In the United States, 4.2 million youth experience homelessness each year, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender queer and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their non-LGBTQ peers. True Colors United believes that in order to develop effective policy solutions to end youth homelessness, youth with lived experience must be a part of the solution. And no organization is doing more than True Colors to bring LGBTQ youth to the table in a meaningful way.
Social Justice Fund Northwest (NW) is building relationships across race and class through philanthropy.
You might have heard of giving circles before. Giving circles are a form of philanthropy where groups of individuals donate money or time to a communal fund in order to raise awareness and engagement in a certain issue.
America has a long-standing tradition of generosity. As a nation, we contribute nearly $400 billion each year to issues and causes. Though we often think of large foundations when we think about philanthropy, more than 70 percent of giving in this country is directed by individuals writing checks or giving online.
When Carol Dweck was working on her doctorate in social and developmental psychology at Yale University, she became intrigued with a fundamental question about education: Why do some students give up in the face of failure, while others thrive?
Bike Works is an organization based in south Seattle that promotes the bicycle as a vehicle for change to empower young people and build resilient communities. Bike Works offers bike repair classes, riding trips, and job training programs for young people, as well as adults.
It only takes a minute talking to Deb Salls, Executive Director of Bike Works, to realize that the youth programs she runs are special.
It is mid-morning on a warm, spring Wednesday, and Erick Delcham is darting from student to student in his Algebra III class at North Queens Community High School.
Delcham smiles and laughs as he pushes his students to explain how they are trying to answer the problems in front of them.
“Notice what you are doing now?” he encourages a quiet boy named Kuron, who has floated an idea about how to solve a Pythagorean equation. “You are conjecturing!”
Thanks in part to Hilltop Scholars, Lily has progressed from reading at a second-grade level in fourth grade to reading at a 12th-grade level in eighth grade today. The program also sparked her leadership skills and increased her comfort with her peers.
Like most youth organizations around Washington state, Peace Community Center is eager to improve the quality of its programs so they can better serve young people.
When Dawn Clemens became principal of Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Washington, D.C., she held a funeral. Into a mock coffin, she dumped a batch of excuses—slips of paper conveying the many reasons people gave for why students weren’t learning. The ritual was her way of saying that, even though the percentage of students living in poverty exceeded those who graduated high school in the area, she would accept no rationalizations for the school’s failure to reach its academic goals.
On a recent Monday morning, a young woman took a seat before the Seattle City Council, opened her PowerPoint slides, and cheerfully introduced herself to the elected officials.
“My name is Montrai Williams,” she told the council, flashing a photograph of herself in pigtails at the age of four. “I go by Trai.”
