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Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis

By David Waters Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, addressed in a launch of More for Memphis, an ambitious community development initiative to improve social and economic mobility in Memphis and Shelby County. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis) For tens of thousands of children in Memphis, most of them children of color, poverty […]
The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis appeared first on The Tennessee Tribune.
The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 years ago

May 16, 2023

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David Waters

Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone, addressed in a launch of More for Memphis, an ambitious community development initiative to improve social and economic mobility in Memphis and Shelby County. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis)

For tens of thousands of children in Memphis, most of them children of color, poverty is not a temporary living condition. It’s a trap constructed generations ago and maintained by adults, policies and systems that neglect, exclude and exploit.

A child who grows up in a low-income home in Memphis has about a 4 percent chance of becoming a high-income adult. That compares to a 6 percent chance for a child who grows up in a low-income home in Tennessee, and a 12 percent chance for a child in America.

The differences within Memphis are even more stark, according to a study by Tennessee’s Sycamore Institute.

A child who grows up in a low-income home in Midtown has a 16 percent of becoming a high-income adult. A child who grows up next door in North Memphis has a 1 percent chance. A child in Frayser has a 2 percent chance.

The list of reasons that poverty persists is as long, deep and convoluted as the Mississippi River in springtime.

“It’s complex,” said Mark Sturgis, executive director of Seeding Success, a local nonprofit that works to advance social and economic mobility in Memphis.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t do something about it. We have to do more and do better.”

That’s the goal of More for Memphis, the most ambitious local community development initiative since the 1979 Memphis Jobs Conference, convened by then-Gov. Lamar Alexander.

For the past three years, Sturgis and dozens of other representatives of local government, business, nonprofits, philanthropy, education, neighborhoods, and faith and arts communities have been meeting to envision, design and launch a “multi-sector, cross-community collaboration” to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

In short, to dismantle the Memphis poverty trap.

They plan to present their initial recommendations to city and county public officials in May.

Mark Sturgis

The Memphis City Council, the Shelby County Commission, and the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board already have agreed to support the process, though there are no financial commitments yet. More for Memphis leaders are working to get similar commitments from this year’s mayoral candidates.

“If this works, it will be the most comprehensive and inclusive community development plan and have the largest social impact in the city’s history,” Sturgis said. “But there are a lot of challenges ahead.

he challenges are dauntMemphis, one of the nation’s poorest big cities, is overseen by four levels of government (city, county, state and federal) with everchanging leaders, and often com

The challenges are daunting.

Thirty years ago, about 1 in 5 Memphians lived below the poverty line. Now 1 in 4 do.

Poverty hasn’t deepened here, but it has spread.

There are about 80 Census tracts in Memphis that are experiencing high poverty — double the number 40 years ago, according to the Economic Innovation Group. Thirty-eight Census tracts have experienced persistent poverty since 1980.

More for Memphis leaders say loosening poverty’s local grip could be especially difficult here for several reasons.

Memphis is overseen by four levels of government (city, county, state and federal) with everchanging leaders, and often competing priorities and conflicting problems.

“Patchwork policymaking is the enemy of systemic change because everyone’s doing their own thing in their own corner,” said Haley Simmons, chief public policy officer for Seeding Success. “They’re not focusing on the connectedness of the world.”

Local policymakers face another challenge. Memphis (and Tennessee) have tax structures primarily built on property values and retail sales, which unevenly burden the working poor. Governments promote the city’s low-cost labor force and tax base, and often use tax incentives to reward companies that provide even more low-paying jobs.

“The whole system is designed to maintain the status quo,” said Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children and one of six “focus area” leaders of More for Memphis. “The status quo is so ingrained in our systems and mindsets that even our Black leaders are afraid to try something different. We’re a majority Black city that doesn’t value Black people.”

Cardell Orrin

Meanwhile, the city’s entrenched generational poverty creates and sustains living and working conditions that generate and exacerbate trauma, blight, violence and other factors that further impair social and economic mobility, despite countless efforts to address those problems.

Memphis has more nonprofit organizations per 10,000 population than any other major city, and 60 percent of them work with low-income people.

