To send a delegation of startup community leaders to Venture Atlanta, one of the Southeast’s most recognizable venture and innovation conferences.
Program Area: Community Impact
8 80 Cities will bring 15 city leaders from San Jose on an immersive, five-day study group to Melbourne, Australia. Additional cost was created as Knight requested in-depth briefing on Melbourne Laneways and 20 Minute City initiatives.
Photo: Lilly WeinbergKnight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen addresses community leaders after accepting the Beacon Council Jay Malina Leadership Award on June 26, 2019. The text of his remarks is below.
When Susana and I arrived in Miami in 1995, one of the first people I met was this skinny, black-haired guy with glasses and a smile that was all teeth. He wanted me to feel welcome, to get me settled, to get me engaged. “Hello, my friend,” he’d say. “How are you, my friend?” Always, “my friend.”
Miami had previously gone through riots, Mariel, and Elian González. It was trying to absorb a wave of new immigrants from Latin America, in the wake of many thousands who moved north after Hurricane Andrew. The city was going west to the Everglades for locals, and up from the ground and against the ocean for New Yorkers, Latin Americans, and Europeans.
We were poised to split apart or to soar — and we soared because some of the people here tonight saw opportunity where others only mayhem. We had people with vision, courage, skill and tenacity. Local talent developed a vibrant downtown, significantly raised the level of our universities and medical centers, and made Miami a cultural destination, a hub of tech entrepreneurship and a beacon of freedom in the Hemisphere.
When I see this town come together, I remember that guy with the glasses and the ever-ready smile, who thought everything was possible and for whom everyone was “my friend.” That guy was Jay Malina, a hard-numbers, business guy, determined and tenacious in his drive to make our city great.
I’m honored to receive the Jay Malina Leadership Award in the presence of so many of this community’s leaders. I accept it with respect for all of your contributions, and with pride and appreciation for my Knight Foundation, Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald colleagues, who deserve their fair share of credit for the development of journalism, arts and tech entrepreneurship in Miami.
I’m thrilled that Janá Sigars-Malina, is here. And most of all, I’m happy to receive this award because it gives me a chance, in front of Jay and Janá’s daughters, Brezlan and Makenna, to remind myself of some lessons from their father.
My friend Jay saw the possibility and power of one community, sharing one goal. But to have one community meant diversity and inclusion, and that meant some people would have to share power. And to share one goal meant giving up self-interest. Those were problems that Jay poked and prodded. He was both a part of and a pain in the side of the establishment. He played hardball and he sometimes lost. Some of you may remember he was pushed out of the Chamber of Commerce. But he was tenacious and One Community/One Goal moved to the Beacon Council, where it’s been sustained ever since.
If he were here, Jay would be thrilled to know the winners of tonight’s Beacon Awards. And he’d be impatient that we have so much work still to do as a community.
If he were here, Jay might share a vision of Miami as a hub of entrepreneurship and high growth enterprise that turns our geographic location at the center of the Americas — and our diversity into a defining advantage. He might also uncomfortably remind us that no civilization ever succeeded when it accepted transparently vast wealth inequality. He might point out, too, that we can’t succeed in a democracy if we don’t properly evolve our public schools, and that we’re Ground Zero for climate change.
And he might say, with a grin, that these are not threats or warnings, but calls to leadership.
If you think these things are too big for us to tackle, Jay might point to our totally transformed skyline, our ability to hold the line on development into the Everglades, the evolution of Miami International Airport or to the amazing transformation of arts and culture in our town. He might also point out that 20 years ago, most of us wouldn’t have known what “early childhood readiness” was, but today, our Children’s Movement is a national example. And he’d take pride in the way this business community came together on the Amazon bid and say, “Hey, focus on the fact that we proved we can come together as one community with one goal. So, what’s our next objective?”
He’d be exhilarated by the fact that we’re in the middle of a major, generational change of leadership in key businesses, in government and in civic institutions. That will be a game changer.
Not long ago, in this county where most of us were born someplace else, we allowed ourselves to be defined by our differences and by our allegiance to where we came from. Today, we celebrate our diversity and our commitment to *this* community.
