Search Results
As a part of our Member Spotlight series, we spoke with Amy Saxton, Vice President of Program Development at The James Irvine Foundation. Amy shared how she is approaching her work, program strategy, and where others can jump in to collaborate.
The COVID-19 vaccine will help keep communities healthy and safe and holds promise to bring an end to the pandemic that has had the most severe impacts on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, immigrant, and low-income people. Systemic racism created the conditions that put people of color at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and experiencing more severe health outcomes, and despite this urgency, California’s vaccination effort so far has fallen short of equity goals. We must reach and authentically engage local communities to remove barriers to access and address concerns to increase vaccine acceptance.
In a year of memorable moments, I keep coming back to a conversation I had with my cousin Harold that is shaping my entry into 2021. Harold lives in Chicago and is an ardent student of history, particularly in the pursuit of racial justice. His observations often help me refine my own thinking.
2024 promises to be a momentous year for democracy—locally, nationally, and globally. Over 4 billion people are living in countries with major elections this year. In the United States, we will also face familiar but obstinate challenges, including the dearth of local news and youth disaffection with voting and institutions. We will also face challenges that are new in this digital era, namely disinformation turbocharged by generative AI that has enormous power to deceive voters, undermine trust, and destabilize our information ecosystems.
The American banking system is broken, and the evidence is unmistakable. From the recent failure of one of the largest banks in the U.S. to ongoing predatory products blanketing lower-income communities, it is clear that we are at an inflection point. Bank regulators currently fall into the familiar trap of trying to fix the symptoms such as banning certain products, minor regulatory modifications without fixing the root causes of structural inequities. This results in repeated crises usually requiring taxpayer-funded bailouts but no meaningful change of the system. We must find better opportunities to address staggering losses of wealth through failures in the banking system while also building new structures that support economic equity and help build and preserve more local community wealth.
Please join the California Youth Organizing Funders Collaborative for a discussion focused on the power and impact of investing in youth organizing as a strategy that supports a broad array of foundation and donor priorities - from youth development, to climate change, to mental health and well-being to power and movement building and leadership development for a truly just, inclusive and equitable California. This session will provide historical context, resources, dialogue with youth organizers and learning between practitioners in philanthropy who seek to invest in youth power and youth leadership development.
Thank you, Marcus and Dwayne, and Cathy and Dimple, for your courageous leadership. And Dimple, thank you for inviting me into the conversation to answer "What exactly holds us back from making more dramatic transformations in our philanthropy?" I’m humbled to be a part of it. I propose that what holds us back from making more dramatic transformations in philanthropy are three beliefs that we inherit and internalize from white supremacist culture.