Disconnected Youth:

An Ominous Problem Hidden in Plain Sight

A new report written by MDC and commissioned by the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation finds that a significant number of 16- to 26-year-olds in the Research Triangle region who come from impoverished backgrounds--particularly African Americans and Latinos--are out of school, out of work, and on a fast track toward disconnection in the midst of a region of prosperity. While school systems and nonprofit social service organizations are making heroic efforts to address the problem, it's not nearly enough. The solution, the report finds, is to follow the lead of other cities and bring together policy makers, business leaders, educators, nonprofits and the criminal justice system to recognize the scale of the problem. Then, a systemic response must be found that keeps students in school, creates alternative educational options for those who aren't, develops training and workforce connections for out-of-school youth, and finds alternatives to criminal prosecution. At risk, the report says, isn't just the future of a potentially lost generation, but the economic viability of a region where 80 percent of new jobs will require education beyond high school in the years to come. "By failing to reverse the growing tide of disconnected youth," the report says, "we undercut our ability to field a competitive workforce in a high-skill, knowledge-based economy." And here's an op-ed about Disconnected Youth, "Finding Paths for Lost Teens," by MDC President David Dodson.

MDC still creating opportunity at 40

As MDC marks its 40th year helping organizations and communities close the gaps that separate people from opportunity in the South, our Annual Report for 2008 describes a growing portfolio of work in education, job training, economic development, asset building and strategic philanthropy. We are leading a groundbreaking national community college initiative, creating career paths for Latino immigrants, helping working people create more than $21 million in wealth through the Earned Income Tax Credit, demonstrating the ways emergency preparedness can protect disadvantaged communities, and showing in our work and State of the South 2007 report how community philanthropy can refocus its work to address fundamental issues. "As the economies of the South, the nation, the world and the nonprofit universe have changed," writes James Joseph, our board chairman, "we are growing into a larger and deeper organization to keep pace."

MDC report is relevant 22 years later 

The news shocked leaders in Seattle, home of Boeing, which had been considered a favorite to win the contract. They're planning to contest the decision. But the news wasn't as shocking to Post-Intelligencer business columnist Bill Virgin. When he was business editor of the Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail in 1986, he did a series on what states were doing to promote economic development. And he remembered an MDC report issued that year called "Shadows in the Sunbelt" that had been a major topic of conversation in South Carolina. The report found that the rural South was not reaping the benefits of growth in the region's urban areas, and that new strategies would be crucial to stemming declines in agriculture and manufacturing.

So when Virgin needed a perspective on what had happened in Southern economic development since then, to help explain Mobile's apparent victory over Seattle, he called MDC. Senior Fellow Ferrel Guillory filled him in.  You can read Bill Virgin's column here.

Latino Pathways helps immigrants succeed as entrepreneurs 

Rosa McIntyre, a recent immigrant to the United States, dreams of starting her own enterprise: "I clean house now, but I want to make more money, have a license, understand the law and make more clear my own vision for my business."

Rosa and 23 other Hispanic immigrant students are currently enrolled in a series of workshops hosted by the Small Business Center at Guilford Technical Community College in Greensboro, North Carolina. The entrepreneur workshops are held on Saturday mornings with instruction in both English and Spanish.

The workshops are the result of a collaboration between the college and the Latino Pathways project. Latino Pathways is a partnership-based effort that seeks to build occupational pathways for immigrant workers that are often stuck in dead end jobs. MDC, Inc. was instrumental in bringing the partnership together and launching the project. Initial efforts focused on the health care industry and created an innovative Nurse Assistant training (now in its third class) that combines vocational training with language and work readiness skills. read more

A Conversation With Marc Morial on The State of Black America 2007 report

 Q: Why did you choose to paint a portrait of the African American male?

Morial: Since 2003, as part of our black male initiative, we've been doing policy and programmatic work on the status of black males. We thought this would be a good time to compile what we've learned over the past three and a half years. The research shows a two-sided coin when it comes to black men in America. On the one hand we have successful role models such as Barack Obama, Charles Rangel, Spike Lee, Bob Johnson, Dick Parsons - so many black men doing sensational work and leading the nation in a variety of sectors. On the other hand, we see that fewer than 50 percent of African American boys graduate from high schools in most major American cities. We see an unemployment rate that's double that of whites, and huge academic achievement gaps. The criminal justice system is disproportionately populated by African American males. Taken together, these facts paint a stark picture of crisis.  Read more ...

• MDC At-a-Glance:  a one-page description of MDC's current programs and initiatives

Of Note: 

• The Danville Regional Foundation has hired Karl Stauber, formerly president of the Northwest Area Foundation, as its first president/CEO.  MDC is consultant to the new hospital conversion foundation, which has assets of $220 million to help the struggling Southside Virginia region.
  
  
• MDC's Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count initiative lauded in Boston Globe editorial.
  
  
• MDC has a wiki!  MDC Jobs Partners serves as a virtual meeting place for organizations connecting people to economic opportunity.



• MDC's State of the South 2007- the sixth in MDC's biennial series - calls upon the region's philanthropic organizations to think more creatively and act more boldly to help the South address its self-limiting inequities and spur its competitiveness in a global economy. A pdf of the report is available for download. Hard copies also may be purchased by using this order form or by contacting us at orders@mdcinc.org.   



• Disconnected Youth: "putting up bars or putting them behind bars is not the solution." Read an interview with MDC President David Dodson about the status of disconnected youth in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. "The stark reality is that we need these young people to support us in future and currently, they're not equipped to do this."
  

News Briefs

• The North Carolina General Assembly has adopted a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)! The 3.5% refundable state EITC will provide more than 825,000 low- and moderate-income families with an average of $57 at tax time and will cover everyone who is eligible for the Federal EITC.  Additional information can be found on Action for Children North Carolina's Web site as well as the NC Justice Center's Web site.
  

  
  

• Save the Date: The second statewide Conference on Financial Education and Asset Building will be held October 8 and 9 at the Friday Center for Continuing Education in Chapel Hill, NC.  MDC's EITC-Carolinas is one of the conference sponsors.



• The Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty has released a report that outlines 12 key steps for cutting poverty in half in the next decade. The Task Force presented its report and recommendations in a press conference April 25th with Senators Ted Kennedy and Charles Rangel.



• The Kellogg Foundation has hired MDC to work with its Rural People, Rural Policy initiative, set in five rural policy networks throughout the country. MDC will help grantees further develop their networks and sharpen their skills in bringing about policy change that benefits rural areas. MDC also will design and coordinate peer learning sessions for the initiative.
  
  
• MDC's Emergency Preparedness Demonstration Program (EPD), a joint initiative of MDC and the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, has received a year's extension and an additional $500,000 from FEMA so that MDC can take the work into areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.



• Disconnected youth (young people neither in school nor working) ages 16 to 24 are the subject of an MDC research project, funded by the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, to gauge the scope of the problem in the Research Triangle area of NC, catalog and assess current programs tackling the problem, and make recommendations.

What moves people into the middle class and places out of poverty: MDC's Quick Primer

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