I can feel the change and it fills me with hope.
Thank you for this honor. And thank you for all you do to build our one community.
To produce the Venture Florida Summit, a two-day gathering of premier venture capital investors, limited partners and startup CEOs.
June 19, 2019 — To advance the creation of public spaces that transform communities, seven outstanding individuals from across the United States have been named Knight Public Spaces Fellows, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Launched this year, the project recognizes leaders, experts, and practitioners who have created or influenced great public spaces that strengthen community engagement and connection. Fellows will each receive $150,000 in recognition of their contributions and to advance their work.
Fellows include talented leaders with exemplary track records of crafting public spaces — parks, plazas, trails, community spaces and streets — that create opportunities for civic engagement. The fellowship aligns with Knight’s support of public spaces as a means to connect communities, drawing people out of their homes and encouraging them to meet, play and discuss important issues, while finding common ground.
Fellows will receive $150,000 in flexible funding to provide them with the space and freedom to unleash their creativity. They will also have access to opportunities to work with and learn from each other, and to elevate their work to a wider audience. The program will encourage the sharing of lessons across cities, and in particular the communities where Knight invests. Participants are expected to build on their ongoing work, while developing new efforts for the field.
“These rare people see something different when they look at streets, parks and sidewalks —they see a vision of how our communities could look, feel and be different,” said Sam Gill, Knight Foundation vice president for communities and impact. “We hope this recognition accelerates their visionary work and invites others to challenge the way we think about and use public space.”
Fellows were identified through a national call for nominations that launched in February, which generated more than 2,000 candidates. They were selected by Knight staff in collaboration with experts and leaders in the field. The Fellows were announced at the inaugural Knight Public Spaces Forum this afternoon in Philadelphia.
The fellows include:
Anuj Gupta (Philadelphia): General manager of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, one of the largest and oldest public markets, Gupta has brought new and innovative distribution and engagement models to the market. In particular, he has spearheaded engagement initiatives focused on connecting cultures and bringing people of different backgrounds together around food.
Chelina Odbert (Los Angeles) (@kounkuey): Odbert is co-founder and executive director of Kounkuey Design Initiative, a nonprofit design firm (with offices in Los Angeles, the Coachella Valley, Nairobi and Stockholm) that prioritizes community participation in public space development — designing side-by-side with residents. Odbert emphasizes that public space design must integrate not only environmental, but also social and economic strategies to address community inequities. Her recent work in Coachella Valley and Los Angeles showcases this approach.
Eric Klinenberg (New York) (@EricKlinenberg): The Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science at NYU and a practitioner working on urban public spaces, Klinenberg most recently served as research director of Rebuild by Design. The federal competition focused on generating innovative designs for 21st Century infrastructure in the region affected by Superstorm Sandy. In 2018, Klinenberg published “Palaces for the People”, a book about the essential role of social infrastructure (including libraries, playgrounds, and parks) in revitalizing democratic culture and civic life.
Erin Salazar (San Jose, California) (@localcolorsj): Founder and Executive Director of Exhibition District, Salazar heads a woman-owned and operated arts nonprofit building economic opportunities for creatives at the intersection of art and community development in San Jose. Salazar is redefining what “public space” is and what it could be in a city full of large corporations, while working to maintain the community’s cultural authenticity.
Kathryn Ott Lovell (Philadelphia): Commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, Lovell oversees one of the largest park systems in the country, bringing a strong focus on innovation to the government sector. Her emphasis on “citizen centric” service, provides exceptional parks and recreation opportunities to residents and prioritizes community engagement.
Robert Hammond (New York) (@robertrhammond): Co-Founder and Executive Director of the High Line, Robert had the vision and foresight to lead the effort to build an elevated park on an abandoned railway line in New York City 20 years ago. In 2017, he formed the High Line Network, which focuses on the equitable development of underused city infrastructure to develop new urban landscapes.
