Guitars Over Guns

Interview with Guitar’s Over Guns Regional Director, Andrew DeMuro.

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Organization Vision: Guitars Over Guns Organization (GOGO) believes all young people should have the opportunity to reach their full potential through the transformative nature of music, mentorship, and performance.

Organization Mission: GOGO is committed to curbing youth violence through providing students with productive options for creative expression – namely, music education, performance, and mentoring. GOGO’s mentors are professional musicians who use music as a vehicle to support the holistic development of young people, while providing a stable relationship with a caring adult. During the 2016 – 2017 school year, GOGO’s team of 35 mentors served nearly 650 students across 16 school- and community-based sites in Miami and Chicago.
Population Served: GOGO targets youth between ages 11-16 who may not otherwise have an opportunity to take part in the artistic process at school or at home. 98% of GOGO participants live at or below the federal poverty level, as defined by the US Department of Health & Human Services 2017 Poverty Guidelines. GOGO was inspired in part by the unfortunate reality that arts education is being slashed from school budgets, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color.
 Founding Year: 2008

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Interview

In a few sentences, please describe the problem you are working to solve and your approach to solving this problem. Three quarters of Chicago’s of violent crime incidents take place outside of school hours. GOGO views this violence as an attempt to combat the pain borne out of broken homes, insufficient options for productive after-school programs, and the feeling of not being heard. Our unique approach aims to develop a community that is both inclusive and bound by the power of music. Through high-quality instruction, community-based performance opportunities, and meaningful relationships with professional musicians and peers, Guitars Over Guns exposes youth to the value of their own choices and the weight of their own voices.
How and why did you end up working for this organization? For most of my adult life, I’ve straddled myself between two important, seemingly unrelated industries: music and education. As an undergrad at the University of Miami, I logged over 700 hours in Miami’s low-income schools & communities while also finding time to sing in the University’s top Jazz and R&B Vocal Ensembles. I moved to Chicago in 2012 to join Teach For America, and was employed at an all-boys charter high school on the city’s West Side. While teaching, I founded and directed our charter network’s first extracurricular choir, which twice earned superior ratings at Illinois state music competitions. I joined the GOGO family in 2015 in hopes of combining my two passions, and became a founding mentor and site director at Evergreen Academy on Chicago’s Southside. The following year, I was honored with the unique opportunity to represent ‘Team Adam’ on Season 11 of NBC’s ‘The Voice’. Following my time on the show, I immediately returned home to take on a new role as Chicago’s founding Regional Director for Guitars Over Guns, in charge of managing the experiences of our four sites, 11 mentors, and nearly 350 students. In my current role, I hope to continue striking that balance between my two purposes.
What kind of trends do you see in your area of work? As curricular music and arts programs seem to shrink, I notice more empirical data surfacing to show the value – socially, emotionally, and neurologically – of a well-rounded, arts-based school experience. While emotions manifest in a host of different ways – from laughter to tears; from giving a hug to throwing a chair – music is a language our brains process almost universally in an effort to make sense of the world. For youth, especially those dealing with the stress of living in poverty, the ability to identify and use music as a tool in this way can be monumental to their holistic development.
Along with the importance of the arts, I also notice a fundamental shift in attention to the habits and mindsets that build great learners beyond a simple test score – particularly, social-emotional learning and development. As musicians who understand the roles effective communication, creative problem-solving, and perfect practice play in achieving success in our world, Guitars Over Guns mentors are positioned uniquely to improve student metrics like school attendance, positive behavior and social interactions, GPA and test scores, by teaching habits and mindsets that transfer across different worlds. During the 2016-17 school year, 88% of GOGO participants grew in these metrics.
What do you think will change most about your work over the next 5 years? Over the next five years, we plan to expand our footprint in each of our flagship cities by engaging and training high caliber leaders in the artistic community who are prepared to put their skillsets to work in our GOGO programs. We also plan to continue refining our curricular methods to break new ground in evidence-based practice. Considering our Chicago programs will see its first two classes of high school graduates in five years’ time, I hope the focus of our work will shift toward supporting and preparing our alumni base to take ownership of our organization on every level. By implementing the GOGO ‘Alumni Band,’ which allows our program’s current graduates to earn community service hours through training and serving as peer mentors to our current students, we are building a feeder pattern which empowers our students as the primary change agents in their own schools and communities.
What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in the population you serve? Why? Our most effective GOGO programs encourage positive social-emotional skill, without forcing a change in people. First, GOGO students learn the importance of vulnerability by building a safe space that respects their own unique abilities. We then zoom out to teach students that empathy, or the ability to consider others before acting, is the source of all positive social interactions. Teamwork and effective communication become everyday points of practice in our ensembles, private lessons, and genre-focused programs alike. Finally, we allow for students to take initiative and practice creative problem-solving by expanding habits from the GOGO stage to the community at large. By cementing these habits as mindsets, our students understand the power and impact of their creative voices, and the data is compelling: 85% of participants have shown improved academic outcomes, stronger attendance, and less severe behavior infractions; 82% reported using GOGO strategies to face challenges in school or at home; 100% agreed that GOGO provides opportunities to build confidence and take healthy risks.
What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in your staff? Why? As a staff made up entirely of creatives, we understand the monumental importance of creating a space to learn and grow that is truly mentor-led, celebrating successes and milestones along the way. We encourage our mentors to ‘make practice public’ by growing comfortable with the discomfort of sharing their work with peers in a live setting. Our ‘Mentor Exchange’ initiative allows for cross-program, peer-to-peer observations and feedback conversations among colleagues. We continue to grow in evidence-based practice by using data to inform programming decisions. Twice annually, students and school partners take authentic program quality surveys which help mentors to analyze and adjust their practice to meet the needs of their dynamic population.
Finally, if our mentors cannot be themselves or ‘embrace their weird’ in the workplace, it becomes difficult to expect the same of our students. We hope to maintain an environment that evolves, but also stays authentic to our soldiers in this work – we want to be a caring adult community that completely accepts its members for who they are. Modeling that sense of love and belonging is contagious, and builds similar habits for our students to adopt and own themselves.
How has technology influenced the way your organization works? Like in the music industry itself, technology in the GOGO classroom evolves along with the artists who utilize it – namely, our students. We utilize the communication platforms they are using – typically Facebook messenger & WhatsApp – to stay in touch outside of regular program hours. Our most effective programs give youth access to the state-of-the-art digital media and education needed to succeed in the current industry. At our Haven Studio in Chicago, GOGO mentees are versed in peer-to-peer writing, studio engineering, and production, using programs like ProTools, FruityLoops, and Abelton to polish musical creations. 80% of our in-school program sites have recorded original music in professional studio environments, and completed student-led music video projects to address issues such as self-esteem, police brutality, mourning and loss. We also use technology in our reporting and data collection, and to share best practices between mentors in Miami and Chicago. In the coming year, we hope to build collaborative structures for students from our sister cities to virtually connect, make music with and learn from one another!
Do you have any key mentors or people who deeply influenced who you are or what you do? Tell me about them. As an educator and a leader, I draw influence from Mr. Jack Hart, my mentor teacher during my student teaching experience at Booker T. Washington Senior High School in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami. A 20-year veteran in one of the nation’s most under-resourced schools, Mr. Hart taught me the power in listening twice before speaking once, in beginning each day with a positive interaction, and most importantly, in eating my vegetables. When it comes to staying on the cutting edge of social-emotional learning innovations and evidence-based practice, GOGO certainly looks to the SCE as a leader in the industry, and we hope to mirror their practices in our organization’s leadership and approach.
If we talk one year from now, reflecting on what a great year it’s been, what did you/the organization achieve? Next year at this time, I want to be able to walk into a SCE workshop for non-profit professionals and leaders and have everyone in the room know of our work. I understand that in order to increase visibility we must also increase our reach; therefore, we will work hard in the coming year to recruit the highest quality talent to build two new school programs to reach 50 additional students in our target communities. Finally, given that we will be one year closer to our first class of GOGO high school graduates in Chicago, I am also hoping to increase membership in our Alumni Band and Peer Mentor groups to ensure that our alumni begin to own our collective identity.
What’s next for you in your work? What are you looking forward to? In the early months of 2018, we are preparing for a year-long relationship with Edelman Marketing & Communications and Social Venture Partners of Miami, building our GOGO alumni base as competent musicians and peer mentors in both cities, and actively recruiting new musicians to serve as mentors for our growing family. There are so many ways to invest in the work that we do, but in my opinion, no way is more valuable than making a genuine, face-to-face impact on our young people. To anyone who is considering becoming a mentor for Guitars Over Guns, please understand: our youth are in need of your time and talents; you will be valued and supported in this incredibly important work, and it will change your life. Please contact andrew@guitarsoverguns.org to learn more about our programs and the many ways to get involved.
What do you wish others knew about the organization? Despite its name, Guitars Over Guns is not a politically charged organization. The purpose of the ‘Guitars Over Guns’ name is to signify our core belief that every student holds the power to choose their sound, and that the choices they make have the potential to profoundly impact their lives. By encouraging our youth to actively engage in the music-making process, GOGO mentors teach kids to take risks, build confidence, and practice positive decision-making skills on stage and in life.

