Ready News: June 12, 2015

How can schools better help young people navigate the traps and gaps that impede their readiness to meet life's challenges? Three leading thinkers in the youth field recently got together to tackle that very question.

The "Thought Leader Roundtable on Readiness and Schools" featured Karen Pittman, CEO of the Forum for Youth Investment; Forum Senior Fellow Stephanie Krauss; and Bryan Joffe, director of education and youth development at AASA: The School Superintendents Association.

Read more about what these thought leaders discussed, as well as listen to a recording.

The Forum for Youth Investment and Collective Impact Forum are teaming up again to help communities effectively carry out collective impact strategies. This three-day institute provides a survey of five key steps in collaborative work and how these steps put partnerships on a clear path to improving lives.

This institute is designed for leaders, staff and volunteers of partnerships working to improve community conditions and outcomes. The institute is particularly useful for organizations that provide support to overarching leadership councils, provider partnerships, prevention coalitions and neighborhood groups. Participants are strongly encouraged to send community teams representing multiple partnership members.

June 23-25, Seattle, Wash.

"The equity agenda has become a national and economic imperative, as well as a moral imperative."

So said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, in her keynote address at the recent Collective Impact Convening, held by the Collective Impact Forum, in New Orleans. Blackwell emphasized the need to incorporate an equity lens into collective impact work, recounting a story from early in her career that provided an "aha!" moment. Watch her keynote and hear her story about efforts to address high infant mortality among minority families in Oakland, Calif., here.