Walter Hood (Oakland, California) (@HDHoodDesign): Hood is creative director and founder of Hood Design, a firm that practices at the intersection of art, design, landscape, research and urbanism across the country. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley in landscape architecture and urban design.Hood Design Studio designs public spaces for institutions such as Cooper Hewitt Museum, Broad Museum and Solar Strand at University of Buffalo, as well as neighborhood community spaces such as Splash Pad Park in Oakland, California and Baisley Park in New York City (now Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson Community Garden).
Knight Foundation supports informed and engaged communities by investing in cities to attract and nurture talent, promote economic opportunity and foster civic engagement. We believe that public spaces are a key ingredient in connecting people to each other and the places where they live. The foundation has made several investments in this area including the national Reimagining the Civic Commons initiative, that seeks to bring people together by revitalizing and connecting public spaces.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.
Contact
Lauren Dickinson, Communications Officer, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2694, [email protected]
Image (top): Courtesy of High Line
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Community Impact / Press Release
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Community Impact / Press Release
Photo by: Albert Yee
For nearly 14 years, I’ve had the privilege of leading Knight Foundation, where our mission is to strengthen democracy by supporting informed and engaged communities.
We support journalism — because we believe, as Jack Knight did, that a well-informed community can best determine its own true interests, and that well-informed citizens are the bedrock of an effective and inclusive democracy.
We support art — because great, provocative art inspires and binds people to the place they call home.
We support community engagement — because shared experiences and common ownership of place bind us to each other.
And that is why we are proud to support public spaces.
As community builders, it was natural for Knight Foundation to gravitate toward the reimagining of public spaces that began, for us, in Philadelphia, in partnership with the City government and The William Penn Foundation. As those projects took shape, we partnered with JPB and Kresge Foundations to expand in four different ways in four different cities: Detroit, Chicago, Akron and Memphis.
We’ve also supported smart city initiatives, helping cities harness the growth of digital technology to improve how they serve and connect with residents, most recently helping engage neighbors exploring the use and purpose of self-driving vehicles.
Through this work, we’ve found that building community takes time and has rough patches. In my experience, projects that successfully transform a community, a field, an organization or a corporation share four distinguishing characteristics: vision, courage, skill and tenacity.
Transformation requires a vision of what could be; the courage to express it; the skill to achieve it; and, perhaps most importantly, the tenacity to see it through. Transformational change, after all, does not happen on the neat schedules of election cycles or foundation grant years. It happens slowly and, if the change is not authentic, it will fail. That’s why we stress active, meaningful community engagement in all of our public spaces efforts.
We’re proud of the work we’ve done. If you’re interested in learning more, please read a report we commissioned by journalist Aaron Weiner. What you’ll find is a report on a work-in-progress, mostly but not entirely successful.
At almost every point in this process, we’ve been impressed by the quality of leadership that is emerging and by the capacity for individuals to inspire. Before I joined Knight Foundation, I had the privilege of attending a Skoll Foundation Board of Trustees meeting and remember they were clear about their purpose: they were going to change the world by finding, funding, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs.
I took that seriously. Over time, we at Knight invested in all manner of entrepreneurs working in public spaces and have connected them at this and many other convenings like it. These convenings are not academic exercises: they bring together smart people determined to learn from each other and impact their communities.
When my colleagues at Knight suggested we should also celebrate the leadership we found, it was a natural progression. We decided to launch the Knight Public Spaces Fellowships. I’m delighted to announce the first set of winners this afternoon.
Our open call for suggestions attracted over two thousand nominations. As is typical of Knight open calls and challenges, our staff worked with outstanding panels of experienced and diverse reviewers.
The seven Fellows we selected are talented leaders with a proven track record of crafting public spaces that foster civic engagement. They represent the creative range and diversity of the field, having built parks, plazas, trails, streets, and community spaces.
Each Knight Public Spaces Fellow will receive $150,000 to spend as they see fit on promoting public spaces.
They will also have opportunities to work with and learn from each other, and the program will encourage the sharing of lessons across the country.