“We are program rich and systems poor,” Sturgis said. “We have a lot of programs to help the poor, but our systems are designed to keep people in poverty. We need to dismantle those systems and build a new civic structure that is better coordinated, more efficient and equitable, more connected to the people who are living in poverty.”

That new civic structure will be crucial to the long-term success of More for Memphis.

“We’re not developing and funding a new organization or a new program,” said Jamilica Burke, chief strategy and impact officer for Seeding Success. “We’re funding a new collaborative that we’re building from the ground up.”

The new structure, still in the works, would establish a long-term public-private governance/management structure similar to Shelby Farms Park Conservancy or First 8 Memphis.

First 8 is a nonprofit corporation that partners with more than three dozen local governments and nonprofits to support, coordinate, and administer funding for early childhood care and education programs.

Shelby Farms Park Conservancy is a nonprofit organization that manages and operates Shelby Farms Park and Shelby Farms Greenline through a private-public partnership with Shelby County Government.

“These types of constructs are typical in public infrastructure projects, but have not been deployed as much in this form in the social impact space,” Sturgis said.

More for Memphis will require ample and sustained funding from public and private sources, but More for Memphis is starting strong.

The initiative is backed by a $50 million conditional commitment from Blue Meridian Partners, a national nonprofit that plans to distribute $2.5 billion in unrestricted grants to “high-performance nonprofits” that are helping people escape poverty.

Natalie McKinney

More for Memphis leaders hope to use those funds to leverage another $50 million in local and state funds. The initiative also has received $500,000 from the Kresge Foundation and $1 million from Facebook.

“This will take time,” said Natalie McKinney, executive director of Whole Child Strategies and a member of the More for Memphis design team. “Generational poverty took generations to establish. There’s no quick fix. We don’t need reform. We need transformation.”

The More for Memphis process began in early 2021 with formation of a 33-member Design Committee representing various agencies, organizations and individuals from across the community.

The committee named the mission (More for Memphis) and wrote a mission statement: “To transform Memphis through dismantling unjust systems into an inclusive city with a deep sense of community, liberation, and access to wealth building systems.”

The committee established a 26-member governing body that includes six youth and six adult community members, and the leaders of six “Anchor Collaboratives”.

–Education & Youth led by Communities in Schools of Memphis.

–Health & Well-Being led by Common Table Health Alliance.

–Economic Development led by Collective Blueprint.

–Justice & safety led by Stand for Children.

–Community Development led by BLDG Memphis.

–Culture led by Memphis Music Initiative.

Each “Anchor” includes a number of partner organizations. For example, Health & Well-Being includes Legacy of Legends CDC, Shelby County Health Department, Church Health, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Baptist Memorial Health Care, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and Youth Villages.

Members of each “anchor” workgroup have been hosting public meetings, gathering data, and examining research to develop “targeted investment strategies that become the backbone of the community-wide improvement plan.”

Those strategies will be incorporated into a comprehensive More for Memphis plan that will be presented to city and county officials in May.

“This is where the real opportunity is to bring our work together, leverage those private dollars to do the things we wish we could do together and do them well, to do them right, and to build a lasting system of impact,” Sturgis said.

That lasting impact will depend on how well More for Memphis addresses the fact that equality isn’t equity. That economic growth and development aren’t the same as economic justice. That poverty and disparity are directly connected to the racial income and wealth gap.

The design team calls it The Big Idea:

“To improve social and economic outcomes in Shelby County through a multi-sector, cross-community collaboration, with an explicit focus on racial equity.”

The median income for Black families in Memphis has remained about half that of white families for more than five decades, according to the Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, compiled by the School of Social Work at the University of Memphis.

Black families in Memphis have, on average, 6 pennies for every $1 white families have.

The net worth of Black residents with college degrees is less than 20 percent that of white residents. It’s barely 6 percent for the average Black family.

Local minority-owned businesses still only account for less that one percent of business receipts citywide.

“The people and organizations in distressed neighborhoods don’t have the capital they need to build equity, to start their own businesses, to transform their own communities,” said Orrin. “We’re talking about the destructive impact of generations of disinvestment.”

