Think about how you feel when you are valued, well-nourished and rested and inspired to take on new challenges. That is a really good day. No one has a good day every day. But the truth is that for many students in Dallas County, those days are few and far between.

  This tool is intended to help funders who have elected to invest in place-based systems change efforts in two ways. First, funders can use this tool to consider the dynamic, natural, and necessary developmental phases through which communities move. Second, the tool can help funders engage with communities to co-design investment approaches that better

Refusing to lose is about never giving up, about successfully navigating uncertainty, and about believing that the future always holds unexpected gifts that the present can’t anticipate. Refusing to lose is why so many who grow up in meager circumstances, often without hope, go on to live fulfilling lives. My personal story is no exception.

This tool is intended to help funders who have elected to invest in place-based systems change strategies assess the extent to which their strategic intent, culture, and capacity can support complementary dimensions of systems change. By using this tool, funders—and by extension the foundations within which they work—can further clarify how to focus their place-based

This assessment is designed to help community partnerships take a closer look at their areas of strength and areas where they can go deeper to effect place-based systems change. Though it draws from learning in cradle-to-career education, the assessment has broader application. It can be used to examine multi-sector partnerships and collective efforts in areas

The Rio Grande Valley is a 7,000-square mile stretch of land bounded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Bravo, the U.S.-Mexico border in the South and security control centers known as secondary checkpoints 100 miles north of the southern border. It is home to Latinx students experiencing poverty. A large portion of these students

In 2011, John Kania and Mark Kramer issued a foundational article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that identified five conditions for organizations to achieve large-scale social change and the instrumental role that backbone organizations have coordinating and facilitating cross-sector collaboration. Today, backbone organizations and partners are still well positioned to assess and respond to community needs—particularly

This resources presents a crosswalk of place-based systems change frameworks to identify their most comment elements. It can serve as a guide for funders, practitioners, and other stakeholders to inform their efforts to support, develop, or refine place-based systems change. The crosswalk distills common elements of systems change, which the review team identified through a

More than ever, we can feel the turbulence of history. This past year has changed all of our lives as we navigate a global pandemic, political unrest, and a renewed national conversation on racial justice. We have seen that communities of color are uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19. Throughout the nation, hospitalizations and deaths caused by

As I watched a mob of brazen white supremacists storm the United States Capitol during a global pandemic, I feared not only for my home city but also could not stop thinking about how this failed insurrection clearly showed the two systems of accountability in America. These people were hell bent on perpetuating violence and

I intend to be a doctor and practice in the community I grew up in, Buffalo’s East Side. As a 21-year-old Black woman in the United States, I’ve learned that I have to work ten times harder than my white counterparts to get to where I want to be.

During the recent presidential election, some blamed Latinos for handing President Trump a win in my home state of Texas—not because they voted for him en masse but because many did not vote at all. Despite record turnout, only 44% of Latino Texans who were eligible to vote cast a ballot during the 2020 early voting period, compared with 63% of eligible white Americans, according to voter-file vendors.

A funder once asked me what it was like growing up in Tacoma, Washington. Reflecting on the 1980s and 1990s, I told him it was fraught with drugs and gang violence. I lost many uncles and cousins to both. I woke up some days in fear, worried about domestic violence in my home and unsure where my next meal would come from. I doubted I had any purpose in this life.

Introducing We Refuse to Lose, a time-limited series of profiles featuring cradle-to-career community partnerships in Buffalo, Chattanooga, Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley and Tacoma. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been supporting the P16 to workforce efforts in these communities since early 2019.