Blog

By: AIF Staff

Earlier this year, AIF President and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced 7 non-profit organizations across the country would receive financial support and strategic assistance from the American Idea Foundation in 2023 as they continue their amazing work of expanding economic opportunities and reducing poverty in their communities.

Ryan’s goal in providing this support is to help front-line organizations identify, test, and evaluate promising interventions and solutions so that their true impact can be measured and so their solutions can be scaled (if and when the results merit).

The hope is by having more evidence and better evidence and by incorporating evidentiary findings into their programming, these non-profits and the federal government can do more to help individuals in need.  A commitment to using evidence and data to solve problems is one of the main characteristics that the American Idea Foundation looks for when partnering with organizations, and it’s why the Foundation is excited to support Friends of the Children in the year ahead.

Friends of the Children is a national non-profit organization, operating in 33 different communities, that selects and invites youth – all of whom have unique talents, interests and dreams, and face multiple systemic obstacles – to be paired with a paid, professional mentor called a Friend. The organization hires and trains Friends to support youth from as early as age 4 through high school graduation. They are a long-term intervention and the Friends’ full-time job is to empower and support youths and their caregivers.

Friends of the Children revolutionized the youth mentoring field by creating the first and only long-term professional mentoring program in the country. Each child gets a dedicated, one-on-one Friend who listens to their hopes and dreams. Friends spend a minimum of 14 to 16 intentional hours per month with each child. They encourage their child to set – and achieve – specific goals. Friends also create meaningful experiences that empower youth to build life skills and make healthy choices while exploring the child’s diverse talents and interests.

The Friends of the Children model is centered around nine Core Assets that ensure the social and emotional development of youths. These Assets include: Growth Mindset, Hope, Belonging, Problem Solving, Self-Management, Self Determination, Perseverance, Finding your Spark, and Positive Relationship building.

The Friends of the Children 2022 Annual Report shows that while they are about developing lasting, long-term relationships that benefit our youth, they are also focused on data and evidence. Friends of the Children is regularly collecting data and conducting research and evaluations to drive improvements. They are currently engaged in a longitudinal RCT with NYU and the University of Washington to study the program’s impact. The longitudinal study, currently in its 15^th year, is the longest-running youth mentoring RCT in the country and will be completed in 2026.

In the upcoming year, the American Idea Foundation will help support Friends of the Children’s existing research and evaluation and also help fund its 2^nd-generation longitudinal study. This research aims to maximize the effectiveness of Friends of the Children’s work in terms of child welfare and self-sufficiency. For decades, Friends of the Children has been a leader in using evidence to evaluate the impact of their program. They are making an enormous difference across the country and the American Idea Foundation is proud to assist them in bettering more children’s lives.

By: AIF Staff

As the number of Americans dying from drug overdoses increases almost every year, organizations around the country are actively developing solutions to help those families and communities plagued by substance abuse disorders. These organizations know that addiction does not just impact the individual user, but has a ripple effect that can change the trajectory of entire families.

This is particularly true when thinking about substance users who are pregnant and preparing to give birth. Newborns who suffer from Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, which occurs when babies withdraw from substances they were exposed to in the womb, are the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable. They enter the world and, through no fault of their own, immediately face a series of health challenges which can reverberate throughout their entire life.

These newborn babies deserve the best care that the American health care system can provide. Their parents deserve care and treatment so families can stay intact and so children can be raised in an environment free from the scourge of addiction.

Every child should be given the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life and that is why the American Idea Foundation is actively supporting the work of Brigid’s Path in Kettering, Ohio.

Brigid’s Path is the first, in-patient, newborn recovery center in Ohio. Founded in 2014, its mission is to care for newborns who have been exposed to an addictive substance like opioids or other drugs during pregnancy. From almost the moment of birth, Brigid’s Path and its team of trained health care professionals employ the latest therapeutic and medical techniques to help babies be as comfortable and as healthy as possible while they experience withdrawal.

At a critical stage in a newborn’s development, the medical staff of Brigid’s Path shower them with love and attention 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As they care for the newborns, they also care for the parent, working with community partners to provide resources that help moms raise their children in healthy and safe environments. They do this on a one-to-one basis, offering wrap-around services so families can stay together, bond, and develop healthy relationships. As Brigid’s Path cares for the medical needs of newborns, they also help mothers meet goals and develop connections within the community that last long after their baby leaves Brigid’s Path.