The emphasis on racial equity and economic justice is what makes More for Memphis fundamentally different from the 1979 Memphis Jobs Conference and its successors.

As Tom Jones of Smart City Consulting pointed out in an analysis published by MLK50 in 2017, the Memphis Jobs Conference focused on expanding the number of low-paying jobs. It worked.

From 1990 to 2012, the number of low-wage jobs in the Memphis region increased by 40 percent. Meanwhile, middle-income jobs increased by 10 percent, and high-income jobs went up 19 percent.

Hundreds of Memphians have been meeting regularly for three years to envision, design and launch More for Memphis, a “multi-sector, cross-community collaboration” to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. (Photo courtesy of More for Memphis)

“The new economic agenda produced by the (Jobs Conference) reflected the influence of the powers-that-be that benefitted most from cheap labor,” Jones wrote. “Tourism, warehouses and distribution, and new agricultural methods were set as top priorities although university economists warned that low wages characterized all three sectors.”

The “low-wage” poverty trap isn’t just a Memphis problem, but it is a monumental problem in Memphis.

A larger share of workers in the United States (23 percent) make low wages — earning less than two-thirds of median wages — than in any other industrialized nation in the world.

By comparison, about 17 percent of workers in Britain make low wages, 11 percent in Japan, and 5 percent in Italy.

In Memphis, about 45 percent (212,000) of all workers make low wages (defined as less than $10 an hour).

“We’ve been selling this community as a low-wage, low-cost, low-taxes prize for employers and developers,” Orrin said. “All that has given us is a low-opportunity, high-poverty community. We’ve built poverty into our economic system.”

Low wages lead to substandard housing and high-interest debt.

Memphis has about 40,000 fewer affordable housing units than it needs, given its number of low-income residents, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Low-income renters generally spend more than 60 percent of their income on rent — double the national average.

That puts a severe strain on low-income household budgets, leading to another trap.

Memphis tops the list of U.S. cities with the worst payday lending problems, according to DebtHammer.

(Nashville and Chattanooga also make the Top Ten, thanks to state laws that allow predatory lenders to charge triple-digit interest rates on short-term loans. State laws also give predatory lenders repayment priority over mortgage, rental and utility companies and other debtors.)

There are more than 100 high-cost loan storefronts in the city, more than twice the number of Starbucks and McDonald’s combined, according to the Hope Policy Institute.

Payday, car title, and consumer installment loans are “charging up to 450 percent interest on loans that effectively ensnare the working poor into webs of long-term debt,” said Rev. J. Lawrence Turner, president of the Black Clergy Collaborative.

Payday lending practices was one of 54 “problem statement topics” considered at a recent More for Memphis gathering.

Others included: rental housing stability and eviction rates; vacant commercial corridors; disproportionate investment in incarceration and related systems; early education and literacy; impact of trauma on children, adolescents and adults.

The 54 “problems” covered economic and community development, banking and finance, housing, transportation, education, health care, public safety, and various other systems.

“All these systems are connected,” McKinney said. “All impact children, families and neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poverty. Applying short-term solutions to the enduring, generational nature of poverty simply doesn’t work.”

Jake Lankford, an intern for the Institute for Public Service Reporting and a graduate journalism student at the University of Memphis, contributed reporting to this story.

The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis appeared first on The Tennessee Tribune.

The post Ambitious New Initiative Strives To Dismantle The Poverty Trap In Memphis first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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California, Districts Try to Recruit and Retain Black Teachers; Advocates Say More Should Be Done

SACRAMENTO OBSERVER — Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

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6 days ago

December 17, 2024

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A Series by EdSource | The Sacramento Observer

Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage. The state and individual school districts have launched initiatives to recruit teachers of color, but educators and advocates say more needs to be done.

Hiring a diverse group of teachers helps all students, but the impact is particularly significant for students of color, who then score higher on tests and are more likely to graduate from college, according to the Learning Policy Institute. A recently released report also found that Black boys are less likely to be identified for special education when they have a Black teacher.

In the last five years, state lawmakers have made earning a credential easier and more affordable and have offered incentives for school staff to become teachers — all moves meant to ease the teacher shortage and help to diversify the educator workforce.

