Dear John,
Happy February! I’m excited to share with you some of the recent happenings with our community’s MC2026 plan for Mighty Change and provide some updates on the progress we’re making together.
The past year has shown tremendous results and we’re seeing positive trends in much of the data, but we know we still have a lot of work to accomplish. We’ve seen the achievement of higher-paying employment increase from 66% to 72%. We surpassed our access to affordable health care goal of 100,000 with 272,000 additional people now covered. We saw third grade reading proficiencies decline and rebound following the pandemic, which are now beginning to level out. And we unfortunately saw the trend go in the opposite direction throughout the Valley’s housing and homelessness crisis, increasing to 9,600 from 9,000 a year ago.
As we look to the year ahead, we are diving into our community-level data to best inform the greatest opportunities and drivers of change. This includes focusing on our most impacted populations and communities. We’re seeing that seniors are being disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis and we’ll be leaning into prevention. We’ll be leading school literacy hubs and also working to address chronic absenteeism. We’re taking a specific look at addressing gaps in educational engagement, particularly among Latino youth. And we’ll be lifting up fair chance hiring so those who have been involved in the justice system have every opportunity to succeed—for themselves, for their families and for our community as a whole.
I look forward to continuing to share our MC2026 journey with you in the months ahead. Thank you for your generous support and partnership in creating a more vibrant and equitable community for all of our friends, families and neighbors across the Valley.
Sincerely,
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