Ideas That Work: Experts Offer Innovative Ideas to Create New Opportunities

Poverty is touching more lives and penetrating more communities than ever. Purpose Built Chair and CEO Shirley Franklin was featured at the What Works for America conference held December 3 and 4 in Washington DC., with other experts offering novel approaches to overcoming poverty through community-building. Ms. Franklin contributed an essay, “It Takes a Neighborhood: Purpose Built Communities and Neighborhood Transformation,” to the groundbreaking book, Investing in What Works for America’s Communities, which was launched at the conference.

The book examines what we can learn from the history of community development and provides dozens of innovative ideas for working with new partners, creating new financing tools, and leveraging new technologies to bring opportunities to America’s struggling communities. Read more 

Investing in Early Childhood Development to Reduce Debt and Strengthen the Economy

At a time when Washington seeks solutions to the fiscal cliff, investing in quality early childhood development is the way to accomplish both goals of reducing the debt in a balanced way and strengthening the economy in the short and long term.

As Congress works to negotiate the “Grand Bargain,” the First Five Years Fund (FFYF) urges legislators to invest in quality early childhood development. More information about the return on investment in early childhood development can be found here.