Research reveals a troubling truth: a child’s future is profoundly shaped by their zip code. Across our nation, countless communities struggle with limited employment options, under-resourced schools, and safety concerns, creating significant barriers that hinder intergenerational mobility and negatively impact a child’s life trajectory. Pockets of entrenched generational poverty and place-based differences in opportunities for economic mobility are the results of years of intentionally inequitable policies, requiring systems-level interventions.
By addressing the unique challenges faced by individual communities, comprehensive place-based interventions offer a promising path towards greater social and economic mobility for children and families in the US. Since 2020, Blue Meridian Partners has invested over $415 million in place-based strategies to open pathways to mobility in regions and neighborhoods around the country, including those that drive systems change directly, and from the neighborhood level, up.
This session highlights two national intermediaries in Blue Meridian Partners’ Place Matters portfolio, showcasing the power of combining multiple approaches to driving systems change to open pathways to social and economic mobility in communities across the country:
1. StriveTogether uses a distinctive Theory of Action framework to build the civic infrastructure necessary to transform the systems that shape opportunity.
2. William Julius Wilson Institute at Harlem Children’s Zone supports programmatic neighborhood-based cradle-to-career efforts in leveraging the conditions of systems change.
Through these complementary approaches, the Place Matters portfolio breaks down silos, fosters collaboration, and ensures that interventions are both grounded in the lived experiences of the community and aligned with broader systemic efforts.