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Press

1. Windy City Live Feature (February 2016)
2. Steve Harvey Show Segment (February 2017)
3. ‘How Guitars Over Guns Organization Gives At-Risk Kids Hope’, People Magazine (September 2016)
4. ‘Can Art Help End Violence? Guitars Over Guns Lets Students ‘Find Their Sound’ & Choose a Better Path in Life’, Chicago Sun-Times (November 2017)
5. ‘Go Innovate – Guitars Over Guns’ Haven Studio’ (July 2017)

St. Mary’s Health Wagon

Interview with St Mary’s Health Wagon Executive Director, Dr. Teresa Gardner Tyson, on why she started the organization and what she is thinking about.

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Background

Organization Vision: To provide compassionate, quality health care to the medically underserved people in the Mountains of Appalachia. Our values are inclusiveness, community outreach, collaboration, spirituality and empowerment.
Organization Mission: The Health Wagon, with its mobile clinic and two stationary clinics, has remained a pioneer in the delivery of health care in the central Appalachian region for more than three decades. The Health Wagon provides Southwest Virginia and the surrounding region with compassionate, high quality health care services. We serve the most vulnerable in our population that do not have access to health care. Our patients have no insurance or may have insurance but have high co-pays and deductibles. We create a medical home for our patients and give access to health care services that they would otherwise do without. Daily at our clinic, someone’s life is forever changed or saved because of the services of that the Health Wagon offers. We create access and more importantly hope to those who come through our doors.
Population Served: The Health Wagon visits eleven sites, in a six-county service area, in Virginia’s Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell, Lee, Scott, and Wise Counties (and the City of Norton) to serve a severely medically uninsured, underinsured, underserved population.
Founding Year: 1980

