FACT SHEET: Opportunity
for all: President Obama Launches My Brother’s Keeper Initiative to Build
Ladders of Opportunity For Boys and Young Men of Color
“I’m reaching out to
some of America’s leading foundations and corporations on a new initiative to
help more young men of color facing especially tough odds to stay on track and
reach their full potential.”
– President Barack
Obama, January 28, 2014
“There are a lot of kids
out there who need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And
is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares
about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?”
– President Barack Obama,
July 19, 2013
President Obama is
taking action to launch My Brother’s Keeper – a new initiative to help
every boy and young man of color who is willing to do the hard work to get
ahead. For decades, opportunity has lagged behind for boys and young men of
color. But across the country, communities are adopting approaches to help put
these boys and young men on the path to success. The President wants to build
on that work. We can learn from communities that are partnering with local
businesses and foundations to connect these boys and young men to mentoring,
support networks, and skills they need to find a good job or go to college and
work their way up into the middle class. And the Administration will do its
part by helping to identify and promote programs that work.
That starts by using
proven tools that expand opportunity at key moments in the lives of these young
people. The President believes this includes ensuring access to basic health,
nutrition, and to high-quality early education to get these kids reading and
ready for school at the youngest age. But that’s not enough. We need to partner
with communities and police to reduce violence and make our classrooms and
streets safer. And we need to help these young men stay in school and find a
good job– so they have the opportunity to reach their full potential,
contribute to their communities and build decent lives for themselves and their
families.
New Presidential Task
Force to Expand Opportunity. President Obama will sign a Presidential Memorandum establishing
the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, an interagency effort, chaired by Assistant
to the President and Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, that will help us
determine what public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon
them, how the Federal Government’s own policies and programs can better support
these efforts, and how to better involve State and local officials, the private
sector, and the philanthropic community in these efforts.
The Task Force will work
across executive departments and agencies to:
- Assess the impact of Federal policies, regulations, and
programs of general applicability on boys and young men of color, so as to
develop proposals that will enhance positive outcomes and eliminate or
reduce negative ones.
- Recommend, where appropriate, incentives for the broad
adoption by national, State, and local public and private decision makers
of effective and innovative strategies and practices for providing
opportunities to and improving outcomes for boys and young men of color.
- Create an Administration-wide “What Works” online
portal to disseminate successful programs and practices that improve
outcomes for boys and young men of color.
- Develop a comprehensive public website, to be
maintained by the Department of Education, that will assess, on an ongoing
basis, critical indicators of life outcomes for boys and young men of
color in absolute and relative terms.
- Work with external stakeholders to highlight the
opportunities, challenges, and efforts affecting boys and young men of
color.
- Recommend to the President means of ensuring sustained
efforts within the Federal Government and continued partnership with the
private sector and philanthropic community as set forth in the
Presidential Memorandum.
Investments from Leading
Foundations and Businesses to Advance the Achievement of Boys and Young Men of
Color. Leading foundations and
businesses have long worked with others in philanthropy to create opportunities
for young men and boys of color and today are committing significant resources
to research critical intervention points in the lives of boys and young men of
color; change the often-damaging narrative about them; and catalyze coordinated
investments to seed, replicate, and scale up effective community solutions.
The foundations
supporting today’s call to action have already made extensive investments,
including $150 million in current spending that they have already approved or
awarded. Building on that, today these foundations are announcing that over the
next five years they seek to invest at least $200 million, alongside additional
investments from their peers in philanthropy and the business community, to
find and rapidly spread solutions that have the highest potential for impact in
key areas, including: early child development and school readiness, parenting
and parent engagement, 3rd 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 foundations will
work over the next 90 days to design a strategy and infrastructure for
coordination of these investments, which can be aligned with additional
commitments from a diverse array of actors from other sectors.
These foundations, who
are joining President Obama at today’s announcement, include The Annie E. Casey
Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The
California Endowment, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation, The Open Society Foundations, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and The Kapor Center for Social Impact. Many of
the foundations are members of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities
for Boys and Men of Color – a coalition of philanthropic institutions committed
to leveraging philanthropy’s role in improving life outcomes for boys and men
of color.
In addition to the
leadership from the philanthropic community, the My Brother’s Keeper initiative
will leverage participation from the business community and elected officials
to support this cross-sector effort. As part of today’s announcement, President
Obama will meet with a number of business leaders – including Joe Echevarria of
Deloitte, Magic Johnson of Magic Johnson Enterprises, Glenn Hutchins of Silver
Lake Partners, Adam Silver of the National Basketball Association and Thomas
Tull of Legendary Entertainment – to discuss ways in which they and their
companies can work with the Initiative to improve the life outcomes of boys and
young men of color.
The President will also
be joined today by public sector leaders including General Colin Powell, Mayor
Rahm Emanuel and the Honorable Michael Bloomberg. Additionally, several other
prominent members of the business community—including Rosalind Brewer of Sam’s
Club, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Don Thompson of McDonald’s—have
already expressed their support for this effort, and the White House expects
additional commitments in the coming days and months.
Data shows that boys and
young men of color, regardless of socio-economic background, are
disproportionately at risk throughout the journey from their youngest years to
college and career. For instance, large disparities remain in reading
proficiency, with 86 percent of black boys and 82 percent of Hispanic boys
reading below proficiency levels by the fourth grade – compared to 58 percent
of white boys reading below proficiency levels. Additionally, the
disproportionate number of black and Hispanic young men who are unemployed or
involved in the criminal justice system alone is a perilous drag on state
budgets, and undermines family and community stability. These young men are
more than six times as likely to be victims of murder than their white peers and
account for almost half of the country’s murder victims each year.
The effort launched
today is focused on unlocking the full potential of boys and young men of color
– something that will not only benefit them, but all Americans. The Task Force
and new private sector partnership will take a collaborative and
multidisciplinary approach to building ladders of opportunity. Both the Task
Force and the partnership will take action immediately while planning for
long-term success.
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