KAPOR CENTER FOR SOCIAL IMPACT JOINS NINE LEADING FOUNDATIONS, WHITE HOUSE, TO EXPAND OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG MEN OF COLOR
Washington, DC–The Kapor Center for Social Impact and nine other leading foundations announced a joint effort with the White House today to help America’s young men of color reach their full potential in school, work and life.
Since 2008, the Kapor Center, through its innovative College Bound Brotherhood program, has helped hundreds of young men in the Bay Area successfully attend and graduate from college, unleashing their potential. In this unique public-private initiative The Kapor Center will use this and other successful programs it supports to help shape national programs that focus on the highest level of success and empowerment.
“Ensuring that all young people have the opportunity to succeed is what we at The Kapor Center for Social Impact tackle every day and we’re grateful that the White House is recognizing the significant role we are playing in expanding opportunity for young men of color, ” said Mitchell Kapor, co-founder and co-chair of the Center.
“We are proud to be represented by Managing Partner Cedric Brown at this historic announcement today, joining thousands of partners, including foundations, teachers, police chiefs, state and local legislators, and community based organizations across the country that are committed to investing in young people’s success ,” said Freada Kapor Klein, co-founder co-chair of the Center.
In addition to the $150 million in ongoing projects and the $200 million in new investments in programs that help young men of color succeed, the ten participating foundations are each committing $750,000 to build the infrastructure necessary to make this initiative a success. This initial funding will help find and rapidly spread solutions in areas such as early child development and school readiness, parenting and parent engagement, third grade literacy, educational opportunity and school discipline reform, interactions with the criminal justice system, ladders to jobs and economic opportunity, and healthy families and communities. The initiative will also endeavor to change the often-damaging narrative about boys and young men of color, and to promote effective public policy solutions.
In addition to the Kapor Center, the nine other foundations participating in this effort are the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The California Endowment, Ford Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Over the next 90 days, the foundations will assess which approaches have the highest potential to help the greatest number of young men. Those insights will be used to develop a blueprint for action that can leverage existing and new contributions from philanthropy, nonprofit organizations, faith-based institutions, the business community and ordinary citizens.