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Interview

Can you tell us Health Wagon’s story?  Our average patient is 38 years old. Ninety-eight percent of our patients are uninsured. Seventy percent of them have an income of less than $20,000 annually, despite working multiple jobs. This means they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. Our patients live in desperately poverty-stricken rural Appalachia, where they can’t afford to go to the doctor but can’t afford not to. The mobility of our health clinic means we are able to fill the gap, whether they are inline at the food bank or at their job, we bring healthcare to them.
The Health Wagon serves individuals and families with free, integrated health care that is culturally sensitive. We provide primary and preventive care, dental, behavioral health, telehealth, and specialty care. In addition to our routine services, we provide the region with strategically coordinated outreach efforts. We are most proud of our Remote Area Medical – Wise Health Expedition held annually which is the largest medical outreach of its kind in the nation. Individuals in desperate need of health care line up days in advance to get needed services such as free, eye, dental and medical care. We have valuable partnerships with academic institutions that allow up and coming physicians, nurse practitioners and nurses to have educational experiences along while helping individuals in dire need of health care. The breadth of our mission, accomplishments and unprecedented community collaboration attest to our commitment to the people in the Appalachian region. Caring and committed partners include foundations, faith community, grants, corporations, civic groups, community-based organizations and businesses and individuals.
In a few sentences, please describe the problem you are working to solve and your approach to solving this problem. The Health Wagon is currently working to solve a variety of issues in Central Appalachia. The Health Wagon is working to make health care more affordable and more accessible. The Health Wagon also hosts the nation’s largest outreach in the nation because the need is so strong for medical, dental and optometry services. The Health Wagon is also a pioneer in drone medicine delivery as the organization serves a geographically widespread region.
How and why did you end up starting/working for this organization? Dr. Teresa Gardner Tyson began working at the Health Wagon as a registered nurse in 1993. She obtained her Masters of Science in Nursing as a family nurse practitioner in 1998 which allowed her to be a primary care provider to thousands of individuals throughout southwest Virginia. In 2006, Dr. Tyson was promoted to Executive Director of the Health Wagon.
What kind of trends do you see in your area of work? Unemployment, uninsured – indigent population, chronic illnesses such as: cardiovascular, depression, diabetes, pulmonary and cancer.
What are you focusing on most right now? Telehealth/telemedicine opportunities. Taking healthcare to the populations most in need. Facing and finding solutions to the opioid epidemic. Drone delivery of medications. Prevention through education and screenings, early diagnosis and chronic disease management.
What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in your staff? Why?

• Loyalty/Dedication – experienced unchanged teams have power
• Technology – change is the only constant in today’s world and technology produces opportunities that are cost effective to patients
• Individuals who align with the mission and vision – individuals who have the mission at the center of what they do, regardless of clinical staff or administrative staff, produces heartfelt work.

How has technology influenced the way your organization works? We are the highest utilizer of telemedicine in Virginia in partnership with the University of Virginia. We use an electronic medical record for all documentation and scheduling. Dr. Tyson and Dr. Hill were the first nurse practitioners in the nation to do tele-cystoscopies.
Do you have any key mentors or people who deeply influenced who you are or what you do? Tell me about them. St. Mary’s Health Wagon’s founder, Sr. Bernie Kennedy, a Catholic nun from Massachusetts, began seeing patients out of her Volkswagen Beetle across the mountains of Appalachia in the 1980s. This mission continues today to bring health care access to anyone and everyone who needs help.
If we talk one year from now, reflecting on what a great year it’s been, what did you/the organization achieve? The Health Wagon saw 6,300 patients with over 13,000 encounters, the Health Wagon provided colposcopies and free cystoscopies via telehealth (1st in the nation). The Health Wagon provided $1,888,368 in value of care at the Wise Remote Area Medical event. The Health Wagon had over 2,195 volunteers. Finally, the Health Wagon launched a $1,000,000 capital campaign in November of this year.
What’s next for you in your work? What are you looking forward to? Our hope is to build a new stationary clinic in the distressed county of Dickenson in Virginia. The clinic in Clintwood, Virginia will provide opportunities for new, updated exam rooms, broadband and telehealth opportunities, and offices to accommodate a growing staff and will include a laboratory, a dental suite and radiology.
What do you wish others knew about the organization? Volunteer opportunities – many individuals can make a difference in helping us provide compassionate, quality healthcare to the medically underserved in our area.
Please click this link to access a list of Health Wagon’s recent media/press: http://thehealthwagon.org/hwwp/in-the-news/

