Dear Friend, Happy New Year! The team at America’s Promise Alliance is entering 2020 with renewed energy and enthusiasm about making progress on behalf of America’s young people in the year ahead. America’s Promise Alliance was founded on the belief that each and every child deserves to fulfill their potential and that our promise as a nation will be fully realized only when America keeps its promise to all its children. 2019 was an important year of growth and transition for America’s Promise Alliance as we continued to help keep that promise. Over the past year, we’ve worked diligently to fully embody our beliefs that: Every child deserves a real chance to succeed, which means having the resources and supports necessary to pursue their American dream. Every adult shares the responsibility to help make that happen. A whole child approach to learning and development is what it takes for children and youth to thrive. Equity must be at the heart of our work – by “every” child, we mean EVERY child. Wisdom and leadership lie in communities. Youth voice must be heard, understood, and respected. We transitioned from leading one campaign, GradNation, to leading four major efforts to support the whole child. Building on our continued efforts through GradNation, the launches of Every School Healthy, the The YES (Young, Employed, Successful) Project and How Learning Happens are instrumental to putting our beliefs into motion. We work closely with key partners across each of these campaigns to drive collective action. America’s Promise Alliance is proud to support local progress in more than 20 communities across the country and in the process, learn important lessons from each of these diverse and vibrant communities. A review of 2019 would not be complete without acknowledging our deepened focus over the past year on hearing directly from young people about their lived experiences. The State of Young People Summit was a remarkable three-day gathering devoted to providing leaders from youth-serving fields an opportunity to hear directly from young people themselves. At the summit, adult leaders worked side-by-side with young leaders to create avenues for ongoing youth leadership across a multitude of national and local youth-serving organizations. The Summit was just the beginning. Stay tuned for more on how we will continue that momentum in 2020. We are proud of the work that we’ve done over the last year and we know that we owe our success to the members of the Alliance. The support of every one of our Alliance partners is critical for us to realize large-scale change for young people. The interactions I’ve had with partners have been encouraging and energizing, even in times where the darker aspects of our society have seemed to routinely get the upper hand. I’m always heartened by the resolve of the Alliance and the steadfast optimism that we can make a difference for young people. In 2020, we will continue our commitment to engage and activate a wide range of partners across our Alliance; make catalytic investment in community activation; use communications as a central lever of change; and conduct research that grounds the work by injecting youth voice and perspective. Over the next few months, we will, among other key priorities: Bring together partners for the Growing a Whole Child Movement event; Release reports about what we learned from communities in the Every School Healthy and GradNation community activation efforts; Engage with new communities through our How Learning Happens community convenings and our YES Project action roundtables; and Amplify youth voice and perspective through our Center for Promise foundational research on How Learning Happens and the YES Project. Underlying all of this work is an unwavering commitment to promoting youth leadership and strengthening our engagement with all of our Alliance members. None of this would have been possible without the tireless leadership of John Gomperts. As many of you already know, John stepped down as CEO and President of America’s Promise Alliance in December. John has been the driving force behind America’s Promise over the last seven years and helped shape the organization since its creation in 1997. John’s energy, vision, and commitment to improving the lives of young people has been an inspiration to all of us at America’s Promise and to our Alliance partners. We are deeply grateful for his leadership over those years and I am personally grateful for the opportunity he gave me to join the America’s Promise family and his support as I step into this role. John is leaving America’s Promise with a strong foundation and I am confident that we will achieve the impact that John has worked so hard for over the years. I look forward to working closey with all of you in the coming year. Thank you for your partnership, Dennis Vega Interim CEO & President AmericasPromise.org

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