Blog

By: AIF Staff

Since his time working for Jack Kemp (R-NY) and through his two decades in Congress, American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has been committed to finding solutions that promote upward mobility and expand economic opportunities. As he worked on these issues, Ryan concluded that in order to break through the partisan paralysis gripping Congress and to better fight poverty, the federal government needed to modernize how it collected, shared and utilized collected, shared, and utilized evidence and data when it came to social programs.

This dual desire to help Americans move up the ladder of life and to do so in an academically rigorous and quantifiable way is why the American Idea Foundation has partnered with local organizations working to solve our nation’s biggest challenges. In addition to providing policy expertise and public awareness about promising solutions, the American Idea Foundation has supported 20 organizations  in the last 3 years with grants to help fund evidence-based research.

In 2024, one of the organizations that the American Idea Foundation is partnering with is Family Promise of West Michigan.

Family Promise is focused on ending homelessness by connecting families in need with a suite of services like providing supplies to meet their basic needs, offering access to family support and emergency services, and creating customized stabilization efforts. Family Promise of West Michigan is a Grand Rapids-based affiliate of a national organization that is committed to helping the 2.5 million children who will experience homelessness this year.

Family Promise of West Michigan, founded in 1997 as the Greater Grand Rapids Interfaith Hospitality Network, partners with local congregations, individuals, families, foundations and corporations to provide emergency shelter and viable solutions for families with children who are facing a housing crisis. Family Promise is a diversion program to prevent homelessness and they work specifically with individuals and families who are at an immediate risk of becoming homeless, rather than people experiencing chronic homelessness, to mitigate homelessness happening in the first place.

Family Promise does this by utilizing a case management model which means providing individualized, wrap-around support for families and their children during times of great need. The individuals who Family Promise of West Michigan helps are seeking urgent assistance with basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter and Family Promise works tirelessly to address their immediate problems while identifying long-term solutions for shelter.

Family Promise tries to divert clients away from homelessness and costly shelter stays by instead providing them with alternative temporary housing options. Most individuals who enter emergency shelters tend to remain homeless longer which is why Family Promise seeks to intervene before that occurs, operating with a lighter touch and supporting individuals as they find alternatives like short-term rental housing or staying with family and friends.

The hope is that, if individuals do not enter homeless shelters because of support provided by groups like Family Promise of West Michigan, they will bounce back faster and stabilize their housing needs. This intervention is important for adults, but also critical for their children because youth who experience homelessness are 20% less likely to graduate high school than their peers.

This video testimonial speaks to the important work being done by Family Promise of West Michigan as they work to end homelessness in Michigan, one family at a time.

As Family Promise’s 2022 Annual Impact Report makes clear, the group is making an enormous difference locally and nationally.

– In 2022, because of Family Promise’s prevention program which provides services like rental assistance, landlord mediation, and case management, 44,000 children nation-wide avoided being homeless.

– In 2022, Family Promise provided more than 5,000 families and nearly 16,000 individuals with emergency shelter and of those, approximately 78% exited towards more stable housing. A marked increase over families in traditional shelter environments.

Nationally, Family Promise served 241,313 individuals including 88,349 children at their 200 affiliates across the country, including West Michigan. As the program continues to grow, they are also determined to refine their programming in an evidence-based way so it can help even more children and families find stable housing.

For the past year, Family Promise of West Michigan, Family Promise of Spokane, and the Lord’s Place (located in West Palm Beach) have been working with Notre Dame’s Laboratory for Economic Opportunities (LEO) on a randomized control trial to study how flexible financial assistance during diversion conversations impacts housing shelter use, housing stability issues, and other outcomes.

The goal is to determine if individuals who are diverted from homeless shelters, largely through financial assistance or other support services, will have increased housing stability and improved outcomes in terms of income, employment, overall well-being.

Funds provided by the American Idea Foundation will help complete this study and advance the base of evidence on homeless diversion programs so they can be refined and scaled, if appropriate, to assist more families and children find permanenting housing from which they can build stable and productive lives.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.   

By: AIF Staff

In 2016, Katie and Iloba Nzekwu felt determined to make a difference in their community of Cincinnati, Ohio. Both overcame significant obstacles in their early years, and they saw a city where youth from distressed areas were falling through the cracks. They set about leveraging these experiences and this desire to have a community support system for local teenagers by creating Found Village.

Found Village works with children, usually at age 13, who are or have been in the foster care and child welfare systems. They help these youths transform their lives through strong, family-like relationships and a community of support.

A community-based organization, Found Village works with children in the foster care system and helps these youths transform their lives through strong family-like relationships and a community of support. At a fundamental level, Found Village helps teenagers – many of whom have experienced trauma, neglect, or other challenges – regain the ability to trust others.

It is a long-term intervention and a methodical process. Found Village begins with a single mentoring relationship and then extends that trust to a wider network, providing family-like support that acts like a “village” around each youth.

In a 2023 interview, Found Village’s Community Engagement Director Shannon Yung explained: “Every young person who walks through our doors is introduced to our Pathway to Independence program, which consists of programs centered around discovery, stability, growth and independence. Our goal is to meet each individual where they are and propel them forward on a path of introspection, self-improvement and autonomy.”

To accomplish this, Found Village pairs each young person with a trained team of coaches to meet immediate needs (like clothing, safe housing, nutrition) before expanding out to a wider network of relationships to help with more long-term needs (like education and employment).

In this moving video from Stand Together, Iloba discusses the organization’s founding and how he came to understand the power of helping teenagers regain trust in their community.