Every year, through our Catalyst program, we select a small group of organizations that inspire us by creatively working to solve entrenched or chronic social issues in new and promising ways, and send each organization an unexpected gift to support their incredible work. The 25 grantees for 2017 are listed in alphabetical order.
BOUNCE, The Basketball Opera: BOUNCE, the Basketball Opera was created by Brooklyn-based nonprofit, Ardea Arts, and the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre. Performed on a basketball court, BOUNCE is grounded in contemporary issues facing today’s youth, particularly teen violence. The production, which pairs diverse casting with a fresh approach to arts education, integrates high school students into the world of opera using the powerful medium of basketball.
Breakthrough Christmas Store: Breakthrough Urban Ministries uses an innovative gift-giving strategy at its annual Christmas Store: instead of pre-selecting gifts for families, Breakthrough asks donors to help with a gift drive. Then community members and homeless guests are invited to shop for and purchase gifts for their families at a greatly reduced price. This empowers parents, grandparents, and caregivers to be part of the gift-giving process, and is a dignifying and practical way for shoppers to provide gifts for loved ones or themselves. Each year, Breakthrough needs about 5,000 gifts for 500 shoppers. Breakthrough’s other services include homeless intervention, youth development and neighborhood transformation.
BUILD: Since 1999, BUILD has used entrepreneurship to engage historically disadvantaged youth, decrease high school dropout rates, and increase college enrollment. BUILD combines academic instruction with real-world business experiences and critical skill-building in order to prepare students for the future. BUILD operates three San Francisco Bay Area sites, and one site in each of Washington, DC and Boston, MA and serves over 1,000 students over twenty public high schools. Over 90% of its seniors have applied to and gone on to college.
Center on Halsted: Founded in 1973 as Gay Horizons, Center on Halsted is the Midwest’s most comprehensive community center dedicated to advancing community and securing the health and well-being of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) people of Chicagoland. Approximately 1,400 community members visit the Center every day, located in the heart of Chicago’s Lakeview Neighborhood. Center on Halsted also serves as an incubator for a number of smaller LGBTQ non-profit organizations, called Resident Partners. Resident Partners provides operational support, space and resources for organizations that may otherwise find it difficult to interact and grow.
Community Activism Law Alliance: Chicago-based Community Activism Law Alliance (CALA) brings together lawyers and activists in a collaborative pursuit for justice by leveraging legal services to benefit the most marginalized communities and individuals, while addressing funding and impact limitations. CALA is community-located, community-collaborative, and community-directed. The organization uses free, existing neighborhood spaces, and the community provides staffing, language and administrative support, and office supplies. CALA’s partners decide the hours, areas of law, priority areas, eligibility criteria, location, and types of services.
The Dream.US: TheDream.US is the nation’s largest college access and success program for DREAMers. TheDream.US, works to help over 4,000 highly motivated DREAMers graduate from college with career-ready degrees. In three years the organization has awarded $19.3 million in scholarships and has committed an additional $50 million. Students achieve a 94% first year persistence rate.
Edesia: Edesia is a non-profit organization that manufactures specialized ready-to-use foods (RUFs) to change lives. Each year, millions of “miracle packets” leave Edesia’s Rhode Island factory and are delivered to malnourished children all over the world by humanitarian aid workers serving the hardest-to-reach and most inhospitable places on the planet. Edesia currently employs 70 people hailing from over 23 countries. Since 2010, Edesia’s RUF’s have reached over 5.5 million children in over 50 countries.
Experimental Station: Experimental Station is working to build independent cultural infrastructure on the South Side of Chicago. It does this by connecting educational and cultural programs, small business enterprises, and community initiatives. Initiatives include a farmers market, a community bike shop, a coffee shop, a multimedia documentary production company, a nonprofit print magazine, and regular free community events. The organization’s goal is to become operationally self-sustainable by building their revenue base through building and event rentals.
Greater Chicago Food Depository: The Greater Chicago Food Depository, Chicago’s food bank, is a nonprofit food distribution and training center that provides food while striving to end hunger in the community. The Food Depository makes a daily impact across Cook County with a network of 700 pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, mobile programs, children’s programs, older adult programs and innovative responses that address the root causes of hunger. In fiscal year 2015 – 2016, the Food Depository distributed 70 million pounds of shelf-stable food, fresh produce, dairy products and meat, the equivalent of 160,000 meals every day.
Guitars Over Guns: Guitars over Guns provides mentoring for at-risk youth through music and arts education. The GOGO program is designed to engage youth through culturally relevant artistic mediums, using a hands-on approach to learn music, dance, and visual arts. Professional artists are paired with small groups of students for the school-year, using this unique arts-learning process to build strong mentoring relationships. Through this connection, mentors are able to help students navigate the obstacles standing between them success.
Himalayan Cataract Project: Himalayan Cataract Project works to overcome barriers impeding delivery of cataract care to underserved, needlessly blind people in the developing world. At the core of the work is the goal to achieve high-quality, low-cost eye care that can be sustained in the developing world for the long-term. In 2015, HCP and its partners provided more than 940,000 screenings and performed more than 83,000 surgeries across Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to strengthen and grow eye care systems in these regions, HCP also provides education and training. Since 2005, HCP has trained over 300 ophthalmic personnel from 19 countries.
Illinois Business Immigration Coalition: The Illinois Business Immigration Coalition (IBIC) represents a diverse set of businesses and business associations promoting sensible, comprehensive federal immigration reform to benefit the people and economy of the state of Illinois. The organization aims to unite key groups across diverse sectors – high-skilled and low-skilled, large corporations and small businesses – in a push for sensible immigration reform alongside elected officials and immigrant advocates. The organization’s goal is to provide a strong and effective voice for Illinois businesses in the national immigration conversation and to urge elected officials to vote for the US economy and local communities by supporting comprehensive, sensible immigration reform.
Latinitas: Based in Austin and El Paso, TX, Latinitas is dedicated to empowering Latina youth using media and technology. Latinitas serves approximately 500 girls daily through after school clubs. Club leaders work with girls in interactive lessons on blogging, photography, graphic and web design, filmmaking, podcasting, game and app design and new lessons in coding, virtual and augmented reality. Girls in Club Latinitas publish on bi-lingual platforms, and broadcast on radio and YouTube based channels. Attendees also share their work locally and nationally through city-wide photo shows and film festivals.
