Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Philadelphia's Secret Ingredient for More Civic Engagement: a Lot of Food

    Food and common passions are bringing people together for solutions-oriented conversations about the communities they live in. The Knight Foundation’s “On the Table” series started in Chicago and has now expanded to 30 cities. It’s an all-day event to encourage civic dialogue.

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  • Meet The Woman Who's Transforming How Kenya Sees Disability

    After volunteering for the special olympics, Maria Omare decided children with disabilities in Kenya needed a space where they would be treated with dignity, care, and respect. So she rented a one-room space, and called it the The Action Foundation, a grassroots organization that provides social inclusion and education for children with disabilities. Eight years later, the organization has ballooned, “since 2012, the foundation has helped almost 240 children with various needs, large and small.”

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  • These Kenyan widows are fighting against sexual 'cleansing'

    In Kenya, and in other parts of Africa, widows are considered impure until a male has sex with them and cleanses them. If they don’t get cleansed they face social stigma. However, one widow, Roseline Orwa, refused, and instead created the Rona Foundation. “The center provides loss and grief counseling, financial support and teaches entrepreneurial skills.” She also successfully lobbied for a bill that outlawed widow cleansing. However, even though the practice is still prevalent in rural parts of Kenya, both men and women are talking about ending the practice through talk sessions offered by the center. “A

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  • The Lasting Pain of Children Sent to Orphanages, Rather Than Families

    Casa Viva is an organization in Latin America that prioritizes family reunification over adoption. They have placed about 640 children with foster families, “60 percent of those went back to their biological family or another relative. About 35 percent were adopted.” In contrast to foster homes, orphanages have become thriving business which recruit western volunteers and charge them large fees. Casa Viva opposes this model because most kids have parents who are alive, but can’t afford to raise them.

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  • Unprotected

    Created to “help some of the world’s most vulnerable children get off the street and into school," More Than Me Foundation exposed its students to widespread sexual abuse by an influential staffer. The charity lacked board members and top leadership with experience running schools and resisted being held accountable for the abuse.

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  • Transforming Tulsa, Starting with a Park

    Gathering Place is the name of a new park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is a large-scale creative park project that, rather than receiving funding from the local government, was funded entirely through a local philanthropic foundation. One goal of the park is to bring different areas of the city together--though it remains to be seen if this will work as well as if privately-funded public spaces are effective in the future.

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  • Can Philanthropy Save a City?

    Stockton is courting philanthropists by billing itself as a budding hub of innovation for fighting poverty. The city is mitigating the risks of tapping private foundations to fund city services by identifying target policies and programs ahead of time.

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  • How a Little-Known Nonprofit Is Bringing Social Practice Art to New York's Most Elite Museums—and Beyond

    The Kenan Trust is philanthropic foundation that supports “social practice art,” in which the arts facilitate change like restoring homes in urban areas and revitalizing immigration services. Their funds have reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum of Art, and the Laundromat Project. A recent $6million program supports 21 New York City-based arts organizations that engage with hard to reach communities. Kenan argues that its approach is not “charity” but “justice.”

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  • Investing in Local Business to Get an Even Break

    The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, known as Balle, encourages a “localism” approach to decrease wealth disparities. By hosting a fellowship program to share best practices as well as encouraging philanthropic foundations to invest their endowments in mission-aligned organizations, Balle as served 121,650 small businesses and worked with philanthropic leaders representing over $8 billion in assets.

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  • Why didn't this program aimed at boosting teacher effectiveness help students?

    The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's teacher-evaluation reform initiative failed to generate the expected improvements in student performance, according to a recent study published by RAND. Critics point to the program's singular focus on teacher improvement as a reason for its shortcomings. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute summarizes, "It was an expensive experiment, but it was a reasonable hypothesis. ... For good or bad, we've learned a lot."

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