Our inaugural Knight Public Space Fellows are:
- Anuj Gupta, general manager of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, one of the country’s largest and oldest public markets. Anuj has done a brilliant job connecting cultures and successful businesses into a marketplace that reflects hardworking, food-loving Philadelphia.
- Chelina Odbert, co-founder and executive director of Kounkuey Design Initiative, a global design firm that prioritizes community participation in public space — designing public spaces side-by-side with residents, integrating environmental, social and economic strategies. Her recent work in Coachella Valley and Los Angeles showcases this approach.
- Eric Klinenberg, Professor of Social Science at NYU. Most recently, Eric served as research director of Rebuild by Design, the federal competition focused on generating innovative designs for 21st Century infrastructure in the region affected by Superstorm Sandy. His latest book, “Palaces for the People,” is about the essential role of social infrastructure — including libraries, playgrounds, and parks — in revitalizing democratic culture and civic life.
- Erin Salazar, executive director of San Jose’s Exhibition District, a woman-owned-and-operated arts nonprofit creating economic opportunities for artists at the intersection of public art and community development. Salazar is redefining public space to maintain a community’s cultural authenticity.
- Katheryn Ott Lovell, Commissioner of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, who oversees one of the largest park systems in the country, having previously been executive director of the Fairmont Park Conservancy. Her emphasis on citizen-centric service provides exceptional opportunities to residents and prioritizes community engagement.
- Robert Hammond, co-founder and executive director of the Friends of the High Line, the organization that created the most notable industrial reuse project of the past decade. More recently, he formed the High Line Network, which focuses on the equitable development of underused city infrastructure to develop new urban landscapes.
- Finally, Walter Hood, professor at the University of California at Berkeley and creative director of Hood Design, a firm that has employed art, design, landscape, research and urbanism in their design of public spaces for institutions like Cooper Hewitt Museum, Broad Museum and Solar Strand at the University at Buffalo, as well as neighborhood spaces in Oakland and New York City.
The Knight Public Spaces Fellows. From left to right: Sam Gill, Knight Foundation; Robert Hammond, Friends of the High Line; Eric Klinenberg, New York University; Chelina Odbert, Kounkuey Design Initiative; Erin Salazar, Exhibition District; Anuj Gupta, Reading Terminal Market; Kathryn Ott Lovell, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation; Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation; Lilly Weinberg, Knight Foundation. (Not pictured: Walter Hood, Hood Design.) Credit: Albert Yee.
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Learn more about the fellows at kf.org/psfellows19
To support a series of learning journeys for leaders in Knight Cities to see, learn and discuss how other communities approach public life and public spaces.
MIAMI – June 10, 2019 – Twenty community leaders from cities across the United States have been selected to participate in the 2019-2020 Emerging City Champions fellowship program. Launched in 2015, the program is an incubator for up-and-coming city leaders with bold ideas to build more accessible, inclusive and connected cities.
The program is led by 8 80 Cities, a nonprofit organization based in Toronto, Canada, and funded by the John S. and James. L. Knight Foundation. In April 2019, Knight Foundation announced a $500,000 reinvestment in the program.
Emerging City Champions is open to young people between the ages of 19-35 in the 26 communities where Knight invests. Hundreds of idea submissions are evaluated based on their innovation, potential impact and the applicant’s leadership qualities and capacity.
The successful applicants will receive $5,000 in seed funding, leadership training, and practical tools to launch their transformative projects to enhance public space, urban mobility or civic engagement in their city.
“Truly informed and engaged communities rely on new leaders, new voices and new ideas,” said Sam Gill, Knight Foundation vice president for communities and impact. “The Emerging Cities Champions fellowship provides a window into the spirit of the community, and supports the visionaries who will shape its future.”
The program encourages diverse voices and fresh perspectives toward common urban challenges. Many participants build on their ongoing work in their communities, while others have new and creative solutions to improve their local streets or public spaces with support from the program.
“Emerging City Champions brings together civic leaders who all share a common drive to build equitable and vibrant cities,” said Amanda O’Rourke, executive director of 8 80 Cities. “Each year, we are thrilled to support the participants as they harness their own ingenuity and collaborative partnerships to create real community change. The 2019 cohort is an incredible group, and we look forward to seeing them bring their ideas to life and grow as leaders in their communities.”