Legal Service Corporation National Public Libraries Training Initiative: While public libraries are a place where visitors, often low-income, seek information on questions, interests, and problems, librarians are not equipped to support personal issues like finances, health or family matters. Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the nation’s largest funder of civil legal aid, is partnering with the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a nonprofit global library cooperative that provides high-quality, free online professional development to librarians across the US, to train librarians on how to identify certain civil legal issues and direct their patrons to appropriate resources to help them with their civil legal problem.
My Block, My Hood, My City: My Block, My Hood, My City provides youth from under-resourced neighborhoods with new experiences to expose them to possibilities beyond their own communities. The mission is to help teenagers overcome poverty and isolation by boosting educational attainment and providing opportunities that make a difference in their lives. Recent explorations include visiting art galleries, learning how to sail, serving meals to the homeless and taking students to the National Museum of African America History and Culture in DC. In addition, the organization sells hoodies and sweatshirts for revenue and produces a regular TV series around ‘hood’ exploration.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across the United States. The Lifeline is comprised of a national network of over 160 local crisis centers, combining custom local care and resources with national standards and best practices.
Nerdy Media: 88% of Chicago’s black and Latinos aged 16-19 are unemployed and 98% of employers surveyed say they look for mindset over skill set when searching for new talent. Nerdy Media helps Chicago’s teens and young adults connect the dots between aspiration, action and achievement. Nerdy Media provides experiential development workshops, as well as through a youth collective that provide students between 16 and 24 who live on Chicago’s South Side with real world work experience via real projects.
News Literary Project: The News Literacy Project (NLP) is a nonpartisan national education nonprofit that works with educators and journalists to teach middle school and high school students how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. NLP provides these students with the essential skills they need to become smart, active consumers of news and information and engaged, informed citizens. The model provides real-world learning experiences for students and connects them with journalists who reinforce these lessons by drawing on their own experiences and on recent examples from the news media.
ProjectFIRE: Project FIRE (Fearless Initiative for Recovery and Empowerment) is an artist development and employment program that offers victims of violence healing through glassblowing. The organization combines glass arts education, mentoring, and trauma psychoeducation to support trauma recovery and create jobs for youth injured by violence, providing a holistic model of care and opportunity.
Re-imagining Migration: Re-Imagining Migration seeks to foster understanding and the successful inclusion of migrant youth across the globe. RIM provides educators with the resources, training, and tools to engage the children of migration and their peers to learn from one another in reflective learning environments. The goal is to empower students to become ethical, engaged, and active civic participants in the interconnected world. The project is currently developing rigorously vetted resources for classrooms and opportunities for lifelong learning and quality professional development to foster the civic skills, social, and intellectual habits necessary for democracy to flourish in the age of mass migrations.
Root & Rebound: Root & Rebound’s goal is to increase access to justice and opportunity for people in reentry from prison and jail, and to educate and empower those who support them. Root & Rebound also seeks to advance and strengthen the reentry infrastructure across the state of California. The organization’s model of support and empowerment goes beyond the traditional 1-1 client-attorney relationship and is based on the idea that a small group of attorneys and advocates could disrupt cycles of poverty and incarceration by transferring powerful knowledge and skills to the people directly impacted by the criminal justice system, and the families and communities that support them.
Symphony for a Broken Orchestra: There are over 1,000 musical instruments owned by The School District of Philadelphia that cannot be played because they are broken with no available budget to fix them. Symphony for a Broken Orchestra is a city-wide effort initiated by Temple Contemporary in partnership with the School District of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boyer College of Music & Dance, the Curtis Institute, and numerous professional/amateur musicians throughout the city. In December 2017, these hundreds of musicians performed a composition written by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang to unite generations of Philadelphia musicians and audiences in support of music education for public schools.  Following the performance, Temple Contemporary, in collaboration with instrument repair professionals throughout the region, will repair all of the fixable instruments and return them back to the public schools they came from in the fall of 2018. Instrument repair kits will also be installed in every public school offering instrumental music classes, allowing any minor repairs to be fixed in the future.
Thistle Farms: Based in Nashville, TN, Thistle Farms has developed a comprehensive model to offer women survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction, hope and healing through a holistic residential program, employment with one of four social enterprises (natural body and home product company, the Café at Thistle Farms, the Studios, and Thistle Farms Global), and a growing national and global network. Last year 59 women employed by Thistle Farms earned over $1 million a year in salary and wages. In addition, Thistle Farms provided 9,215 nights of safe, supportive housing, and 14,100 hours of counseling and therapy. Finally, 40 organizations across the country have replicated the housing model, offering 185 beds.
Unchartered: Drawing from a vast network of people from companies, foundations, governments, policy makers, etc., Unchartered (formerly The Unreasonable Institute) builds coordinated movements of people to address big, entrenched problems. Current programs include addressing unchartered food access, developing a future cities accelerator, an agribusiness partnership in Ghana, and 5-day accelerator labs made up of teams around the world.
Vox Teen Communications: Founded in 1993, VOX Teen Communications is based in Atlanta, GA. The organization started as a monthly newspaper and has evolved into a multi-platform media enterprise with daily and weekly digital publishing. VOX 20/20 prepares teens for future success through experiences including publishing and leadership opportunities, job shadowing with Atlanta media professionals, college and career readiness workshops, financial literacy training, skills-based training, crisis intervention, and social and emotional support. Through VOX’s publishing opportunities, teens research, write personal and journalistic features, create art, and design publications to grow personally and inform and inspire a citywide audience.

