Immigration, Communities, Foundations

All communities experience immigration. No question whether it will occur, just when and how much. Some of us arrived as immigrants ourselves to a new nation; the rest of us descended from ancestors who came from somewhere else, to settle in a land still pristine or already inhabited.

Political events, economics, wars, environmental changes, and other events cause people to move, voluntarily and involuntarily. Worldwide trends suggest that immigration will continue on a major scale, with implications for nations and for their constituent regions and communities. Since 1990, the immigrant population in the United States has doubled; in Minnesota during that same period, the immigrant population quadrupled.

Speaking for Ourselves study

Using newly gathered information from the Wilder Research “Speaking for Ourselves” study, in combination with data from Minnesota Compass, Nicole MartinRogers, Ryan Evans, and I contributed an article to The FoundationReview to offer foundations around the world a bit of insight in deciding how best to partner with immigrant-led and immigrant-serving organizations. We sought to identify some of the benefits and the challenges that immigration brings to communities.

This research can help support foundations and their grantees to understand how to improve a community’s quality of life for immigrants and refugees – to the benefit of all residents. By understanding demographic trends and cultural nuances, organizations can increase awareness, access, and trust among immigrants and refugees, and can influence public policy.

“Speaking for Ourselves” is a community-based effort that looked at the experiences of Hmong, Karen, Latino, Liberian, and Somali immigrants and refugees living in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region of Minnesota. We collaborated with an advisory group for the study, comprised of individuals from these five cultural communities as well as professionals in organizations of many types that serve immigrants and refugees.

The results of the research suggest focal points for foundation grantmaking, for example: support for secondary refugees; early childhood education; postsecondary education and employment training; long-term care planning; and capacity building.

Tips for foundations working with immigrant populations

But perhaps more importantly, the research suggests attributes of an effective style for foundations to work with immigrant populations. We made three recommendations in this regard.

First, foundations, along with any other organizations intending to provide resources to immigrant communities, should take a balanced approach. They should consider needs as well as strengths. Funders should determine whether an immigrant community itself considers something a need, and if so, they should explore together whether that community’s cultural assets and other resilience factors might constitute part of an optimal solution in the eyes of both the funders and the community.

Second, funders should work with immigrant communities in an authentically collaborative manner – ensuring that the presumed beneficiaries of an initiative actually participate in defining the benefits. We encourage a judicious start to any new initiative within a cultural community, with full appreciation of the time and resources necessary to cultivate community engagement and collaboration. Flexibility, willingness to revise plans and start over, and openness to working jointly constitute characteristics of successful efforts.

Third, funders should beware of providing funding to organizations unless those organizations have made a special effort to understand and respond to the specific needs and preferences of the cultural communities they seek to serve. Funders should insist that potential grantees enlist the participation of cultural communities in the design of proposed programs, including collaboration in the adaptation of existing program models to fit a new context. Attempts to adapt an existing program to fit different cultural communities should consider language (oral, written, both formal and casual), values, customs, and the suitability of the program’s goals and methods, along with other features that affect the transferability of the program from one culture to another.

Some insights useful for all of us who want to strengthen our communities, regardless of whether or not we do grantmaking.

The Clown vs. The Liar

That’s how my almost 90-year-old mother characterized her 2016 Presidential voting options. After attaining voting age in 1948, she cast her first vote for Harry S. Truman. Knowing that she might not live until the 2020 election, she laments this year’s choices, feeling that she really does not have a choice.

Her words came to mind as I read statements recently by two African-American women of the millennial generation, one who described her decision about the major party candidates for President as the process of choosing between a racist and a liar, and the other who described the prospect of casting a vote in the upcoming election as the choice between “being stabbed and being shot.”

Those comments, from an old white woman and two young black women, illustrate the cynicism and frustration of voters. Surveys reveal that close to two-thirds of potential voters do not “trust” either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, disenchantment among Americans about their government runs deep. A 2015 analysis of surveys of the United States public by the Pew Research Center showed that, “Currently, just 19% say they can trust the government always or most of the time, among the lowest levels in the past half-century. Only 20% would describe government programs as being well-run.”

Three ways to build

We owe it to ourselves and future generations to enable voters to feel that they have many good choices, and that they have sound information and understanding to make the best choice. To that end, three types of “building” seem worthwhile.

