This morning I was on a webinar with Forest Harper, CEO of INROADS, who shared valuable statistics and trends, including the 300+CEO in Action Organization who, including P&G, have begun to build a war chest for change in just the past 14 days of $3.2 billion dollars, to support programs working in the realms of social injustice.
(Posted below is a Conference in Chicago by Inroads that we hope will happen in November 2020!)
Our path at PeaceJourney.com continues to align our activities for peace through cultural travel, the environment, arts and music, food security and job creation focusing our efforts on youth from marginalized communities. This webinar today reinforced our belief that our biggest impact will continue to be made working with high-school youth as our opportunity to influence the best in human capital.
Corporate stakeholders are beginning to understand that patience is key when working with high school students vs.college age students. The full impact experience for HS students requires milestones and time to allow those steps to bloom into deep systemic life-path development. We see this happen as our traveling youth trained in media and storytelling from Chicago, traveling to places like Tanzania to gift computer labs to under-served communities or building a garden in Casablanca alongside Moroccan youth, where together they helped provide safer- community spaces. These projects then blossom to inspire local projects back home in their own neighborhoods.
Seeds for careers are planted and, in these cases, inspired careers in film, music, landscape architects, IT pros and jobs in the nonprofit sector. These seeds blossom as youth seek career options of true interest, some change in course studies and often times, volunteerism flourishes. These steps taken will be felt over a few years and last a lifetime, as high school students enter college and the job market. And, taking that time is more than OK.
Like taking a new product to market, dedication to slow, methodical skill and opportunity development, while embedding building blocks that stick, has proven to lead to choosing better career paths, paving the way to opportunities for greater wealth building in diverse communities, stated Mr. Harper.
And this is tremendous for inclusion, diversity and economic stability.