“Digital technology has transformed the world we live in – disrupting entire industries and changing the social landscape. Childhood is no exception. One in three internet users worldwide is a child, and young people are now the most connected of all age groups. From photos posted online to medical records stored in the cloud, many children have a digital footprint before they can even walk or talk. Digital technology can be a game changer for disadvantaged children, offering them new opportunities to learn, socialize and make their voices heard – or it can be yet another dividing line. Millions of children are left out of an increasingly connected world. And the online gender gap is growing: Globally there are 12 per cent more men than women online, and the gap is greatest in low-income countries. And as digital technology rapidly evolves, so can the risks children face online – from cyberbullying to misuse of their private information to online sexual abuse and exploitation. For better and for worse, digital technology is an irreversible fact of our lives. How we minimize the risks while maximizing access to the benefits will help shape the lives and futures of a new generation of digital natives. UNICEF set out to uncover how the internet and digital technology are helping and hindering children’s learning, well-being and social relationships. Explore these stories and learn about the urgent need to make the internet safer for children while increasing access to digital technology for every child, especially the most disadvantaged.”

To learn more and download the report: https://www.unicef.org/sowc2017/

 

Recipe for Change

Interview with Recipe for Change founder, Bruno Abate, on why he started the organization and what he’s thinking about.

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Background

Organization Vision: To become the national model for innovation in evidence-based jail and prison rehabilitation programming thereby reducing recidivism, building stronger families, and safer communities through individual change.

Organization Mission:  Recipe for Change brings culinary, fine arts, and life skills training to detainees of the Cook County jail with a unique emphasis on supporting individual growth, change from within, and restoration of personal dignity.

Population Served: Detainees of the Cook County Jail

Founding Year: 2014

Problem and Approach: The United State’s system of incarceration has too long focused on warehousing while overlooking the essence of the human beings in custody. Therefore, Recipe for Change seeks to bring change both to the system and to those enrolled in the program. Foundational to real change is the fostering of dignity and self-respect in an environment where participants are recognized for their individual worth while learning skills to support themselves, their families and their communities. Recipe for Change is fortunate to have the enthusiastic support of Sheriff Tom Dart in the work that we do.

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Interview

Why did you start this program? Recipe for Change was initiated from the perspective that each day spent in incarceration is a day that can be used to learn something or to lose something. Seeking to interrupt often multi-generational patterns, our instructors have a long view on their work in terms of the impact and influence our students will have on subsequent generations. We seek to return contributing and confident citizens who have been reminded of their humanity –rather than stripped of it– to their families and communities. This, indeed, is a human right.

What kind of trends do you see in your area of work? We are pleased to see increasing attention to the rehabilitative side of the criminal justice system. Whether fueled by a greater awareness of the escalating costs of mass incarceration or the social impact and failed experience of incarceration in addressing recidivism and other societal ills, we are pleased that the issue is gaining greater attention in the political sphere and in social dialogue.

What do you think will change most about over the next 5 years? While five years may be a somewhat ambitious time frame, we do see increasing attention to the twin issues of mass incarceration and the need for effective approaches to returning contributing citizens to our communities. We see the trend line moving forward (slowly), yet it should pick up speed as these issues remain in the national spotlight and become increasingly urgent. Within ten years, we see a more consistent recognition of the need to direct resources to holistic rehabilitative programming (taking greater account of the societal forces giving rise to phenomena of mass incarceration) while the injustices of mass incarceration come into focus and are addressed by a more activist and receptive generation.

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in the population you serve? Why? Self-respect, personal accountability/respect for others and maintaining a vision for the future.

• We believe that by nurturing human dignity in our student population while teaching skills we create a sense of self-respect, competency and self-esteem that, when buried deep within, will create a source of resiliency to inevitable life challenges.
• Likewise, in demonstrating the importance of accountability to self and others, our students practice self-discipline while maintaining an appreciation of their place in the world and importance to those relying on them—whether in the workplace, family, or community.
• Maintaining a vision for the future depends on the other two skills and reminds our students of the potential that lies within in ways that may have been missing or inadequately nurtured before joining our program.

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in your staff? Why? 

• Our staff must work with our students without judgment. We recognize that the circumstances giving rise to pre-trial incarceration are complicated and are not the focus of our interaction.
• Our staff recognizes and focuses on the potential within each human being in the present moment while helping to support a vision of a satisfactory life outside the jail.
• Our staff must also cultivate patience within themselves as they work with a diverse group of individuals who are starting from many difference places in terms of self-discipline, attention span, and personal interactions.

How has technology influenced the way your organization works? This is an area where we have experienced only minor technological influence. Our program largely depends on interpersonal relations and traditional culinary classroom technique (other than by installation of a/v monitors to enlarge and enhance classroom learning). In developing state of the art metrics for our performance tracking we will use computer programming. Additionally, social media has facilitated post-release communication with our population offering additional opportunities for support and peer-to-peer communication.

Who are your key mentors? Pasticceria Giotto in Padua, Italy is a highly successful prison-based rehabilitation program that has been shown to dramatically reduce the recidivism of its participants. Chef Abate was influenced by this program when he first felt called to do his part in addressing what he saw as gross deficiencies in the U.S. penal system. Here is a link to their English language website.

What’s next for you in your work? What are you looking forward to? We are looking forward to the expansion of programming to include music and a program in the women’s division. We also hope to start a capital campaign for a post-release transition center and add more internal structure to our organization. 

What do you wish others knew about the organization? That our student interns make the best thin crust pizza in Chicago! (see, Trevor Noah on the Daily Show). And, we welcome others (and need them!) to be a part of the change!

On a technical note, we would like to see a greater understanding that jail is a pre-trial holding facility most often populated by people who cannot afford bail. We often hear that “criminals” don’t deserve our resources, attention, or compassion—when this population has not been convicted of the charges that brought them to Cook County Jail. We firmly believe that people are deserving of basic human rights and society benefits from a rehabilitative approach regardless of conviction status but we would like the general public to better understand the difference.

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Press

Jail culinary program preaches power of food (Chicago Tribune)

Cook(ing) County Jail – WTTW Chicago

Local chef teaches Cook County Jail inmates to cook healthy food– ABC7 Chicago

Creating Cooks at Cook County Jail – Wall Street Journal

‘The Daily Show’ says they found the best pizza in Chicago – in Cook County Jail – WGNChicago

Chef Teaches Inmates At Cook County Jail How To Cook, How To Live – Huffington Post

Chef Bruno and his Recipe for Change: “If we do a little bit every day, we can make the world better” – WGN Radio

 

The Top Venture Philanthropy Nonprofits and Foundations – Make It Better
By Will Mendelson

According to Nonprofit Quarterly, “… there’s no one definition or model for ‘venture philanthropy’ — nor is one needed, because it’s ‘more of a blanket term, an expression of a more purpose-, results- and responsibility-driven worldview’ many foundations now embrace.” At Make It Better, we’re proud to work closely with these types of nonprofits and organizations every day. Organizations that are tried and true through our previous partnerships include the Chicago Public Education Fund, A Better Chicago, Invest for Kids, the Y of Chicago, Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation and the Lefkofsky Family Foundation. These Chicago-based organizations have a strong vision and clearly articulated priorities.