The 20 participants will meet in Toronto, Canada from July 27 to 30 for the Emerging City Champions Studio. The Studio is an immersive four-day learning experience where fellowship participants hone skills that will help them hit the ground running when they return to their cities. It includes interactive tours of community-led programs and public spaces, presentations by city leaders and program alumni, and hands-on workshops on project planning, community engagement, communication and tactical urbanism. This is also when the participants will collaborate, bond and establish a support network with fellow participants.
The Emerging City Champions will begin implementing their projects after returning home from Toronto. In one year, their cities will have new and enhanced neighborhood programs, community events, interactive public art, and vibrant public spaces that will push boundaries, change mindsets and inspire long-term investment in the public realm.
More information is available at www.emergingcitychampions.org.
2019 Emerging City Champions
Aberdeen, South Dakota
- Spencer Sommers will restore downtown “ghost signs” (faded, historic advertisements painted on building walls), with support from local artists and community volunteers.
Akron, Ohio
- Sheri Yearian will promote cycling in her community by installing bike racks and a bike repair stand, and by hosting an earn-a-bike contest and bike repair workshops for adults and children.
Charlotte, North Carolina
- Caroline Burgett will create lively, sculptural garbage receptacles along a greenway, turning litter pickup into a participatory art game.
- Lyn Kim will run pop-up mobility events for older adults, held on accessible one-mile outdoor courses across the city.
Detroit, Michigan
- Briana Mason will work directly with residents and a local artist to program vacant lots and cocreate a public art installation along Dexter Avenue.
- Jamii Tata will create 50 poetry banners and 50 poetry rain barrels, featuring poetry by youth and adult community members, to display in outdoor gardens and parks in Detroit’s north end.
- Whitney Sherrill will cultivate healing spaces for black and brown community members in the outdoors, through intergenerational storytelling and exploration in the local environment.
Duluth, Minnesota
- Moira Villiard will run safe, sober art shows where the audience will collaborate with diverse artists to create art and music, and then share a community dinner.
Macon, Georgia
- Nancy Cleveland will set up “mental health gym” pop-ups in parks to introduce people to therapy and mental health techniques, in the model of trying out a gym membership.
- Steven DeGeorge will build a performance venue in an abandoned park in Pleasant Hill and rehabilitate the surrounding green space, with support from local community organizations.
Miami, Florida
- Kat Regnier will promote access to community assets and active transportation options in Little Haiti by installing collaboratively designed wayfinding signs and sidewalk decals.
- Kyle Maharlika will install a solar/wind-powered Wi-Fi pole in an Overtown park and lead digital literacy programming to combat the technological inequality gap.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Marcos Lomeli will work with community leaders and neighbors to codesign walking tours showcasing Eastern North Philadelphia’s food, art, music, history, and unique Latinx culture.
- Molly van den Heuvel will create a thoughtful, accessible community space outside of the Andorra Library, to expand the library’s programming and services in the outdoors.
- Shawn Sheu will encourage cross-cultural engagement in the new Rail Park by inviting residents to lead outdoor workshops for their neighbors, teaching skills from Mahjong to salsa.
- Somaly Osteen will promote pedestrian safety along the South 7th Street corridor by painting crosswalks with colorful designs reflecting the input and diversity of the neighborhood.
San Jose, California
- Ellina Yin will produce a funny, digestible podcast about San Jose development projects, in order to democratize challenging information and create more meaningful civic engagement.
- Lucila Chavez will revitalize Plata Arroyo’s neglected skate park and invite more women skaters with murals by local woman artists, community programming, and decorative lighting.
St. Paul, Minnesota
- Xia Xiong will produce a podcast to promote connection and civic engagement in the Hmong community in the Twin Cities, which has the highest concentration of Hmong people in the U.S.
State College, Pennsylvania
- Jay Mundinger will invite people to dance in public spaces with live local bands, teaching diverse dance styles at weekly social events.