To date, Brigid’s Path has helped 214 babies and will care for around 70 babies and families in 2023. Because of Brigid’s Path, in 2022, 90% of the babies treated went home last year with a parent or family member. Without the organization, 77% of those babies would’ve been sent directly to the foster care system.

Brigid’s Path is making a difference every single day by fighting for those babies who cannot fight for themselves. They are giving newborns a chance to grow and thrive and, at the same time, they are giving parents an opportunity to remain in their child’s life.

The support provided from the American Idea Foundation to Brigid’s Path in 2023 will help raise awareness about the organization’s transformative efforts. The American Idea Foundation will help Brigid’s Path tell amazing stories of individual transformation and will work to buttress the evidence and data associated with their program in the hopes of scaling and replicating it in other communities suffering from the scourge of drug abuse.

Addiction is a complex problem, but Brigid’s Path is making a difference one baby at a time and is playing a critical role in helping our most vulnerable have a chance at a healthy and productive life.

By: AIF Staff

This year, as part of its work supporting front-line organizations who are developing evidence-based approaches to fighting poverty, the American Idea Foundation has provided grants to 7 groups across the country. 

These organizations were selected because they are policy entrepreneurs, innovative problem-solvers, and leaders in their respective communities. The policy problems that these organizations are tackling vary greatly, but these groups share the belief that the American Dream should be accessible to everyone and they have created programs to achieve this noble goal. Like Speaker Ryan, these groups believe evidence and data should drive decision-making and have designed their programs accordingly.

One organization receiving funding and institutional support from Speaker Ryan and the American Idea Foundation in 2023 is Bernie’s Book Bank in Chicago, Illinois.

Bernie’s Book Bank was founded in 2009 on a simple premise: Reading is a vital skill for every child and children, particularly those in under-served communities, need access to books, to properly develop this skill. If a child has access to books and develops an early love of reading, the positive effects will reverberate throughout their life.

Bernie’s Book Bank knows how critical reading is for young children’s development and understands how education can offer a pathway out of poverty. It is why, fifteen years ago, Bernie’s Book Bank started distributing books to under-served children from a garage in Chicago.

Bernie’s Book Bank sources new and gently used books from individual donors around the country, group them by age-appropriateness, and then select a group of 8 new and used books to be packaged for distribution. The Book Bank delivers books directly to the children they serve via school districts and early childhood programs in the Chicagoland area. In one year, each child served will receive a total of 8 quality children’s books to take home and call their own.

In the organization’s first 12 months, Bernie’s Book Bank sourced, processed, and distributed 140,000 children’s books. In its second year, Bernie’s Book Bank expanded and distributed 350,000 books to more than 35,000 children. By the end of 2012, it had distributed 1 million books. In 2019, it reached 15 million. By 2023, Bernie’s Book Bank had distributed over 25 million books since its founding.

Bernie’s Book Bank knows that where a student resides will often affect their ability to get a quality education. It can affect their ability to access reading materials, particularly at a young age, and impact their desire to pursue an education as they mature. Bernie’s Book Bank knows that reading can transform children’s worlds. Books can offer children new perspectives, teach new lessons, or inspire passion about a particular subject. It is fundamental to a child’s development but all too often, children are falling behind.  

In Illinois, according to a 2019 survey by the Casey Foundation, 66% of fourth-graders in the state were not proficient in reading. The strains on our educational system only worsened during the pandemic, with lower-income areas being hardest hit. Illinois and other communities need organizations like Bernie’s Book Bank now more than ever.

Because of their success in Illinois and because of the demand for books in other cities, Bernie’s Book Bank is scaling their efforts in Southern Wisconsin and building out programming through Milwaukee’s public school system.

The American Idea Foundation is going to spend the next year working with Bernie’s Book Bank to ensure that more children in Illinois and Wisconsin have access to reading materials of their own. The Foundation and Speaker Ryan will help Bernie’s Book Bank as they assess and measure the impact book ownership has on the short-term and long-term development of the children it serves. Anecdotes and personal stories about how Bernie’s Book Bank has changed children’s life are plentiful.

By pairing these stories of transformation with tangible, empirically sound evidence, other communities can see the effect Bernie’s Book Bank is having in Chicago and hopefully develop similar programs to help children in under-served communities experience the joy, and the benefits, of reading.