Found Village measures success in a holistic way, focusing on a child’s development of self and their relationship and communication skills. As the co-founder, Katie Nzekwu, noted: “We look at success four ways. How are we contributing to your self-esteem? Your sense of value and seeing yourself in your fullness, so that you see that you have value and something to offer.”

Found Village’s goal is to create a family-like atmosphere for the teenager as they navigate the foster care system. Building a community of support is a long-term intervention and over half of Found Village’s participants have been enrolled in their program for over 3 years.  

Additionally, Found Village addresses an important age gap in foster care: though the system often leaves youth on their own after they turn 18, Found Village starts with kids who are 13  years-old and stays with them as they transition into their young adult lives, with engagements on-going until age 25.

Because of the nature of Found Village’s approach, the organization is still developing a base of evidence to measure their program’s impact, but the early results are promising.

Found Village is taking a community-driven approach to helping Cincinnati’s youth have brighter futures. They are working with children who, in many cases, have faced tremendous challenges early in life and are showing them that they matter and that there are support systems available to help them reach their full potential. Because of Found Village, hundreds of youths in Ohio have been able to continue their education, experience the benefits of a safe and stable family, and enter the workforce.

The American Idea Foundation cannot wait to see what the future holds for Found Village and are honored to partner with them as they continue making a profound impact in children’s lives.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here. 

By: AIF Staff

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan started the American Idea Foundation because he wanted to lift up individuals and organizations doing the hard and necessary work of expanding economic opportunities to people in-need. He fervently believes remarkable things are happening in communities across the country, but all too often, these amazing success stories are drowned out by the negativity and divisiveness that dominates our civil discourse.

To support and shine a light on those organizations who are making a difference in people’s lives, Ryan and the American Idea Foundation have issued annual grants to groups focused on evidence-based approaches to fighting poverty and promoting upward mobility. Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation has issued nearly $1 million in grant funds to 20 different deserving non-profits across the country and has supported their work of addressing major social and economic challenges in a data-driven way.

One of the 8 organizations that the American Idea Foundation is honored to support and partner with in 2024 is the Downtown Boxing Gym in Detroit, Michigan.

Since 2007, the Downtown Boxing Gym, led by its founder Khali Sweeney, has been committed to improving educational outcomes for Detroit students, with a particular emphasis on improving reading skills. 

To accomplish this, the Downtown Boxing Gym mixes athletics with academics in a family-like setting and develops long-term relationships with students, primarily between the ages of 8-12 but with continuing support offered to individuals under age 25.

Currently serving nearly 200 boys and girls from 30 different zip codes and from 57 different schools across the Detroit area, the gym provides free after-school programming which consists of academic support, mentorship, athletic activities, ACT/SAT prep, nutritious meals, and more. Accepted students are evaluated by academic coordinators to determine baseline academic and athletic skill-levels and then the Downtown Boxing Gym develops customized plans to help each student. They offer these programs year-round, Monday through Friday, and do so at no cost, making it accessible to every child in the Detroit area who needs support.

In an interview with CBS News Detroit, Sweeney said: “I started the boxing gym because it was a lack there. It was something that was missing. It was something that was actually needed… The kids in our community needed a place to go in the area where we were first located, and it wasn’t a lot of stuff over there to do, so I saw the need.”

A 2018 profile of the organization by ESPN, entitled Hitting the Books, the Boxing Gym saving Detroit’s Youth, summarized the Downtown Boxing Gym’s approach:

“Boxing is the enticement to get kids into the gym, but the real goal is in the white-painted rooms behind the rings. It’s there where the motto [Sweeney] stresses — “Books Before Boxing” — is pulled off. That’s the true mission of the Downtown Boxing Gym: a mantra consistently preached by the students…. Boxing brings the kids in. Education, life lessons and a group of adults preaching positivity and seeing potential in kids surrounded by negativity is why they stay.”

Succinctly summarizing the gym’s growth and deepening impact, Chase for Business said:

“What began over a decade ago, with Sweeney and a handful of volunteers has grown into one of the nation’s leading after-school programs. Its proven track record of success — a 100% high school graduation rate for 16 straight years — affirms that access to education is the key to economic mobility.

The gym boasts a growing roster of accomplished alumni, who have advanced to higher education and successful careers, and a waitlist of more than 1,000. DBG now has more than 40 employees and an operating budget of over $4 million per year.”

The Downtown Boxing Gym is changing lives. It’s more than just a boxing ring. Rather, it provides a safe place for students to learn, grow, feel safe, and build skills that will serve them into adulthood. As their literacy rates improve alongside their athletics, the Downtown Boxing Gym is creating opportunities and pathways for Detroit’s youth to realize their versions of the American dream.

With demand for their programming increasing, the Downtown Boxing Gym has committed to measuring and evaluating their effectiveness in an academically rigorous way as they grow. In 2023, the gym and Purdue University received a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to study the impact of their program, particularly as it relates to helping students develop an interest in STEM-based fields. The NSF grant funds, along with support provided by the American Idea Foundation, will be used to expand the Gym’s programming, help with the construction of a 22,000 square foot building for STEM-related activities, and to perform a five-year study on the program.

Without a doubt, as the city of Detroit continues its economic comeback following the Great Recession, organizations like the Downtown Boxing Gym will play a critical role in the city’s youth improving their educational skills. It will continue to be a beacon for local students, providing them with a place to thrive and exercise while also giving them the skills to realize additional economic opportunities later in life.

The American Idea Foundation believes in the community-driven work of the Downtown Boxing Gym and is proud to help buttress their amazing stories of success with evidence and data.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2024 grant recipients, click here.