Charity Seeks to Keep Poverty From Being Passed to Next Generation

When Casa de Maryland released the findings last summer of a yearlong study of Langley Park, a mostly Latino neighborhood in suburban Washington, the conclusions were grim:

“Few of Langley Park’s 3,700 children—almost all born in the U.S.—are currently on track for a secure future,” the immigrants-rights group said in a news release. One of the biggest obstacles: Parents have “staggering low levels of schooling and limited access to continuing education,” making it difficult for them to support their children.

Those findings highlight a dynamic getting increasing attention from today’s poverty fighters: economic hardships that are handed down from generation to generation.

Casa de Maryland is trying to cut the odds of that happening in Langley Park with a program called Learning Together, an effort to help the children of immigrants succeed by teaching their parents, many with poor English skills, how to navigate the U.S. education system. Sometimes what they need to know can be as basic as “What does this report card mean?” says senior manager Jamila Ball.

Learning Together, which won a $3-million grant from the U.S. Education Department last year, also earned Casa de Maryland a spot in a new network created by the Aspen Institute to unite organizations that attempt to disrupt poverty by providing services to children and their parents together.

The network is part of the think tank’s Ascend program, which has emerged as a hub of projects and policy ideas promoting “two-generation” strategies—an approach that has found favor with a variety of big grant makers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and others have poured more than $10-million into Ascend since it was created in late 2010.

Casa de Maryland is one of 58 organizations selected for the Ascend Network last spring after a national competition, putting them in line for $1.2-million in grants and other assistance.

The Learning Together program, which received $50,000, aims to head off a common occurrence, Ms. Ball says: a falloff in performance once children move from elementary to middle school. The project, operated with the public schools, offers classes, home visits, school events, and teacher training to help immigrant parents guide their children to read, complete homework, and get to school on time. It also helps parents get marketable skills.

Another Ascend Network member, the Evanston Community Foundation, created the Two-Generation Education Initiative last year to offer services to parents of children enrolled in early-education programs operated by foundation grantees. “Working with both children and parents at the same time, we’re hoping the children will stand a chance of being better off economically than their own parents are,” says Sara Schastock, the Illinois grant maker’s president.

Ascend offered $100,000 to help the foundation set up a pilot program, working with Lindsay Chase Lansdale, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, who was one of 20 nonprofit, academic, and government leaders to win 18-month Ascend Fellowships in 2012.

Exploring Careers

The first class of 13 women in Evanston graduated in May after attending a 13-week course that helped them explore careers in high-demand fields, took them on site visits to a local manufacturer and a senior-living facility, provided information about community-college job-certification programs, and offered financial-literacy training.

Artishia Hunter, the program’s director, recalls that one woman who needed a car loan was able to increase her credit score by 26 points using information from class handouts. The second class started in November.

In October, Ascend gathered more than 180 leaders in Aspen to discuss the latest thinking about “two-generation” strategies and released a report proposing the “Top 10 for 2Gen” policies that policy makers should adopt to support those efforts. They should, for example, allow recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to count certain educational and job-training activities toward the requirement that they work.

Anne Mosle, Ascend’s director, says the Aspen program aims to promote an integrated approach to fighting poverty, taking into account demographic and economic changes like the explosion of single-parent families headed by women. “We’re very comfortable investing in women and mothers internationally,” she says. “We’re still struggling with that here at home.”