Build processes to inform the electorate. Provide individuals with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions. While the news media might like to focus on attention-grabbing topics such as Donald’s obsession with President Obama’s nativity, or Hillary’s characterization of her opponent’s supporters as “deplorables,” other issues of much more significance deserve intense consideration: child care; education; poverty; public safety; and the list goes on.

Voters deserve objective, understandable information on such issues. At Wilder Research we strive to provide this, by documenting and interpreting community trends through Minnesota Compass, for example, and by conducting research to shed light on which programs and policies actually work to improve the quality of life.

Build multi-partisan collaboration. Political parties serve a valuable purpose. However, if allegiance to a party (or to oneself) becomes overly rigid, partisanship becomes counterproductive. As one researcher who studies political polarization noted, problems arise not when political parties disagree, but when the disagreement devolves into “partisan warfare” in which “combatants question the motives, integrity, and patriotism of their opponents.” Unfortunately, we see a lot of that today – from both of the major parties.

We need leaders, from local to national levels, who have a commitment to fixing problems and to working with partners of all political persuasions, not just their own, to move our communities forward. At Wilder Research, we attempt to foster such collaboration by engaging people with varied perspectives in the design of our major initiatives. In that way, we build ownership across political lines to nurture jointly-crafted understanding and problem solving on significant community issues.

Build good leaders in all parties. Integrity and competence do not have just one party label. Regardless of our own political leanings, we should champion the development of skills among candidates in all parties and thus create a body of legislators who will engage in robust consideration of issues, just the way that the creators of our democracy intended, and then make decisions and move forward in a positive spirit of compromise. Many such elected public officials now sit in our executive and legislative branches; we need more of them.

Senseless Killing, but Hope Exists

Philando Castile, driving with two passengers, including a four-year-old child, is shot during a police traffic stop. He dies. It’s senseless.

What can we do about this? How can we prevent it from happening again?

In 2013, when police in the United States committed 461 “justifiable homicides,” police officers in England and Wales killed exactly zero people. Do we in the United States have violent tendencies so much worse than residents of England, so that shooting us becomes necessary in order to maintain the peace?

In the Falcon Heights, Minnesota incident, the police officer seems like an upstanding community member, dedicated to helping others. He likely did not go to work expecting or intending to kill someone. Did sufficient information exist in that officer’s mind to justify a split-second decision to fire a gun at another human being? Whether or not the facts of this situation justified a killing by the police is not the most important question we need to answer. We could misguidedly expend a lot of energy addressing that question, but our efforts would not have long lasting value.

I can’t pretend to know everything we need to accomplish in order to move forward as a united community. However, as of now, I am fairly certain about three things we should do.

First, we should ask why our culture promotes the use of guns – by police and by civilians – for resolving conflicts. Why should the police ever shoot an unarmed person? If the Ferguson event happened in London, the police officer would most likely have waited for backup and then physically restrained the unarmed suspect. Here, we shoot people. Why? Can we change the accepted protocol?

Second, what really does happen in encounters between police and community residents? We should find out. We lack good information about this, although we hear many claims, some based on sound evidence, some not. Little research exists. Results may surprise us. For example, a very good recent study produced unexpected results: “A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police. But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.” We need the facts as a foundation for discussion, decisions, and action.

Third, the solution of problems related to race and violence will require us to engage in one-on-one respectful treatment of our fellow human beings, to overcome deeply embedded elements of our culture. As Melvin Carter, Executive Director of the Minnesota Children’s Cabinet recently wrote, we need to keep “our eyes and our hearts open to seeing one another’s humanity”.

A picture and related story in the Washington Post brought Melvin’s words to mind. Many observers expected riots in Cleveland. Instead, in at least one significant instance, they found a block party. Black Lives and Blue Lives joined one another. People with differing political views danced together. As one dancing Cleveland resident said, “Stop all the white against black, black against white. It’s all about love. This is what Cleveland is about. This is what the world should be about.”

I hope that, in the coming months, we identify a means for Wilder Research to address this issue and assist in moving our community forward. Our community needs to collaborate to build a common framework and take real action. In the meanwhile, we must acknowledge that we won’t achieve our dream of an equitable society unless and until we accept one another, interacting in genuine kinship with others who differ from us on the surface, but who underneath share the same dreams, the same desire to build a just world for themselves, their children, and for all human beings.