The Susan Crown Exchange is “a social investment organization with a fresh approach to catalyzing change through philanthropy.” It explores how agency and resilience play a role in connecting others, and the organization focuses on social and emotional learning. Their mission is to drive social change, and they are so successful with what they set out to achieve.

The Keywell Foundation has backed the Change the World Social Entrepreneurs Competition, which awarded $1 million in cash prizes. Forbes spearheaded the competition, which focuses on ideas that have the potential to change the world. The completion, held in the fall of 2016, garnered more than 1,000 young entrepreneurs. Along with Brad Keywell, Ashton Kutcher also lent his hand to the competition, signing on to a three-year partnership to host for profit competitions for young social entrepreneurs.

Chicago Beyond focuses on scalability and partners with the University of Chicago on important research. Their mission statement reads, “We believe the young people of Chicago possess incredible potential. Chicago Beyond aims to help realize that potential.” They take a three-step approach, which consists of sourcing and supporting innovative programs that improve education and increase safety for young Chicgoans, investing in research and sparking further philanthropic and public investments that improve the lives of these young people.

Social Venture Partners Chicago (SVP Chicago) invest time, money and an expertise in innovative nonprofit that have the potential to make meaningful and sustainable improvements within the Chicagoland community. The group consists of lawyers, investors, educators, business professionals and philanthropists who help solve problems and aim to improve the communities in which they live. Social Venture Partners Chicago “is a partnership of philanthropically-minded individuals striving to make a significant impact on the lives of those in our community.” They take an engaged philanthropy approach to funding innovative and scalable nonprofits and we strengthen the impact of our dollars through volunteering our time, expertise and network connections in support of the mission.

Emerson Collective, by Laurene Powell Jobs, is organized as an LLC — not as a nonprofit — which means it can make for-profit investments and political donations. They’re an organization dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential and focus their work on education, immigration reform, the environment and other social justice initiatives. They use a wide range of tools and strategies, which include partnering with entrepreneurs and experts, parents and policymakers, advocates and administrators to spur change and promote equality.

These national organizations regularly surface on top/best lists for venture philanthropy nonprofits.

The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation is a global venture philanthropy firm supporting early stage, high impact social enterprises. They believe that with early funding and rigorous support, exceptional leaders, tackling some of society’s most complex problems, they can make the world a better place. They find, fund and support exceptional leaders with innovative and highly impactful ideas that have the potential to scale and provide $300,000 of unrestricted capital over three years.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. For 50 years, they have supported efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment, improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries, promote the health and economic well-being of women, support vibrant performing arts, strengthen Bay Area communities and make the philanthropy sector more effective.

The Seattle Foundation has teamed up with the Bullitt Foundation, Loom Foundation and Social Venture Partners to create a new funding collaborative – the Sustainable Communities Funders group. Seattle Foundation strengthens the health and vitality of Seattle by connecting generous people with well-informed philanthropic strategies and by developing targeted strategies to quicken the pace of progress toward a stronger community for all.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation prioritizes organization leaders with transformative ideas, insists on results and assists with thought-partners and bench-marking and scrutinizes for proper leadership to leverage the investment. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation makes grants to promising people and organizations working to improve public schools, advance scientific and medical research and make the arts accessible to the broadest public.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was established to create positive outcomes for future generations. The Foundation enables lasting, meaningful change through sustained, scientifically sound philanthropy. We appreciate our role as society’s venture capital, making bold investments and taking considered risks, to attain significant results that can improve the future. We seek to achieve through philanthropy what Gordon Moore accomplished for the world of computing: to create an ever more powerful engine of progress in society.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on the areas of greatest need, on the ways in which they can do the most good.
From poverty to health, to education, their areas of focus offer the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality of life for billions of people. To do this, they build partnerships that bring together resources, expertise, and vision and work with the best organizations around the globe to identify issues, find answers, and drive change.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation aggregates capital and integrates into investment approach, thereby channeling capital more effectively to scale programs that work. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation champions economically disadvantaged youth and partners with other investors to expand programs with compelling evidence in order to help more vulnerable young people become successful adults.

The Robin Hood Foundation “compares the impacts of dissimilar programs by measuring them on this same scale: how much the program is going to increase future earning and income.” The Foundation invests in the most effective ways to fight poverty in New York City by partnering with more than 200 of the best nonprofits in the city. Their mission focuses on improving the living standards for 1.8 million low-income New Yorkers.

The Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2) is a community of more than 200 individuals and families who have come together to learn about effective giving and pool their resources to support innovative social ventures. SV2’s model of engaged, collaborative giving has four components: grants and impact investing, learning programs, capacity building, and family engagement. This powerful combination of activities enables the fund to learn more and create more impact.

A new report by Brookings, Signs of digital distress: Mapping broadband availability and subscription in American neighborhoods, provides in-depth data and visualizations showing where remaining broadband gaps persist throughout the country.

Based on an analysis of all 435 congressional districts, every member stands to benefit from federal policies that boost wireline broadband availability and adoption. Developing bipartisan solutions—especially for Republican members’ constituents, who face the largest broadband gaps—will ensure that every household has a chance to participate in America’s rapidly-evolving digital economy.

Check out this blog from Brookings, which dives into the data as related to congressional jurisdictions, and provides thoughts for federal policymakers to consider implementing to move the needle on connecting all Americans to the digital economy.

