THRIVE - Cradle to Career Initiative's New Executive Director

Inspired by Geoffrey Canada's "Whatever it Takes" approach which led to the nationally recognized Harlem Children's Zone, a few key foundation and community leaders in town quietly came together to begin making major investments in finding out what would it take to successfully implement a cradle to career strategy in Santa Barbara County.

With the help of Lois Mitchell, Orfalea Foundations President, I did an earlier post discussing what is Cradle to Career.  In this post I mentioned that existing efforts underway weave school districts, non-profit agencies, service providers, government, business, families, higher ed, and other public-private partners into a supportive safety net focused on strengthening families, neighborhoods and students ability to succeed.

The efforts of the initial foundations and community leader's aren't so quiet anymore.  In fact, the initiative continues to grow, has a new name called THRIVE, and a new impressive Executive Director, Anita Perez Ferguson who you can read about in Noozhawk.

The other week, I was part of an education event which brought together the boards from Storyteller, THRIVE, CALM, and First 5 to talk about collaboration.  Anita introduced herself and the keynote speaker.  What really blew me away about this event, wasn't actually the very noteworthy keynote speaker, but the clear resolve among these agencies to successful collaborate for the betterment of our community.

It was clear that Anita Perez Ferguson will be a key driver of this success and continues to make me proud to live in a community that very possibly is within striking distance of “making sure that all the kids in (Santa Barbara County) are going to be able to achieve academically and compete economically.”