"Speaking for Ourselves" - Collaborative Research with, for, and about New Arrivals

All large communities experience the arrival of new people. Sometimes the newcomers arrive from nearby; sometimes they arrive from afar. Sometimes newcomers and longer-term residents have similar languages, customs, and cultures; other times, they differ, at least on the surface. The constant blending of people from different places constitutes a regular aspect of life in most parts of our globalized, modern world.

In Minnesota in the 2010s, the migration of people into the state is not just something that happens to occur. It’s something that needs to occur. In 2013, the Minnesota State Demographic Center indicated that “greater numbers of migrants, both domestic and international, will be necessary to meet our state’s workforce needs and to buttress economic activity.”

Here in Minnesota, we have the opportunity to welcome newcomers and to maintain a high quality of life for all residents, new and long-term. To accomplish that effectively requires that we learn what’s working for our new arrivals, along with what issues and challenges they face.

For that reason, Wilder Research carried out a major study – Speaking for Ourselves – to focus attention on foreign-born people who have settled in Minnesota’s Twin Cities region. We wanted to learn about their lives – their families, education, jobs, health, and engagement in their communities.

The findings confirm some notions and challenge others. You can find easy-to-read summary reports on our website. For most topics, the research reveals a blend of positives and negatives. For example:

Health. About three-quarters of those who participated in the survey consider their health “excellent,” “very good,” or “good.” However, these ratings fall slightly lower than the health self-ratings of other Minnesotans. Health care, employment assistance, housing, and food assistance were all identified as helpful resources. Yet lack of health insurance, cost of health care, and cost of insurance create barriers to obtaining needed health care – despite federal and state initiatives intended to make health care more accessible.

Education. Parental encouragement helps to keep children in school, and about three-quarters of survey participants feel “fully able” to provide a home environment good for studying. On the other hand, only about one-quarter feel “fully able” to help their children with homework in English. Nearly all believe their children will go to college, but about three-quarters consider financial issues a barrier to obtaining post-secondary education.

Connections to mainstream institutions. Almost all of the immigrants and refugees who participated in Speaking for Ourselves had heard about or visited a public library. However, large proportions had not heard about or visited some major cultural institutions, such as the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Minnesota History Center, and the Minnesota Children’s Museum.

Civic and social participation. Survey respondents frequently offer assistance to neighbors, family, and friends. Yet, they tend not to volunteer their time in formal volunteer programs.

Those few findings illustrate the social assets existing among immigrants to our region; they also illustrate some of the challenges immigrants face. It is important to consider both the needs of these newcomers as well as the assets and resilience factors they possess, and to engage with these newcomers about their experiences and preferences, as we discuss and decide on programs and public policies to meet their needs.

A hopeful sign: organizations in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region, as well as members of immigrant groups themselves, have begun to follow up on the study’s findings. Anna Bartholomay’s blog highlights some of this activity, as does one of the study reports. Cultural institutions who have had some successes in attracting visitors and recruiting volunteers from immigrant communities have embraced the study’s findings to formulate new plans of action to increase their appeal to, and relevance for, the region’s newest arrivals.

Our work on this study involved representatives of immigrant groups as partners, as well as representatives of some government and nonprofit organizations. This collaboration produced relevant and important findings useful for improving our quality of life in Minnesota, as well as useful for educating other communities around the world.

HMIS: Using Data for Social Good

Who is homeless? What services do they receive? Who provides those services?

Vantage points for understanding homelessness differ greatly. Some members of our community have direct, personal understanding. They experience, or have experienced, life without a permanent place to live, or they work, day in day out, with or for homeless people. Other members of our community have little or no firsthand knowledge – developing an understanding based on occasional observations of homeless people or on news articles about the homeless population.

Similarly, HMIS – the Homeless Management Information System – is selectively known. People who deliver services to the homeless, and people who establish policies and funding for those services – they know HMIS very well. The general public, on the other hand, has never heard the acronym, although they might have read news reports based on HMIS data. In addition, they have unknowingly benefited from HMIS to the extent that the agencies which they support through tax dollars, or to which they make charitable contributions, can provide services more effectively and efficiently because of HMIS.

HMIS History

How did HMIS come to be? In 2001, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to collect better data on homelessness. HUD created a vision for HMIS using wisdom from communities who had already developed information systems to track services to homeless people. Locally, Wilder Research served as a pre-HMIS pioneer, establishing an emergency shelter database in Ramsey County under the leadership of Dr. Richard Chase in 1991. HUD mandated what data homeless service providers must collect in order to receive federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants, the primary source of federal funding directed at homelessness. HUD provided limited technical assistance, and made limited funding available for competitive applications from communities.

