Good Success

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced $4 million in grants to the National League of Cities’ Institute for Youth, Education and Families, and seven cities to boost college graduation rates by better coordinating the services that colleges, schools and communities provide to students. Reuters reports that, “Enrollment at the nation’s 1,200 community colleges is at an all-time high, yet two-thirds of those attending will not graduate within three years.”

The grants will help cities and colleges in New York, Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and California dramatically increase the number of young people who earn a degree beyond high school. These grants recognize that successfully reaching that goal will require education, business, and civic leaders working together to coordinate and streamline the guidance and services young people need to get into, and through, college.

Source: The Distance Daily

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The Arc of the United States in Silver Spring, Maryland, has announced a $3 million grant from the Wal-Mart Foundation to establish a nationwide initiative designed to improve outcomes for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities as they transition from school to adult life.

The Wal-Mart Foundation School-To-Community Transition Project will expand the Arc’s efforts to improve the quality of transition planning and services by identifying successful programs that can be replicated and by supporting the work of some fifty local Arc chapters already operating promising school-to-community transition programs. The goal of the project is to achieve greater inclusion and involvement of youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities in independent living, employment, post-secondary education or vocational training, and community, social, and civic affairs.

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The Walmart Foundation.