Place-Based Initiatives

At a Glance

Urban, rural, tribal—where people live can limit their economic mobility. JFF helps communities work together to improve education and employment outcomes for families living in poverty.

Capabilities

Design

Invest

Influence

Experts Involved
Status
In progress
Locations
  • LA
  • FL
  • IL
  • IN
  • CA
  • OK
  • WA
  • KY
  • AZ
  • NY
  • PA
  • NJ
  • MN
  • MO
  • SD
  • ND
  • SC
  • GA
  • TN
  • PR
  • CT

Why Place-Based Solutions?

When communities are healthy and thriving, children succeed from cradle to career. The problems facing underperforming schools are interconnected with other challenges facing high poverty communities like dilapidated housing, neighborhood violence, poor health, and insufficient economic opportunities. Strong schools are critical for young people to succeed, but schools alone cannot address the multiple challenges facing communities in concentrated poverty. Neighborhoods of concentrated poverty need deeper, more comprehensive support to change their trajectories. Federal-to-local partnerships can leverage existing federal resources to help community stakeholders develop strategies to address the range of challenges that impact education outcomes for children and youth in their communities. The Department of Education recognizes that place matters. 

Fiscal Mapping Resource Hub

With the support of the US Department of Education, JFF and its partners have created a collection of resources that communities can leverage to identify and coordinate the funds needed to achieve significant educational, workforce, and health-related goals. In this fiscal mapping “hub,” we have included the following resources:

Tools and Resources

Stakeholders need direction and guidance to support communities. Below are tools—which will continue to be curated over time—to support them. 

A set of six briefs to help various stakeholders on a variety of topics and strategies such as: two-generation approaches, youth workforce development, early learning, FAFSA completion, family-school partnerships, and opportunity youth.

PBI & P3 Stakeholder Resources

With stronger connections across agencies and levels of government come stronger programs and better results. This paper focuses on convenings that bring together multiple federal, state, and/or local staff, spanning multiple departments and agencies, in order to solve coordination problems in delivering services to the American people and takes a closer look at what it takes to orchestrate such convenings.

Strategic Convenings

Helping to reconnect youth back to education and employment can be challenging and Youth development stakeholders and beneficiaries (i.e., the youth themselves) often describe significant challenges that hinder meaningful improvements in education, employment, health, and well-being outcomes. This tool will help communities identify, align, and integrate resources so they can strengthen systems and partnerships to design high-impact programming for opportunity youth.

Addressing Barriers: A Tool For Community Reflection