Local networks of homelessness service providers, called Continuums of Care, had the obligation to implement sophisticated, internet-based data systems in order to continue to receive McKinney-Vento funding, which remains the federal government’s primary source of funding directed at homelessness.

We at Wilder Research moved forward, along with Minnesota Housing, to collaborate with the Continuums of Care and other stakeholders to create the vision and governance for the new system, select a technical vendor, and secure funding. Minnesota Housing, the Family Housing Fund, and the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund contributed funding. Data collection began in 2003, when Wilder Research assumed the authority of Lead Agency and System Administrator for Minnesota’s Homeless Management Information System.

Today, HMIS serves all 10 Continuums of Care in Minnesota – including over 800 end-users and 230 service providers-- tracking the volume and type of service use by homeless people within agencies, across agencies, and for the entire state. It is used for both federal and state reporting.

HMIS “Reaching Maturity”

In 2015, given the growth in size and cost of HMIS over a decade, we worked with others to analyze the system and develop a new plan. During the planning process, HUD advisors proposed that responsibilities for managing HMIS be split, with one organization focused on governance and another on administration. A decision was made that Wilder Research would continue in its role of system administrator; Minnesota Housing would take on governance and policy. We established the goal to issue an RFP in 2017 for a new system administrator.

These proposed changes, we hoped, would set Minnesota’s HMIS on a firm footing for the next decade.

In 2016, the 10 Continuums of Care decided to accelerate the organizational shift. So, in collaboration with HUD, the state of Minnesota, the Continuums of Care, and others, we are transferring our responsibilities to another organization.

Data for Social Good: Into the Future

We at Wilder Research are very proud of our legacy with HMIS. Creation of a data system, especially with many moving parts, always involves daunting challenges. I particularly want to acknowledge the Wilder Research staff who contributed so much to this effort. They care deeply about providing the highest-quality service, producing high-quality data, and ending homelessness.  

The service delivery system for homeless people in Minnesota has many facets. Establishing a high quality HMIS required strategic, political, and technical savvy which we contributed along with other stakeholders to make HMIS the valuable resource that it is today, providing data for social good.

(Interested in some research based on HMIS information? Take a look at these outcomes and return-on-investment reports.) 

      

(Interested in further reading about HMIS or Wilder Research’s triennial statewide survey of homeless people? Visit these sites: Minnesota's HMIS and Minnesota Homeless Study.)

Informed Public Decision Making

The Bern?

The Donald?

The Hill?

The Cruzinator?

Perhaps you have a favorite; perhaps you have not yet decided.

The once-every-four-years politics as circus has revved up in spring 2016, with the media sometimes more focused on topics like Hillary’s email indiscretions and Donald’s portrayal of Ted’s wife than on the issues of substance that we as voters should seriously ponder.

The who certainly has a lot of importance at all levels of government. We should select competent public officials. But, in the long term, the how has significant importance as well. How do we determine the best course of action for a city, a state, a nation? How – by what means – do we establish wise policies that will enhance the quality of life for everyone in the most equitable ways?

At Wilder Research, we focus on the long term, seeking to improve the means – the how – by which public officials and the general public can make the best choices. We shed light on what programs work. We seek to understand social and economic trends and how they influence the well-being of residents of our communities. We assist others to build their capacity to effectively implement programs and to make policy and funding decisions that will move community trends in a positive direction. All of those activities take time. They don’t happen overnight.

Sound public decision making requires measured, careful combining of values with evidence. We at Wilder Research seek to collaborate with community leaders of all types, bringing relevant, trustable, non-partisan evidence into their deliberations.

These examples demonstrate how we’ve informed decision making at local and state levels: 

• As part of the Minnesota Strengthening Families Affected by Incarceration Collaborative, Wilder Research analyzed the impacts of parental incarceration upon young people and held forums to bring that information to the forefront. Now, state agencies use the research findings to educate the legislature. 

• A Health Impact Assessment, done in collaboration with the Public Health Law Center, informed the revision of the Minnesota Department of Education’s Guide for Planning School Construction Projects. Historically, the guide has offered a compendium of design standards and state mandates for school districts doing new school construction or renovation. The HIA illuminated the many ways that school location and design can optimize student health. So far, at least one superintendent has used the HIA report to inform facility audits.

