Reflections on SXSW
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As some of you may have read via Opportunity Nation’s Senior Advisor Sarah Beaulieu’s Huffington Post blog: I Took My Baby to SXSW and Lived to Tell About It, I was beyond honored to attend SXSW Interactive as one of fiveInteractive Scholarship winners this past month. Sarah and I (accompanied by Opportunity Baby) headed down to Austin, Texas to immerse ourselves in technology and introduce a whole new audience to the Opportunity Index.
Welcome Strong Women, Strong Girls
•Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG) is a nonprofit organization with an important mission: building communities of women committed to supporting positive social change. To do this, the organization has created a model of mentoring that reinforces confidence, expands aspirations and creates a civically engaged life among three generations: elementary-aged girls, undergraduate women and professional women.
Bridging the Digital Divide and Improving Opportunity with Broadband
•Opportunity News Free Community College for all and a Tale of Two Counties
•Paying it Forward: Coaching Leads to Success
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When Colton Alexio learned that his high school coach of four years, Ron Murphy, had been diagnosed with cancer, Alexio was distraught. “Coach Murphy – one of the most influential people in my life – said that he would be there for us ‘no matter what’, in sickness or health,” says Alexio, “And he wasn’t playing around. He was there for me every day until he passed.”
Our Youth Need Jobs With a Future
•An insightful, sobering March 16 story in the New York Times details just how hard it has become to lift oneself up from poverty in America, even if a person works hard. This thoroughly-reported article: Low-Wage Workers Are Finding Poverty Harder to Escape should be required reading for anyone who believes that people who struggle just to get by every day deserve their plight because they lack a work ethic or shirk responsibility for their complicated lives.