Despite efforts by the state and school districts, the number of Black teachers doesn’t seem to be increasing. Black teachers say that to keep them in the classroom, teacher preparation must be more affordable, pay and benefits increased, and more done to ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

“Black educators specifically said that they felt like they were being pushed out of the state of California,” said Jalisa Evans, chief executive director of the Black Educator Advocates Network of a recent survey of Black teachers. “When we look at the future of Black educators for the state, it can go either way, because what Black educators are feeling right now is that they’re not welcome.”

Task force offers recommendations

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond called diversifying the teacher workforce a priority and established the California Department of Education Educator Diversity Advisory Group in 2021.

The advisory group has made several recommendations, including beginning a public relations campaign and offering sustained funding to recruit and retain teachers of color, and providing guidance and accountability to school districts on the matter. The group also wants universities, community groups and school districts to enter into partnerships to build pathways for teachers of color.

Since then, California has created a set of public service announcements and a video to help recruit teachers and has invested $10 million to help people of color to become school administrators, said Travis Bristol, chairman of the advisory group and an associate professor of education at UC Berkeley. Staff from county offices of education also have been meeting to share ideas on how they can support districts’ efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, he said.

The state also has invested more than $350 million over the past six years to fund teacher residency programs, and recently passed legislation to ensure residents are paid a minimum salary. Residents work alongside an experienced teacher-mentor for a year of clinical training while completing coursework in a university preparation program — a time commitment that often precludes them from taking a job.

Legislators have also proposed a bill that would require that student teachers be paid. Completing the 600 hours of unpaid student teaching required by the state, while paying for tuition, books, supplies and living expenses, is a challenge for many Black teacher candidates.

Black teacher candidates typically take on much more student debt than their white counterparts, in part, because of the large racial wealth gap in the United States. A 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that the median white family had $184,000 in family wealth (property and cash), while the median Latino family had $38,000 and the median Black family had $23,000.

Lack of data makes it difficult to know what is working

It’s difficult to know if state efforts are working. California hasn’t released any data on teacher demographics since the 2018-19 school year, although the data is submitted annually by school districts. The California Department of Education (CDE) did not provide updated data or interviews requested by EdSource for this story.

The most recent data from CDE shows the number of Black teachers in California declined from 4.2% in 2009 to 3.9% during the 2018-19 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics data from the 2020-21 show that Black teachers made up 3.8% of the state educator workforce.

Having current data is a critical first step to understanding the problem and addressing it, said Mayra Lara, director of Southern California partnerships and engagement at The Education Trust-West, an education research and advocacy organization.

“Let’s be clear: The California Department of Education needs to annually publish educator demographic and experience data,” Lara said. “It has failed to do so for the past four years. … Without this data, families, communities and decision-makers really are in the dark when it comes to the diversity of the educator workforce.”

LA Unified losing Black teachers despite efforts

While most state programs focus on recruiting and retaining all teachers of color, some California school districts have initiatives focused solely on recruiting Black teachers.

The state’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, passed the Black Student Excellence through Educator Diversity, Preparation and Retention resolution two years ago. It required district staff to develop a strategic plan to ensure schools have Black teachers, administrators and mental health workers, and to advocate for programs that offer pathways for Black people to become teachers.

When the resolution was passed, in February 2022, Los Angeles Unified had 1,889 Black teachers — 9% of its teacher workforce. The following school year, that number declined to 1,823 or 7.9% of district teachers. The number of Black teachers in the district has gone down each year since 2016. The district did not provide data for the current school year.

Robert Whitman, director of the Educational Transformation Office at LA Unified, attributed the decrease, in part, to the difficulty attracting teachers to the district, primarily because of the area’s high cost of living.

“Those who are coming out of colleges now, in some cases, we find that they can make more money doing other things,” Whitman said. “And so, they may not necessarily see education as the most viable option.”

The underrepresentation of people of color prompted the district to create its own in-house credentialing program, approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, Whitman said. The program allows classified staff, such as substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative assistants and bus drivers, to become credentialed teachers while earning a salary and benefits at their original jobs.