About 8 80 Cities
8 80 Cities is a non-profit organization that exists to promote safe and happy cities that prioritize people’s well-being. We believe that if everything we do in our public spaces is great for an 8 year old and an 80 year old, then it will be great for all people. For more information, visit www.880cities.org.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.
CONTACT:
Lauren Dickinson, Communications Officer, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2694, [email protected]
Image (top) courtesy of 8 80 Cities.
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Community Impact / Press Release
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Community Impact / Press Release
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Community Impact / Press Release
Bring the wider San Jose Community together to participate in the new downtown holiday parade through a series of neighborhood-sponsored floats.
On May 30, 2019, Endeavor Insight, with support from Knight Foundation, released the report, “Miami’s competitive advantages in entrepreneurship.” See the press release with more information here.
Executive summary
The goal of this report is to identify and highlight Greater Miami’s competitive advantages in entrepreneurship. This report is based on analyses of new data on more than 20,000 companies, and was conducted by Endeavor Insight thanks to the generous support of Knight Foundation and its staff. This research yielded four major conclusions.
- Greater Miami has grown rapidly in recent years, but its economy needs solutions to reduce its reliance on low-paying service jobs. Miami’s economy continues to lag behind other major cities.* Lower-paying service industries are more prevalent in Greater Miami than in the rest of the United States. Many local workers are also employed in industries that are projected to grow more slowly than the rest of the economy. If Miami is going to reach its economic potential, decision makers must reduce the prevalence of lower-paying service industries by generating more high-paying, knowledge-intensive jobs in growing sectors.
- The most prosperous U.S. cities provide examples of how Miami can build a stronger economic future by generating more larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies. The U.S. cities with the highest incomes per capita and greatest productivity generate more of a specific type of local business: larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies. These businesses bring a number of benefits to cities.
Larger: Companies that have grown to 50 or more employees — often referred to as “scaleups” — create the vast majority of jobs in U.S. metropolitan areas. They also pay higher wages, on average.
High-Value: Businesses in industries that generate greater productivity per employee are of high value to local communities. These companies generate larger proportions of knowledge-intensive jobs and also tend to draw in more revenues from outside their cities and regions.
Entrepreneurial: Businesses created by local entrepreneurs reinvest a greater share of their sales within their communities compared to branches of companies that are headquartered elsewhere.
Unfortunately, Greater Miami has a lower proportion of these companies than many other major metropolitan areas. If local leaders wish to bring the benefits of these businesses to the city, they should work to accomplish two objectives: (1) increase the number of new larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies, and (2) support existing larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies as they continue to grow.
3. The Miami area has a diverse set of competitive advantages in entrepreneurship that can be found in six types of local companies. Though Greater Miami has a relatively low number of larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies, those that do exist in the city are much younger than the ones found in other major cities, on average. This indicates that Miami has significant potential to generate more of these valuable companies in the next five years.
Decision makers should support the growth of new, larger, entrepreneurial companies in all high-value sectors. However, Miami is fortunate to have six types of companies that make up the city’s specific competitive advantages in entrepreneurship. They are:
— Passenger Transit and Transportation Services Companies;
— Financial Intermediary Businesses;
— Consulting Firms;
— Pharmaceuticals and Medical Device Companies;
— Software and Software-Enabled Companies; and
— Advertising Firms.
Among these groups, Miami has as many as 2.9 times more larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies than the rest of the country, relative to its population size. Almost all the industries in which these types of businesses operate are projected to increase employment and generate a greater-than-average share of knowledge-intensive jobs.
4. Entrepreneur-Led Economic Development can help Miami’s leaders to enhance competitive advantages in entrepreneurship and generate more high-paying jobs. If local decision makers wish to create an economy that is less dependent on slower-growing, lower-paying sectors, they should offer more targeted support for founders building larger, high-value, entrepreneurial companies. The recommendations at the end of this report outline an approach for entrepreneur-led economic development that puts these founders at the center of the local entrepreneurship community. These actions can help to create a new pillar of local economic development based on Miami’s competitive advantages in entrepreneurship.
