A Decade with America’s Promise


To view this email online, paste this link into your browser:
[link removed]





([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

([link removed])

America's Promise Bulletin - December 20, 2019 

americaspromise.org ([link removed])

As this decade draws to a close, we are reflecting on the work we’ve been able to do together in the last 10 years to deliver the Five Promises to America’s young people.

After laying the groundwork of the GradNation campaign for three years, in early 2010 America’s Promise led the way in setting the national goal of 90 percent on-time high school graduation. We brought together then-President Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donoghue, along with General Powell and Alma Powell, and committed ourselves and the nation to a sustained campaign to reach that goal.

Ever since then, we’ve been working to tackle that goal:

From 2013 through 2017, we held 100 GradNation Community Summits ([link removed]), which supported and fueled collaborative, community-based efforts to increase high school graduation rates and provide an array of holistic supports that young people need to succeed. 25,000 people participated in those summits, including over 4,000 young people.

In addition to working with communities, with the help of our Center for Promise, we got serious about understanding the youth perspective on issues related to graduation. The result was two seminal reports – Don’t Call Them Dropouts ([link removed]) and Don’t Quit on Me ([link removed]), both of which shaped our approach to the GradNation campaign, and rewrote the script on how everyone thinks about the high school graduation challenge.

In 2016, we launched the GradNation State Activation Initiative ([link removed]), which included intense partnerships with Arizona, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. This effort leveraged statewide change in three ways: by encouraging statewide innovation and collaboration, by sharing knowledge to accelerate adoption of proven strategies, and by developing successful models all states can replicate.

In 2017, the campaign released the GradNation Action Platform ([link removed]), an evidence and practice-based framework for improving graduation rates, and a communications strategy anchored in the places, partners, and practices emerging from the platform’s planks

Last year, the Grad Nation campaign announced the Acceleration Initiative ([link removed]), partnering with five communities (state-level work in Georgia and Michigan and community-level partnerships in Albuquerque, NM, Greeley, CO, and Los Angeles, CA) where leaders have successfully identified specific student needs and corralled the resources to meet youth where they are.

In this process, we have learned a lot about what works and helped increase the graduation rate by nearly 10 percent.  This remarkable success story means that over 3 million additional young people have graduated from high school with their peers.  While this is no small feat and we are proud of that progress, more needs to be done. That is why GradNation continues to work towards the 90 percent goal. 

Since our inception, youth voice and leadership have been central to America’s Promise.  Over the course of the past decade we’ve been fortunate to have many exceptional young leaders on our Board of Directors and Trustee group, people who have brought power and perspective, and who have gone on to be leaders in housing, education, public safety, as well as technology and entertainment.  We look forward to more leadership from and being able to learn from young leaders going forward.

We’ve always seen the power of recognition, and in the course of the past decade we’ve recognized a diverse group of leaders who have made extraordinary contributions to improving the lives and life prospects of America’s young people.  We been delighted to present the organization’s highest honor, the Promise of America award to notable individuals ranging from Randall Stephenson to Common, from Lamar Alexander to Angela Diaz, from Magic Johnson to Bryan Stevenson, from Arne Duncan to Dorothy Stoneman. 

Fast forward to this year when America’s Promise expanded our work beyond the Grad Nation campaign to lead three new major initiatives. Last November, we launched Every School Healthy ([link removed]), a campaign to increase the understanding of all the dimensions of health that are necessary for young people to succeed in school. Then this spring we launched the YES Project ([link removed]) to focus on the challenges of youth employment and How Learning Happens ([link removed]) to advance social emotional development and a whole child view of how young people learn and grow.

Throughout all these campaigns, we’ve relied on our team at the Center for Promise ([link removed]), who are at the forefront of research that uncovers and illuminates the lived experience of young people.

In the spirit of youth voice and leadership, we also hosted the first ever State of Young People ([link removed]), a youth led and designed gathering held on Facebook’s campus that brought together young people with the nation’s leading adult advocates for youth, as well as business and community leaders.

This holiday season, we also announced 10 winners in our Power of Youth Challenge ([link removed]), which provides $1,000 grants to young people to identify a challenge in their local and/or national community, devise a solution, and carry out their service projects. From assisting young people in expanding their worldview by creating a digital exchange to providing information about healthy ways of managing stress and pain for high school students, their projects touch on a number of issues that affect Americans from coast to coast. 

It’s been a busy decade for America’s Promise!

On a personal note, the end of the decade also marks the end of my time as President & CEO of America’s Promise Alliance. It’s been my experience that when you love a job, you never really leave it.  So I’m look forward to staying involved with America’s Promise and with many of our key partners in the years to come.

I feel very confident that America’s Promise is a strong position, and the board and I have great confidence in the leadership of Dennis Vega as our Interim President & CEO.  Under Dennis’s leadership, we will continue the spirit of partnership and collective leadership that animates all of us. Check your inboxes for more from Dennis in the new year, but in the meantime, I join with the whole America’s Promise team in wishing you a very happy holiday season and New Year!

Warm regards,

John Gomperts 

Donate ([link removed])





1110 Vermont Ave NW Suite 900 | Washington, DC xxxxxx US

This email was sent to [email protected].
To ensure that you continue receiving our emails,
please add us to your address book or safe list.

manage your preferences ([link removed])
opt out ([link removed]) using TrueRemove(r).

Got this as a forward? Sign up ([link removed]) to receive our future emails.
email powered by Emma(R)
[link removed]