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Health
A new PBS documentary, CHILDREN IN CRISIS: The Story of CHIP, tells the fascinating history of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides affordable health insurance to millions of American children. The documentary features Joan Alker from The Center for Children & Families at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, a WKKF grantee. The story traces the roots of CHIP to the collapse of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when 150,000 people lost their jobs and suddenly found themselves without health insurance for their children.
Racial Equity
Are diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs effective at encouraging talent attraction, a sense of belonging, career advancement and industry influence? A new report from Expanding Equity, a W.K. Kellogg Foundation program that helps companies implement DEI strategies, finds that companies have success advancing DEI initiatives when they have proper leadership support and goals, and deploy inclusion and belonging efforts. The program and report represent insights and analysis from 100 companies in the Expanding Equity network. Another finding: Even amidst politicization, 80% of companies in the Expanding Equity network are doubling down on DEI efforts.
Mississippi
Low teacher retention rates are plaguing school districts nationally. However, mentorship is being credited for keeping more Mississippi teachers in the classroom. Mentoring tools and resources are part of the state’s Teacher Residency Program, which was designed to recruit, prepare, graduate and retain an increasing number of academically talented and diverse teacher candidates.
Louisiana
WKKF partners like the Power Coalition for Equity & Justice and Urban League of Louisiana are celebrating the redrawing of Louisiana’s congressional map. The new map includes a second Black majority district in the state and is a win for Black voters. It comes after more than a year of litigation that found the congressional map drawn after the 2020 census violated the Voting Rights Act, because there was only one majority Black district in a state where one-third of the population is Black.
Michigan
The Battle Creek Coalition for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (BC TRHT) hosted a Youth Day summit on Jan. 30 for about 70 high school students at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan. Participants in the summit envisioned a future without racism in their community as part of a broader series of community conversations connected to WKKF’s National Day of Racial Healing.
Mexico
The online magazine Reasons to be Cheerful ran an article on the rise of agroecology that features grantee Agroecology Fund (AEF). WKKF’s Mexico team has worked with AEF to help establish the Agroecology Fund of the Yucatán Peninsula (Fondo Agroecológico Península de Yucatán, or FAPY), which supports community organizations strengthening climate resiliency and promoting agroecology – an ecological approach to agriculture – and food sovereignty on the peninsula. FAPY is managed by AEF’s local partner, Túumben K’ooben, a cooperative of primarily Mayan women that supports sustainable community development. FAPY is AEF’s first regional agroecology fund.