Just Matters

We’re spreading the word about Public Interest Tech, an exciting field that’s eager for fresh ideas and skills.

The right to protest has always been essential to movements for human rights and social justice. But around the world, there is a big gap between the promise of that right, and its reality.

Kevin Ryan joined the Ford Foundation’s Equitable Development team earlier this year, leading our grant making in Detroit. Here, the Detroit native talks about his family’s history in the city and region, the changes he’s seen in Detroit over the years, and the shape and scope of the foundation’s grant making there.

Universal free school lunch is a simple but radical idea. It removes stigma, improves children’s health and education, and helps low-income families make ends meet. Because it is one system, it also simplifies administrative processes, allowing schools, principals, and teachers to focus on teaching.

Earlier this summer, the Ford Foundation launched an interactive tool called Your American Dream Score, which aims to help each of us examine the factors that have helped us succeed or held us back, and to start conversations about the role of inequality and opportunity in our lives.

The “American Dream”—one of the country’s most foundational principles—has long made a simple promise: Hard work leads to success. But what happens when large swaths of American society don’t buy into it?

Darren Walker reflects on four of his commencement speeches, addressing how around the world, democracy and democratic values are under siege, and our responsibilities to protect democracy. 

Despite similar crime rates, the US incarceration rate is more than five times that of comparable countries. Out of every 100,000 Americans, 693 are in prison—a number that has multiplied in the past four decades.

In 2015, the Ford Foundation decided to "walk our talk" and start a professional development program for formerly incarcerated people. Our HR department explains what the process was like. 

Your American Dream Score aims to help us examine the many experiences, systems, and institutions that have helped—or hindered—our path to where we are today, and to jump-start honest discussions about the role of inequality and opportunity in our lives.

In their new book, Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito and journalist and MIT visiting scholar Jeff Howe lay out new “rules” for surviving and advancing in this age of rapid technological change.

The global refugee crisis poses a range of challenges to host countries but also economic and cultural opportunities. Policy solutions that ensure refugees’ dignity and help build their skills, talents, and assets will ensure that migrants can live full lives and contribute to their new communities.

JustFilms, part of Ford’s Creativity and Free Expression program, is a longtime partner of the Sundance Institute and supported seven films in 2017.

The Ford Foundation's Elizabeth Alexander speaks with actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith about Smith's new play, Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, examining the school-to-prison pipeline.

CGAP and the Ford Foundation commissioned case studies in Colombia, Peru, Ethiopia, and India exploring the Graduation Approach.

Stereotypes and stigma make black female students vulnerable to mistreatment and criminalization in school.

America Divided, a new documentary series from EPIX, explores narratives around inequality in education, housing, healthcare, labor, criminal justice and the political system.

The Ford Foundation recaps episode 3 of America Divided, a docu-series about rising inequality in the United States.

The Ford Foundation recaps episode 2 of America Divided, a docu-series about rising inequality in the United States.

The Ford Foundation has a rich history of supporting scholarships and fellowships that have a focus on social justice, including our International Fellowships Program.

The global inequality of opportunity is what's driving the current migration crisis.

In a world where building connections is everything, paid internships offer young people of all different economic and social classes the opportunity to prepare for the future without having to sacrifice financial stability.

Ford Foundation interns weigh in on President Darren Walker's New York Times op-ed "Why Internships Are Not a Privilege."

Internships help disadvantaged students tap into the advantages that so many of their peers already have.

There is a close link between child marriage and the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Yet the interventions designed to respond to these two issues are often not integrated. 

Unlike traditional scholarships based primarily on academic achievement, social justice fellowships use non-traditional ways to recruit talented individuals and extend higher education opportunities to leaders from marginalized communities.

New York City school suspensions are down by one third, great news for students, parents, and "restorative justice".

With increasing xenophobic political rhetoric and brazen incidents of violence against American Muslim, South Asian, and Arab communities, the Ford Foundation hosted a dialogue with leaders to strategize ways to advance inclusion. Here are the highlights from the discussion.

 If we’re going to speak about the power of storytelling then I guess I should tell a story—or rather, my story.

Remembering the extraordinary Grace Lee Boggs.

President Obama announced a major improvement to the federal student aid application process, making it easier for students to tap into needed Pell Grants and other college aid. 

Education and voting are fundamental rights, and they’re also essential opportunities. So when a federal appeals panel ruled against a strict voter ID law in Texas this week—deeming it discriminatory and in violation of the Voting Rights Act—it was an encouraging sign. It was also evidence that there’s still a serious need for our 50-year-old civil rights law. And that disenfranchisement doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

People incarcerated in federal and state prisons will be eligible to receive federal aid to take the college courses that will prepare them to be thoughtful, responsible, engaged members of their communities—and help keep them from returning to prison.

Our support for the student power model and its movements is an investment in the future of social change.

Supporting INGOs that are based in the Global South, the Ford Foundation can contribute further to the realization of rights.

Darren addresses three graduating classes at three commencement ceremonies.

Program officer Amy Brown shares five things you should know about student debt and social justice.

Prison education can have a transformative affect on incarcerated people.

Learn how Max Kenner, founder of the Bard Prison Initiative, is trying to fix a broken prison system.