Grow-your-own programs such as this, and the state’s Classified School Employee Credentialing program, and a soon-to-be launched apprenticeship program, are meant to diversify the educator workforce because school staff recruited from the community more closely match the demographics of the student body than traditionally trained and recruited teachers, according to research.

Los Angeles Unified has other initiatives to increase the number of Black educators in the district, Whitman said, including working with universities and colleges to bring Black teachers, counselors and psychiatric social workers to their campuses. The district also has programs that help school workers earn a credential for free, and channels employees completing a bachelor’s degree toward the district’s teacher preparation program where they can begin teaching while earning their credential.

All new teachers at Los Angeles Unified are supported by mentors and affinity groups, which have been well received by Black teachers, who credit them with inspiring and helping them to see themselves as leaders in the district, Whitman said.

Oakland has more Black teachers than students

Recruiting and retaining Black teachers is an important part of the Oakland Unified three-year strategic plan, said Sarah Glasband, director of recruitment and retention for the district. To achieve its goals, the district has launched several partnerships that make an apprenticeship program, and a residency program that includes a housing subsidy, possible. A partnership with the Black Teacher Project, a nonprofit advocacy organization, offers affinity groups, workshops and seminars to support the district’s Black teachers.

The district also has a Classified School Employee Program funded by the state and a new high school program to train future teachers. District pathway programs have an average attrition rate of less than 10%, Glasband said.

This year, 21.3% of the district’s K-12 teachers are Black, compared with 20.3% of their student population, according to district data. Oakland Unified had a retention rate of about 85% for Black teachers between 2019 and 2023.

Better pay, a path to leadership will help teachers stay

Black teachers interviewed by EdSource and researchers say that to keep them in the classroom, more needs to be done to make teacher preparation affordable, improve pay and benefits, and ensure they are treated with respect, supported and given opportunities to lead.

The Black Educator Advocates Network came up with five recommendations after surveying 128 former and current Black teachers in California about what it would take to keep them in the classroom:

Hire more Black educators and staff
Build an anti-racist, culturally responsive and inclusive school environment
Create safe spaces for Black educators and students to come together
Provide and require culturally responsive training for all staff
Recognize, provide leadership opportunities and include Black educators in decision making

Teachers interviewed by EdSource said paying teachers more also would make it easier for them to stay.

“I don’t want to say that it’s the pay that’s going to get more Black teachers,” Brooke Sims, a Stockton teacher, told EdSource. “But you get better pay, you get better health care.”

The average teacher salary in the state is $88,508, with the average starting pay at $51,600, according to the 2023 National Education Association report, “State of Educator Pay in America.” California’s minimum living wage was $54,070 last year, according to the report.

State efforts, such as an initiative that pays teachers $5,000 annually for five years after they earn National Board Certification, will help with pay parity across school districts, Bristol said. Teachers prove through assessments and a portfolio that they meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. To be eligible for the grant, teachers must work at least half of their time in a high-needs school. Teachers who qualify are also given $2,500 to cover the cost of certification.

This incentive will help teachers continue their education and improve their practice, said Los Angeles teacher Petrina Miller. “It’s awesome,” she said.

Teacher candidates must be actively recruited

Many Black college students have not considered a teaching career because they have never had a Black teacher, said Preston Jackson, who teaches physical education at California Middle School in Sacramento. Those who consider a teaching career are often deterred by the cost of teacher preparation, taking required tests and unpaid student teaching.

“In order to increase the number of Black teachers in schools, it has to become deliberate,” Jackson said. “You have to actively recruit and actively seek them out to bring them into the profession.”

Since starting in 2005, Jackson has been one of only a handful of Black teachers at his school.

“And for almost every single one of my kids, I’m the first Black teacher they’ve ever had,” said Jackson. “… And for some of them, I’m the first one they’ve ever seen.”

Mentors are needed to help retain new teachers

Mentor teachers are the key ingredient to helping new Black educators transition successfully into teaching, according to teachers interviewed by EdSource. Alicia Simba says she could have taken a job for $25,000 more annually in a Bay Area district with few Black teachers or students but opted to take a lower salary to work in Oakland Unified.