 Library For All

Interview with Library For All founder, Tanyella Evans on why she started the organization and what she’s thinking about.

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Background

Organization Vision: Provide individuals the tools to learn, dream, and aspire to lift themselves out of poverty.

Organization Mission:  Make knowledge accessible to all. LFA sees an opportunity to leverage mobile technology to provide the world’s poorest people with access to books and educational resources that are essential for increasing literacy rates, improving health outcomes and reducing poverty.

Population Served: Children/adults with access to a mobile phone or tablet device in Haiti, Rwanda, DRC, Cambodia, and Mongolia.

Founding Year: 2012

Problem and Approach: In a world where at least 758 million adults and 263 million out-of-school children lack basic literacy skills, access to books is essential for increasing literacy rates, improving health outcomes and reducing poverty. Library For All has created a digital library that allows users to access culturally relevant and linguistically appropriate content sourced from local and international publishers, at a much lower cost than building physical libraries. “The Library” is designed specifically for developing communities to work on any operating system or device that those living in poverty have access to, such as low-cost mobile devices, tablets or PCs.

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Interview

Why did you start this program? When I was 17, I volunteered as a teacher for a year in Uganda, and it was a year that changed my life. At the school where I worked, books were so scarce that they were kept under lock and key in the principal’s office. I had just one textbook to teach a class of 40 students. Each day, I would transcribe our lesson on the chalkboard, and after class, the students I taught were so eager to learn that they would beg me for homework. At a young age, I saw firsthand how easy it might be for individuals in developing countries to fall short of functional literacy, even after attending school. And unsurprisingly, in accordance with illiteracy rates, as much as 40% of the global population does not have access to books in a language they speak or understand.

At Library For All, we believe technology is a powerful, equalizing force in the face of of such a massive illiteracy crisis: through widespread technology, our mission is to make knowledge accessible to all, equally. We have built a global digital library platform that houses content curated for communities across the developing world. Today, individuals in countries like Haiti and Rwanda can access reading material via our digital library using devices they already own (i.e. mobile phones and tablets).

What kind of trends do you see in your area of work? One of the biggest trends in the education sector right now is the collective realization that children in developing countries do not necessarily learn or gain literacy skills just by being enrolled in school. Quality education is not about school attendance, but rather the educational experience, as it must produce improvements in literacy, educational attainment, and therefore earning capacity. This is what is required to break the cycle of poverty. Children need quality educational materials and quality school teacher instruction.

Another trend in our space is the fact that more and more people have access to technology via low-cost tablets and mobile phones, but there is a huge need for relevant, local language content. A device is only as good as the content it provides for the user, and through our work, we have realized a gap in the content that’s needed for people in countries like Haiti, Rwanda, and Cambodia to achieve a quality education.

What do you think will change most about over the next 5 years? We live in a world where people living on $1.25 per day have access to a mobile device. There are 6 billion mobile subscribers globally today, and over the next 5 years, I believe that mobile phone penetration will continue to increase exponentially. I believe that nearly every person will not only own a mobile device, but that device will be some type of smart phone equipped with high-speed data. As a result, I believe the cost of data as a whole will decrease. Finally, as more and more people become connected to the national and global economy through mobile money, I foresee new opportunities for earned revenue and business in there (previously developing) markets.

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in the population you serve? Why? We focus on providing tools to the population we serve to foster independence, resourcefulness, and pride. We do not want the communities that we work with to become dependent on us, but rather to partner with us in helping their own communities to thrive.

What are the three most important skills you focus on developing in your staff? Why? 

• A “get s**t done” attitude – If we want to make our digital library accessible to all, we have a lot of work to do if we want to solve this issue in our lifetime. Our staff members are willing to dig their heels in deeply and help to create something from nothing.
• A data-driven approach – Data speaks! We have very little resources, and we can only afford to invest in what we know works. The data helps paint a picture of success vs. learnings, and we rely on it.
• Independent strategic thought – we need to keep our eye on the big picture, and each of us needs to consistently remind the other of that.

Who are your key mentors? Too many to count, but I’d like to highlight two specifically. Linda Smith is my spiritual mentor and guide. She helps me to be conscious and aware of how I show up to work and to bring positive energy into my interactions. She helps me keep my ego in check and makes sure I don’t get caught up in the “story” of who I am. Keith Wright has helped me to develop a rigorous, agile, data-driven approach to our organizational strategy. He is also a role model to me for how to be a good coach – he is someone who is always in my corner, but constantly makes me want to better myself. I want to be that for my staff.

If we talk one year from now, reflecting on what a great year it’s been, what did you/the organization achieve? In 12-months time, we will have scaled the reach of our digital library in our program countries, particularly in Haiti and Rwanda, increasing our readership from 10,000 to 25,000 readers. We will also have created original, local language books for our digital library in our program countries: Haiti, Rwanda, Cambodia, DRC, and Mongolia. We created 200+ local language books for Haiti in 2017 via writer workshops funded by USAID, and we will have replicated our writer workshop model in our program countries!

What’s next for you in your work? What are you looking forward to? After reaching our 12-month milestone, the future is thrilling! We will be poised for rapid scale in our program countries listed above, and in 15 additional countries, the majority of which are located in East Africa and Southeast Asia. Our goal is to provide our digital library of local language book to 30M+ children and adults in the next 3 years through partnerships with local schools, governments and NGOs.

What do you wish others knew about the organization? I want all of our future supporters and partners to know that we take a systems change approach to our work. Beyond supporting the needs of children and adults to achieve literacy and a quality education, we aim to improve other global systems by way of our work. For example, through our writer workshops, we are shifting the publishing industry in our program countries by working to create new supply-chains for content and ways of bringing relevant knowledge to the world.