12/23/19 – To what end? That’s the question I posed back in March when I launched the blog Finding Common Purpose. It’s a question I continue to pose to myself and to the tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations, myriad government programs at the federal, state, county, and municipal levels, thousands of foundations…
11/4/2019 – Do you know that 38% of undergraduates are at public two-year colleges? That of the remaining 62%, three-fourths attend four-year public colleges and universities? Or that overall, only 11% of students from the lowest-income quartile graduate within six years—and that 40% never finish?
10/21/19 – When David Delmar Senties faces hurdles to get more companies on board as employers of Resilient Coders graduates, his “whiteness” allows him to jump over them. I ended my last blog post with a promise to tell you the details.
10/7/19 – I’ve been thinking a lot about the “handoff” problem between different points along the pathway to lifelong success, and in my most recent posts I’ve focused on the transition from high school to some kind of post-secondary education or training that results in a good-paying job. To help ensure the success of a young person…
9/9/19 – Some years back, Michael Scannell mentored, as part of the Year Up program, a bright young man he describes as “someone you could tell had a tremendous amount of potential.” He had been working at one of the big box stores, and had a passion for computers and technology. When he completed Year Up, he was placed as an intern at a Boston law firm…
8/23/19 – I recently heard two stories I want to share. Each of them illustrates an aspect of how we, together as a society, are failing to ensure that people can get on and stay on a pathway to lifelong success.
8/12/19 – In several blog posts, I’ve been diving deeper into guaranteed income as a way to ensure people can meet their basic needs and get on—and stay on—a pathway to lifelong success. Might direct cash payments—in the form of what most call universal basic income (UBI)—be an alternative to the programs that comprise America’s broken social safety net?
7/29/19 – How does a guaranteed income impact financial insecurity and volatility? To what degree will a guaranteed income impact drivers of inequity and social determinants of health? How does guaranteed income unleash potential among recipients and generate agency over one’s future?
7/15/19 – Those of you who have been reading my blog know that I’ve been calling for a new social contract, one that puts more people on a lifelong pathway to success, aimed at realizing—as a country—population-level change and reduced disparities…
7/1/19 – The adjective “basic” describes something that forms an essential foundation; the noun “need” refers to something required. From this we can cobble together a dictionary definition of “basic needs,” but thankfully, centuries of various writing…