Took a lot of field trips today:
11:15: Interview at an organization that facilitates policy-changes to strengthen community-college outcomes
1:00: Met with the co-director of an upstart parenting program that is explicitly trying to be small and focus only on early-parenting--while linking with other resources to help low-income parents give their kids a successful life
3:30: Met with a social-entrepreneur/student who's poised to launch an organization that would connect poor schoolchildren with wraparound services for their families, to help remove barriers to learning and change the "conversation" about how schools operate
It's a good thing at my age you don't need to fill out permission slips!
By my count, that's 1 existing "linkage" program that's very big and supports front-line work, 1 new front-line program that supports linkages but wants to remain small, and 1 new linkage program that works at the front lines and wants to be big.
If you followed that, I bet you can tell me where the pea is!
Two lines of argument I'm constantly thinking about (in a very, very reduced form):
1) We have enough organizations and enough services. To help disadvantaged folks, we just need to connect them better from one program to another.
2) Poor people shouldn't have to run from program to program to meet their needs. Give them one-stop shops with all services under a single roof. Found a new org that does it all. Or add another program to round out your org.
What do you think?
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