Opportunity News Free Community College for all and a Tale of Two Counties
•Paying it Forward: Coaching Leads to Success
•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.
The Income Gap, the Longevity Gap and the Opportunity Index
•Is Free Community College the Next Step in Higher Education?
•Opportunity News: Mothers in Poverty and the Future for Young Americans
•Highlights from President Obama’s “Opportunity for All” Budget
•Why We Should Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to More Americans
•Opportunity Nation’s diverse coalition has long supported the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), one of the most effective anti-poverty programs of the last 40 years, and one that has benefitted millions of low-income families. But the EITC needs to be expanded to help lift more Americans out of poverty, especially adults without children and noncustodial parents.