Every young person should have the opportunity to receive a good education, begin a quality career, and raise a family in the region we all call home. When they have the chance to be a part of our economy and strengthen it, we all prosper.
In 2012 and again in 2020, Youth Invest Partners’s Capital Kids Report provided essential data on the status of underserved children in our region. Consistently, and in almost every outcome area, boys and young men of color suffer disproportionately with adverse outcomes. They are more likely to drop out of high school and be involved in the criminal justice system. They are more likely to suffer the effects of poverty and less likely to find a career with life-sustaining wages. We also know that they suffer under racially charged stereotypes and embedded inequities. As the data reflects, the challenges and injustices facing underserved boys and young men of color do not stop at jurisdictional lines.
We recognize the complex, specific systemic impediments that boys and young men of color face in navigating their paths to successful adulthood, and we commit to supporting the families, organizations, and communities that nurture and strengthen their ability to navigate through such impediments and to working to remove such impediments altogether.