But like many young teachers, Simba knew she wanted mentors to help her navigate her first years in the classroom. She works alongside Black teachers in Oakland Unified who have more than 20 years of teaching experience. One of her mentor teachers shared her experience of teaching on the day that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Other teachers told her about teaching in the 1980s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

“It really helps dispel some of the sort of narratives that I hear, which is that being a teacher is completely unsustainable,” Simba said. “Like, there’s no way that anyone could ever be a teacher long term, which are things that, you know, I’ve heard my friends say, and I’ve thought it myself.”

The most obvious way to retain Black teachers would be to make sure they are treated the same as non-Black teachers, said Brenda Walker, a Black teacher and president of the Associated Chino Teachers.

“If you are a district administrator, site administrator, site or colleague, parent or student, my bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and my special education credential are just as valuable and carry as much weight, and are as respected as any other educator,” she said.

“However, it’s just as critical for all those groups to acknowledge and respect the unique cultural experience I bring to the table and acknowledge and respect that I’m a proud product of my ancestral history.”

Black teachers: how to recruit THEM and make them stay

This is the first part of a special series by EdSource on the recruitment and retention of Black teachers in California. The recruitment and hiring of Black educators has lagged, even as a teacher shortage has given the task new urgency.

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Christmas Travel: When is the Best Time to Take Your Trip

BIRMINGHAM TIMES — When planning for your trip, the thoughts of hitting the road or boarding a flight can be stressful. You envision not “sugar plums dancing in your head”, but crowded airports, long lines and very heavy traffic because Christmas travel can be notoriously difficult. It’s a time of high demand and volume with millions traveling during the winter weather, which is often synonymous with snowstorms, icy roads and delayed flights.

Published

6 days ago

December 16, 2024

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By Samuetta Drew | Birmingham Times

Christmas is one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. It’s a time when people schedule trips to visit family and friends, take that winter wonderland vacation or simply enjoy a festive getaway.

When planning for your trip, the thoughts of hitting the road or boarding a flight can be stressful. You envision not “sugar plums dancing in your head”, but crowded airports, long lines and very heavy traffic because Christmas travel can be notoriously difficult. It’s a time of high demand and volume with millions traveling during the winter weather, which is often synonymous with snowstorms, icy roads and delayed flights.

This safety article is meant to help you dodge the busiest crowds and make your trip as stress-free as possible, but also not to lose focus on practicing good safety measures. It will identify the best travel dates and times.

Most travelers wait until closer to Christmas, so plan your trips this year earlier in the week – specifically Monday, December 16, through Thursday, December 19. This is ideal for several reasons:

Lower Crowds – airports and highways are less congested.
Cheaper Flights – airlines often offer lower fares earlier in the week before the rush begins.
Less Stress – with fewer people on the road and shorter lines at the airports, your travel experience will be much smoother.

The least busy days with fewer travelers during Christmas are:

December 24 (Christmas Eve)
December 25 (Christmas Day)

While not as bad as the days immediately before, Christmas Eve still poses some challenges, such as:

Last Minute Travelers – many people wait until the last minute to travel.
Shortened Hours – some businesses and transportation services close early.
Higher Stress Levels – the pressure to arrive on time can add a little additional stress.

Avoid peak times at the airport. Opt for the late or early morning flights. The red-eye flights and early morning flights are generally less popular but offer significant advantages such as:

Fewer Delays – airports are generally less busy during these times, reducing the risk of delays.
Faster Security Checks – shorter lines at TSA means you will get through the airport faster, especially if it’s a large airport.
Affordable Options – airlines sometimes offer discounts on less desirable flight times.

Hopefully this article will help you Keep an Eye on Safety when traveling over the 2024 Christmas season by decreasing your holiday chaos, which could result in your lack of focus while traveling.

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PRESS ROOM: Trace and ARDN Join Forces to Promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN), a New York-based nonprofit, is committed to promoting the African Renaissance by strengthening ties between Africa and its diaspora through development and peace-building initiatives. Trace, an international multimedia platform focused on Afro-urban entertainment and youth success, is globally recognized for its contributions to Afrocentric cultures and its support of creators and fans from the African diaspora.

