When I was just six years old, I made a choice in hopes of creating a legacy that my father never got the chance to do: to seize the education opportunities present to me at the moment, and make the most of these opportunities so that I could become the first in my family to attend and graduate from college.
Today, many young people are missing out on this important rite of passage: their first job. While not all companies can provide entry level jobs, there are a range of ways that companies can introduce young people to the business world and the knowledge, skills, and experience that are required to take the first step to getting a job.
Ensuring that more Americans have greater access to the ladder of opportunity is a critical issue for our nation. In today's political discourse, candidates and office holders at every level of government and in both major parties champion the value of "opportunity." The challenge we're seeing today though is that our candidates are rarely pressed to explain how their policies or votes will actually create opportunity for all Americans.
The Opportunity Index, which we at Measure of America created in partnership with Opportunity Nation, uses more than a dozen data points to rank every state and assign almost every county in America an opportunity grade ranging from "A" for excellent to "F" for failing.
When Utahns hit hard times, they are better positioned than much of the nation to find a road up and out, newly released data shows. Utah rates 16th on the 2012 Opportunity Index, a conglomerate of factors that portray how upwardly mobile residents in 2900 counties around the nation are likely to be.
We know mentoring is a critical strategy for improving the lives of young people, boosting their academic achievement, social development, and chances for long-term success.
On Monday, Opportunity Nation -- a bipartisan national coalition of more than 250 organizations, businesses, schools, and others that are dedicated to restoring social mobility in America -- launches its Week of Action across the country with a National Day of Mentoring.
Every day teaching and working at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston I work with students who have so much intellect, so much motivation and so little opportunity.
At the core of the Opportunity Nation campaign is the idea that, in America, the circumstances of your birth, the community you grow up in, should not condemn you or any person to an inescapable economic fate.
Last week’s Opportunity Nation Summit featured engaging discussions of the challenges we face in repairing the broken ladder of opportunity as well as leading ideas for fixing it.
