NEWS & OPINIONS
Support GCO With Amazon Smiles This Holiday Season (and all year long)
Like you, we love family and giving during the holidays. Well, we have a new way you can support Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO) and give during the season of giving: It’s called Amazon Smile, and it’s a chance to give back a small percentage of each purchase at...
Q&A: Kristin Barker on Hiring Well, Doing Good in Columbus
Georgia Center for Opportunity’s Hiring Well, Doing Good (HWDG) initiative is quickly gaining ground in Columbus, Georgia. Here’s a brief Q&A from the front lines with HWDG Program Manager Kristin Barker. Q: What's the goal of HWDG in Columbus? Kristin: The...
Breakthrough 2019 – Caring For Foster Families
We can’t address the crisis in our civil society without addressing children who lack a family to come home to. That was the driving theme behind Breakthrough 2019’s panel on foster care and adoption. A staggering 97 percent of kids who age out of the foster care...
Breakthrough 2019 – A Sustainable Vision For Helping The Poor
Is there a solution to poverty? That’s the question GCO president and CEO Randy Hicks discussed with AEI president Robert Doar as a keynote at Breakthrough 2019. One powerful step forward in the anti-poverty fight is the Success Sequence: Helping as many people as...
Introducing an Innovative New Way for Those in Poverty to Find Work
Government, particularly at the federal level, can only do so much to help those who are struggling in poverty to lead stable lives. We know instinctively that real change happens at the community level, when individuals, businesses, nonprofits, churches, and schools...
Breakthrough 2019 – Bettering Lives With Better Business
Is it possible to do good while making a profit? The resounding answer from our jobs panel at Breakthrough 2019 was “yes.” The big question, of course, is how to do it. We heard from mission-driven leaders in the business community dedicated to helping the...
Breakthrough 2019 – Criminal Justice Reforms That Restore & Empower
Georgia ranks 4th nationwide in incarceration rates. One out of every 18 people are in jail, on probation, or on parole. And about 40 percent of Georgians have a criminal record. These are just a few of the startling statistics on criminal justice in the Peach State....
Breakthrough 2019 – Bettering Lives With Better Business
Is it possible to do good while making a profit? The resounding answer from our jobs panel at Breakthrough 2019 was “yes.” The big question, of course, is how to do it. We heard from mission-driven leaders in the business community dedicated to helping the...
Breakthrough 2019 – Businesses Investing In Student Readiness
We know that a traditional four-year college pathway isn’t the right choice for many students in Georgia. The harder part is figuring out which alternative pathway is the best. Breaking ground in these areas are forward-thinking employers like Southwire, America’s...
From prisoner to influencer: Tony’s story
The day that Tony Kitchens was released from prison in 1985, he did an unusual thing: He got down on the ground and created a fake “snow angel” on the grass. “I was elated, but nervous. Free, but I didn’t know anything. The sun was very bright. Red was very red, green...
Breakthrough 2019 – Outcome-Focused Programs & Measuring Success
What works and what doesn’t? That’s a basic but important question for community nonprofits to address. But more times than not, we tend to launch off hunches. We think we know what works, but we don’t know, with quantifiable data points to back it up. At Breakthrough...
Breakthrough 2019 – What Makes Communities Thrive?
American civil society is broken. So many Americans live fragmented lives, disconnected from the institutions and associations that once characterized American life and brought people of all economic classes together—everything from churches and synagogues to rotary...
MEDIA MENTIONS
Georgia jobless rate lowest in decades, but workers quitting clouds good news | GEORGIA RECORDER
Fewer Georgians filed initial unemployment insurance claims last month than in the weeks leading up to the pandemic last year, and the state’s unemployment rate hit 3.2%, a 20-year low. Those are two welcome signs of economic recovery after record-breaking layoffs...
Lawrenceville awarded $5 million grant to support youth, families | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lawrenceville plans to use a $5 million federal grant to connect families to mental health resources, strengthen a program that sends clinicians out on police calls and create programs to engage and support youth. City Council unanimously accepted the five-year grant...
DonorsTrust Launches Giving Ventures Podcast | MENAFN
This week the team at DonorsTrust , a donor-advised fund committed to encouraging philanthropic giving and protecting donor intent, launched a new podcast focusing on philanthropy. The Giving Ventures podcast explores innovative projects and problem-solving...
Working-class Americans’ Views on Family Policy | GLOBE NEWSWIRE
A new report on the work and family policy preferences of black, Hispanic, and white working-class parents reveals that their opinions often cut against the agenda of Washington, D.C., insiders on both the right and left. The report, Working-Class Americans'...
Anti-Poverty Leaders to Biden: Child Allowance Cash Payments Will Not Give Low-Income Americans True Opportunity | DAILY SIGNAL
Policymakers who are concerned about low-income Americans should reject the Biden administration’s plan to make new unconditional cash payments permanent in the form of a child allowance. Policymakers should not support this ill-advised attempt to expand safety-net...
Letter: Reimagine how children stay connected to school | THE ROANOKE TIMES
The June 8 Roanoke School Board meeting addressed student learning loss and post-pandemic reorganization. As a Hollins University student and member of the Roanoke community, I care about access to education. In my research, I found a study from the Georgia Center for...
Inflation is running wild — poor and low-income Americans will be hurt the most | QUAD CITY TIMES
How can we help working families the most? Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is a popular solution, but it’s a short-sighted one given the reality that inflation — the silent assassin of Americans’ livelihoods, particularly for the poor — is now running the...
Gov’t. check can’t beat work’s dignity | AJC
Jobs provide dignity and purpose to people’s lives and contribute to community flourishing in ways that can’t be measured by monthly employment reports.