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6 days ago

December 16, 2024

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Trace, a global multimedia platform dedicated to Afro-urban entertainment and youth success, and the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN) have entered into a partnership to guide their joint actions over the next two years. The objectives and details of this partnership will be revealed during a digital press conference on Tuesday, December 17, at 3 PM (GMT+1). Main speakers will be Olivier Laouchez, CEO & Co-Founder of Trace, Djibril Diallo CEO & President of ARDN as well as Richard Gant, ARDN’s Art, Culture and Sports Chair and renown actor, screenwriter and director.

Mandatory registration here.

Two Organizations, One Shared Vision

The African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN), a New York-based nonprofit, is committed to promoting the African Renaissance by strengthening ties between Africa and its diaspora through development and peace-building initiatives.

Trace, an international multimedia platform focused on Afro-urban entertainment and youth success, is globally recognized for its contributions to Afrocentric cultures and its support of creators and fans from the African diaspora.

A Partnership for Global Impact

ARDN and Trace are collaborating to:

Advocate for equality and success,
Support the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,
Foster peace and security, and
Provide aid to vulnerable communities”Our partnership with Trace represents a significant milestone in our mission to rally support for Africa and its diaspora. Together, we will amplify our impact and raise global awareness of African cultural richness and challenges,” said Djibril Diallo, President of ARDN.

“We are proud to collaborate with ARDN to contribute to the SDGs, positively impact people and societies, and elevate African cultures,” added Olivier Laouchez, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Trace.

The ARDN Red Card Campaign: First Joint Initiative

A central focus of this partnership is the ARDN Red Card Campaign, which tackles gender-based violence and discrimination. Positioned within the “Pathway to Solutions” framework, the campaign features the Red Card Pledge—a global movement aligned with SDG #5 to advance gender equality and empower women and girls worldwide, serving as a critical step toward accelerating the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The campaign encourages individuals and organizations to symbolically raise a red card, taking a stand against discrimination and promoting actions to eliminate inequality. It underscores the indispensable role of women as agents of transformative societal change. With the support of Trace and its innovative Trace+ streaming platform, the initiative will scale globally, reaching broader audiences and galvanizing international efforts for change.

This launch marks the beginning of a worldwide collaboration aimed at mobilizing collective action through symbolic gestures like the red card. It is the inaugural joint initiative between ARDN and Trace.

Adding a dynamic musical element, Trace will contribute to the Afrobeat remix of the campaign’s theme song, AOFB (“Africa Open for Business”), produced by Mackadamion. Featuring a prominent Afrobeat artist, the remix will premiere on Trace networks, celebrating Africa’s emergence as a hub of innovation and opportunity through captivating rhythms and uplifting lyrics.

A Committed Partnership for Sustainable Change

The Trace X ARDN partnership reflects their shared commitment to inclusion, cultural pride, and sustainable development. Together, they aim to contribute to societal improvements benefiting the African diaspora and beyond.

For more information about this partnership and upcoming initiatives, please contact:

Trace Contact: press@trace.plus

ARDN Contact: angelauzoeme@gmail.com

About Trace

Trace is a leading multimedia and digital platform dedicated to Afro-urban music and cultures, as well as the success of youth and artists. Trace regularly engages 350 million fans in 190 countries through entertainment and empowerment platforms. Learn more at http://www.trace.plus | Download the free Trace+ app on the App Store and Google Play.

About ARDN

The African Renaissance and Diaspora Network (ARDN), founded in 1990 and headquartered in New York, is a non-profit organization with consultative status at the United Nations and representation in over 80 countries. ARDN works closely with the United Nations to champion sustainable development across Africa and its diaspora. Its flagship initiatives, such as the Red Card Campaign, address critical issues like discrimination and gender-based violence while celebrating Africa’s potential and empowering women’s leadership. Through strategic partnerships, ARDN is dedicated to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals and fostering meaningful global impact. Learn more at: http://www.ardn.ngo