President Obama

For the past five years, the Obama administration has honored more than 1,300 ordinary citizens who drove positive changes every day in their communities with a “Champions of Change,” (COC) award.

In May, a couple hundred technologists, child welfare experts and foster youth gathered on the grounds of the White House for the first foster care hackathon to reach such national prominence.

Last week, during a reception at a sleek house off of Washington D.C.’s Embassy Row, I found myself in the kitchen talking with Winnie Wechsler. Wechsler, who runs the Pritzker Foster Care Initiative, which funds a slew of child welfare related non-profits including the one I run, was amped up.

Heaven was going to Disney World.                                                                Summer was in full bloom, and the family’s Disney World trip planned for early July was growing nearer. The eager and joyful 7-year-old had her hair styled for the upcoming trip.

Unattended guns can harm your children. Guns may cause injury or death. Guns may increase the case-fatality rate of firearm suicide attempts. Imagine these phrases plastered on the box of recently purchased gun.

“Poetic justice” is a phrase rarely used to describe unpaid bills, foreclosure or youth homelessness. However, in recent weeks in Harlem, the phrase has been repeated in everything from prominent blogs to local news coverage as an LGBTQ youth support center attempts to expand into a nearby church.

Earlier this year, the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force released a one-year progress report to assess the initial year of the Presidents' Initiative.

President Obama laid out a plan for universal Pre-K in his 2013 State of the Union address, and came back to that theme in his 2015 speech. “In today’s economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, we need affordable, high-quality childcare more than ever,” Obama said during this week’s address.

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) will fund $24 million in grants as part of President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which is aimed at improving the academic and social outcomes of young black men.