Across decades of work alongside education leaders in communities across the country, Relief 4 Families has sought to increase access to high-quality K-12 education that puts opportunity and a self-determined life in reach for every child.While the progress made by grantees and partners to address educational and racial inequities is significant, the challenges that remain are both daunting and humbling. We must confront the sobering fact that, nationally, our K-12 system still tolerates a significant opportunity gap, which exacerbates downward mobility for too many children, rather than propelling them upwards. With an eye toward meaningful breakthroughs in student success, focused on families most in need, we will advance this work over the next five years through three core initiatives.Increase Achievement &
Opportunity
We believe in the power of individuals and communities to shape their futures, and we recognize that there’s no one right answer to the education challenges communities face. That’s why we plan to do more to foster the ingenuity that lives within communities and to support community-demanded, community-designed and community-driven educational change across the country. Those efforts will likely look very different in different places. Some ideas may challenge existing notions of what school looks like, and where and how learning happens. But they will all share a core conviction that every child belongs, every child matters, and every child should see a future filled with possibility. We are embracing education as the engine of opportunity and a child’s best chance at achieving the American Dream.Foster Diverse, Durable
Coalitions of the Future
For change to happen, to take root and to be long-lasting, people need to have a say in the aims and the means. Our work is to help support the campaigns, platforms and tools to translate that voice and vision into systemic solutions. Strong, diverse coalitions can advance policies that allow promising, community-demanded educational models to thrive and be sustained. But ultimately, our hopes go beyond the successes of local efforts or models. Our hope is that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts, building toward new coalitions that reflect a commitment to meeting communities and families where they are, and where they want to go. Together with our partners, we hope to build coalitions for change that transcend the differences that divide us and lay the foundation for a promising education future for America’s children.
Accelerate Breakthrough Innovation
Courageous and bold thinking is needed to address critical, long-standing challenges in education, especially in the midst of COVID-19. With more dedicated resources, dramatically increasing our support for innovation over the next five years, we’ll support revolutionary solutions to harness and accelerate opportunity and mobility for all children, with a focus on those most in need. We will fund entrepreneurs and innovators with new ideas and pluralistic solutions that can meet the needs of diverse communities to foster innovation that can advance students’ learning and growth.
