Blog
Five Ideas from Colorado’s 2Gen Statewide Conference
Golden, Colorado is a quintessential main street community with boutiques that encourage browsing, yummy wood-fired pizza, and the stunning backdrop of the Rockies. It’s probably not the first place you’d think of for a high-powered gathering of the state’s top policy players. Yet, here they were for a packed 36 hours focused on what it…
State 2Gen Leaders Come Together in Minnesota
On September 14, 2017, Ascend joined The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, State of Minnesota, City of Saint Paul, the Saint Paul Foundation, and Future Services Institute at the Minnesota 2Gen Summit to Reduce Poverty. The summit brought together 150 policymakers and philanthropic, state, and community leaders from across sectors to learn more about the 2Gen…
New Census Bureau Poverty Data
Yesterday, the U.S. Census Bureau released new data on income and poverty in the United States. The nation’s poverty rate fell to 12.7 percent in 2016 – nearly returning to the 2007 rate – and median household income increased by 3.2 percent from the previous year. While this news is encouraging, we still have a…
The ROI that Matters: Investing in Kids and Families to Build a New Economy
Photos by Dan Bayer, The Aspen Institute This year at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Ascend hosted a session with Jackie Bezos, president and CEO of the Bezos Family Foundation, and Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economics Dr. James Heckman titled The ROI that Matters: Investing in Kids and Families to Build a New Economy. …
The New Mental Health Models: Stress-Reduction and Beyond
On Friday, July 14, a group of 18 thought leaders and experts came together for a strategic conversation at the Aspen Institute’s Washington office on recent research and on-the-ground interventions regarding mental health supports and interventions for families with low incomes. The Ascend Strategic Conversation on Maternal Depression and Positive Parenting is part of an…
You’re the Mom: Empowering Moms to Make Healthy Eating Fun & Easy
At ChildObesity180, we believe that effective intergenerational programming calls for a commitment to helping parents and kids build healthy habits. So much of that work starts with making healthy food and drink choices, but, with over one-third of kids in the US eating fast food every day, it’s not always easy to make the healthy…