government must be our partner in building communities and encouraging Americans to SERVE their communities. Yet we must also never let ourselves fall into the easy and familiar trap of believing that government alone is the answer. As a nation, we cannot get where we need to be by thinking that government alone, or programs alone, or money alone, will cure our problems or prepare our young people.
Once again, I’m preaching to the choir. I don’t have to tell you about the importance of serving the community. Our challenge today is to tell OTHERS, to engage others, to build partnerships with others.
Equipping young people for our nation’s future means we MUST engage the American community. We must work smarter, and we must work together. Our common mission must be to ensure that every child receives every promise, every essential resource. As a nation, we cannot afford anything less. And every child deserves nothing less.
Some may say the goal is too big. We say it’s time to make advances and not excuses. It takes all of us. And all of us, together, will do much, much more than any of our organizations will achieve alone. Every act on behalf of a young person is a ripple. Acting in partnership with others turns ripples into currents. Currents become powerful forces of change.
As you go from here back to your homes, I encourage you to redouble your efforts to enlist your colleagues and your community leaders in building the stronger partnerships that will accomplish more for young people — partnerships that are their best hope for the future. Thank you again for all you do for our young people. Together, let’s keep the promise of America for every American child.