• Our study of the return on investment in Supportive Housing demonstrated returns of $1.44 for every public dollar invested. Its very compelling findings have figured in multiple funding and legislative proposals. An additional study on this topic will come out soon. 

• Minnesota Early Childhood Risk and Reach – in which we assembled, in partnership with the University of Minnesota and state agencies, key indicators of early childhood development in Minnesota – showed that Ramsey County is a high-risk county, resembling many greater Minnesota counties more than other metro counties. The project offers evidence that developmental risk levels will likely rise without concerted effort to rectify income and racial disparities. 

• Regarding disparities, the disparities section on Minnesota Compass, along with other work at Wilder Research, has added to the rationale for the Governor’s recently-announced, $100 million dollar initiative to reverse racial disparities. 

• Our research on the Safe Harbor Law and the No Wrong Door model raised awareness about sex trafficking in Minnesota. The Safe Harbor Law legally redefined prostituted Minnesota girls under 18 as crime victims. The study is now being used by government and non-profit agencies statewide to improve services and to educate and mobilize the public to end the prostitution of Minnesota girls. 

• Our monitoring of mental health needs and patient flow through the health care system in the East Metro produced information used to support increased access to, and payment for, Crisis Stabilization Services, including the development of a mental health urgent care facility in Ramsey County; we expect further use of this ongoing study. 

• Speaking for Ourselves, an innovative study of immigrants in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region, carried out with representatives of those communities, has shed new light on mental health (policies that improve access to culturally appropriate behavioral health services), health (dedicating resources focused on healthy eating, physical activity, and tobacco/alcohol/drugs for immigrant and refugee communities), education (improving access to culturally appropriate early childhood education, as well as a pipeline for immigrant and refugee students in the Twin Cities to receive teacher education so they can work in and diversify the Twin Cities teaching force). 

• The State of the Infrastructure survey, in the field again this year for MnDOT and MN2050, examines whether asset management will most efficiently and effectively care for Minnesota’s infrastructure assets. 

In these efforts and more, we hope to enable public officials and other community leaders to apply the best possible knowledge to their decisions, to use data effectively, to learn from experience, and to continually grow in their ability to govern wisely. We don’t subscribe to a narrow partisan creed. You won’t find us collaborating with Super PACs or producing soundbites for shock value. We prize the strategy we pursue – seeking to provide compelling rationales and evidence for public decision making that benefits everyone.

What is Equity?

I suspect that most of us subscribe to the concept of equity in a general sense. But if pressed, could we define it unequivocally? Moreover, could we really commit ourselves to it and strive to achieve it? For example, how would you answer these questions?

A child born in one zip code in 2016 will likely live 5 years longer than a child born a few miles away in a different zip code in the very same city. Does this seem fair?

A black child born during the past few years in the United States will, on average, live to age 75; a white child born during the same time period will, on average, live to age 79. Does this seem fair?

A child living on one side of a street attends a school with a shortage of books, outdated facilities, and no access to music instruction; a child living across the street, in a different school district, attends a school with enough books, modern facilities, and a variety of enrichment classes. Does this seem fair?

Most people would respond that these situations are not fair. Few people take satisfaction in a status quo with sizable disparities based on where people live, their race, or a history of exclusion. But how would you respond to these possible remedies?

Certain groups of Christians, Jews, and Muslims have practiced gender segregation of various forms historically and to the present day. Should we accept such segregation as reasonable accommodation of diverse cultural norms, thereby equitable across varied cultural communities? Or, should we denounce it as a violation of our values, a barrier to gender equity?

A white applicant to an educational program does not receive admission, in favor of a student of color with lower admissions test scores, in order to rectify historical injustice. Does this seem fair? If it does seem fair, would you change your opinion if you knew that the white student’s grandparents had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to end racial discrimination? What if you knew that the Nazis had murdered her great-grandparents in the Holocaust?

Should we merge school districts so that all children, regardless of where they happen to live, have equal access to the same resources?

When we consider remedies, it usually reveals great disagreement, even among people who proclaim a strong commitment to “equity.”