The following pages of this report offer in-depth explanations of these findings, as well as detailed analyses based on data from thousands of businesses in the Miami area.
* The authors use “Miami” and “Greater Miami” synonymously to refer to the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach, FL metropolitan statistical area throughout the study. This area consists of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
- Miami’s competitive advantages in entrepreneurshipExternal Content / Website
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—May 23, 2019—The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today announced a three-year, $600,000 investment in the expansion of Read Charlotte, a collaborative, community-wide initiative that engages families, educators and other local partners to improve children’s literacy from birth to third grade.
“The Charlotte community has rallied around Read Charlotte’s mission, demonstrating that children’s literacy is a key local priority,” said Charles Thomas, Knight Foundation program director for Charlotte. “Knight Foundation hopes to build on this momentum, supporting a promising initiative that engages all members of the community and promotes literacy, an important prerequisite for building a more informed Charlotte.”
Read Charlotte is working to increase the reading proficiency of Charlotte’s third graders from 39 percent to 80 percent by 2025. Reading proficiency at third grade is a critical predictor of school, career and life success. For example, children who are not reading at grade level by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.
Knight’s investment will help the organization grow its “Transformation Network,” a group of literacy-focused school partnerships in in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. The Network will more than double the number of under-resourced schools it works with, from 12 to at least 30. It will launch a recruitment program to double the number of volunteer literacy tutors needed to serve 1,500 students. Additionally, it will expand its innovative programming to enable more families to support their children’s reading development at home.
“The Read Charlotte Transformation Network has worked tirelessly to improve early literacy in this community, and our top priority right now is scaling these efforts,” said Munro Richardson, Read Charlotte executive director. “This new funding from Knight Foundation equips us to respond to community requests to bring more schools into the Transformation Network and grow our efforts.”
The Transformation Network launched in fall 2018 at 12 schools. In less than a year, 50 partners worked with schools to coordinate the distribution of 23,981 books to nearly 4,000 students at “Book-A-Palooza” events. In addition, they hosted 17 Family Literacy Nights, where over 1,000 parents learned effective ways to support their children’s reading at home; and they recruited 152 volunteers to provide fluency tutoring to almost 200 third graders.
Earlier this year, Read Charlotte launched its second-annual “Commit to 80” campaign, in which, during a two week period, nearly 1,300 Charlotteans pledged their commitment to the community goal of reaching 80 percent third grade reading proficiency by carrying out specific, evidence-based practices and strategies.
Read Charlotte’s Lead Funders made five-year commitments that support operations through 2019. This new support from Knight Foundation, along with recent commitments from Bank of America, Albemarle Corporation, C.D. Spangler Foundation, Ann Dunlap Hendrix Charitable Fund and The Belk Foundation brings the organization closer to creating transformative change in Mecklenburg County by 2025. Read Charlotte has an additional $3.9 million to raise for the remainder of the 10-year initiative.
About Read Charlotte
Read Charlotte is a collaborative, community-wide initiative to double the percentage of third grade students reading at grade level from 40% in 2015 to 80% by 2025. Housed under the Foundation For The Carolinas, Read Charlotte is organized as a backbone organization leading a collective impact effort across Mecklenburg County. Focusing on the continuum from birth through third grade, Read Charlotte builds collaborative partnerships and provides resources on proven practices and/or programs. Read Charlotte plays a leadership role but does not directly operate the programs. Working groups comprised of experts and community members have helped to select strategies, identify community indicators and define a strategic plan that will guide Read Charlotte’s work through 2025. For more information, visit readcharlotte.org.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For more, visit kf.org.
Contacts
Elise Esasky, Communications Manager, Read Charlotte, 770-366-7486, [email protected]
Lauren Dickinson, Communications Officer, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 305-908-2694, [email protected]
Photos: kf.org/rctnpics (Please credit Read Charlotte)
Image (top): Courtesy of Read Charlotte
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Community Impact / Press Release
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Journalism / Press Release