Social commentators of many different stripes have cited extreme income “inequality” as one of the most dangerous trends the world faces at present. I would agree that having a minuscule portion of the human population controlling a huge portion of the world’s wealth will very likely lead to trouble. But does it constitute only a severe disparity that we must live with in an imperfect world, or a morally indefensible inequity that we should seek to eliminate? Must the wealth of the world be divided into 7,300,000,000 equal shares (or thereabouts) to achieve equity, or can some people fairly have larger shares than others?

Does equity require equality?

If not, what’s the tipping point at which inequality becomes inequitable? A common twentieth century response involved distinguishing between equality of opportunity and equality of result. That provided temporary satisfaction to those wishing to reform the status quo, until we realized that a universal guarantee of eligibility to stand at the starting line doesn’t provide much advantage to people who lack training, a good coach, and proper running shoes.

Equity is something that decent people can love in principle, struggle to define and measure, and severely disagree in the identification of a means to achieve it.

So, where does that put Wilder Research, given our mission to improve the lives of individuals, families, and communities through research – and our obligation to carry out this mission in an independent, nonpartisan, solidly-evidenced way?

We consider the movement toward equity an inchoate process at present – something that we understand enough to enter, but which we need to mold and shape with others based on what we learn as we all move forward.

We like the suggestion put forth by the Minnesota Department of Health that health inequities are avoidable disparities in health status based on social characteristics such as race, income, or geographic location. This implies that we can do something to influence them.

We shed light on disparities in educational achievement, homelessness, life expectancy, juvenile justice, and other areas, raising them up for careful examination.

We participate in activities to promote equity, so long as those activities remain inclusive and nonpartisan. Our endeavors in early child development and in education, for example, intend to promote full community efforts to enable all young people to thrive in their personal, family, work, and community lives.

Finally, we remain eager to collaborate, playing whatever role we have the competence to play – providing enlightening information, conducting methodologically rigorous research, convening groups to understand these issues – with partners who seek to take action to enrich the lives of everyone and make this world a better place.

2016: Building Community

What do efforts to deal with global warming, the displacement of refugees, and the fight against terrorism have in common with efforts to address local quality of life issues such as failing physical infrastructures, the educational achievement gaps among racial and income groups, tensions over police shootings, and growing income disparities?

All of these issues require that we form strong social bonds if we want to make progress and improve our quality of life. Building community – in its broadest sense – demands our attention for this new year.

We, the inhabitants of this planet, share a common destiny. We will succeed or fail together to overcome ecological and social challenges at the global level. Nothing but working together – setting a worldwide vision and achieving it – will enable humanity to survive and thrive. Joint efforts have become a necessity for resolving economic, social, environmental, and other problems that transcend political boundaries and require us to forge social ties throughout a world community.

Closer to home, local quality of life issues related to infrastructure, education, housing, health care, and other parts of our lives demand reliance on our social groups – families, neighbors, community associations. The education of our children, for example, requires strong ties between parents and children, within neighborhoods, and between communities and schools. Each part of the community needs to stand up, do its part, and communicate with the other parts.

As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” By implication, we must nurture a cooperative spirit among the “all” in order to nurture the well-being of every “one” of us.

What practical implications does this reality have? Just a few examples, related to issues in the current press.

The achievement gap. For those who see the achievement gap as someone else’s problem, who feel that any mismatch between the competencies of our graduates and the needs of employers falls only on the shoulders of the business community to solve, please understand that all children are our children. We have a connection to them along with moral and practical imperatives to ensure their healthy development. If any of them fail, we all as a community fail.

Police/resident tensions. Recent police shootings have exacerbated already strained relationships between the police and some residents of our communities. One public official went so far a few weeks ago as to suggest that residents of his area should throw stones at the police. If we want to move forward productively, we need to resist the temptation to construct barriers. Community leaders should invite police officers to the next neighborhood barbecue, ask some of them to join in at youth clubs or school events to discuss their work, and take whatever steps possible to forge social connections that will build understanding and trust.

Immigration. We all come from somewhere else. Even our Native American residents migrated from another place. We serve as temporary caretakers of our land and our civilization, with generations of people to follow, some who look like us and many who do not. While surely we must protect ourselves from those who would do harm, we must put more focus on connecting with new arrivals. Efforts to foster continued success for today’s immigrants — private and public efforts alike, collective and individual — will pay rich dividends and honor our own immigrant pasts.

All of us can provide more examples. The theme is clear. Nurturing social connections, building community – we must focus on those activities during 2016 in order to achieve a better world for all.