The first fellowship program for social entrepreneurs starting up organizations to improve the lives of black men and boys has 16 finalists in the running. The Open Society Black Male Achievement Fellowship, known as the BMA Fellowship, is a new venture shared by the Open Society Foundations and Echoing Green. The fellowship will provide creative thinkers the space and support they need to tackle the entrenched problems facing black males and advance the field of black male achievement.

In the late spring of 2012, the BMA Fellowship will be awarded to up to eight of the finalists who are generating new ideas and best practices in the areas of education, family, and work. Examples include initiatives related to fatherhood, mentoring, college preparatory programs, community-building, supportive wage work opportunities, communications, and philanthropic leadership. The fellowship will provide start-up capital and technical assistance over 18 months to help new leaders launch and build their organizations; access to technical support and pro bono partnerships; and a community of like-minded social entrepreneurs and public service leaders.

Over 1,200 individuals applied to join the inaugural class of eight fellows since the selection process began several months ago. Go to the Echoing Green website to learn about each of the finalists’ innovative solutions and grand aspirations to confront the challenges and obstacles black men and boys encounter with their bold solutions for social change.

At a time when the underachievement of black boys in the United States can only be described as a national crisis, there is finally some good news. This fall, Baltimore City Schools chief executive Andres Alonso proudly reported that black male teens in his district are staying in school and graduating in higher numbers. The announcement made headlines, and for good reason: It proves that there are successful strategies in approaching this seemingly intractable problem. We urge other cities across the country to learn from Baltimore's creative approach.

So how did they do it? School systems, local philanthropies, not-for-profit groups, government officials and others worked together with the singular goal of improving the academic lives of those who need it most.

With help from community partners such as Open Society Institute-Baltimore, the city's schools adopted a graduated system of consequences and interventions for student misconduct that takes into account the student's age, the type of misbehavior and other factors. It makes suspension a consequence of last resort. Increased funding from the state of Maryland also played an important role, along with the closure of big, failing middle schools and a concerted effort by school leaders to woo dropouts back to the classroom.

We have long known that excessive use of suspension and expulsion results in higher rates of school absence, academic failure and, eventually, quitting school altogether. Evidence also points to suspensions leading to higher incidence of arrests and juvenile detention. Once the commitment was made to address disruptive behavior in school, suspensions in the district were cut in half.

Consider: In the 2003-04 school year, fewer than one out of two black male students graduated. Baltimore schools handed out nearly 26,000 suspensions to a student body of just over 88,000 kids. Two-thirds were to boys and, reflecting the city's population, nearly all were to black students.

Fast forward to the 2009-10 school year: Two out of three black male students graduated, while the District handed out fewer than 10,000 suspensions. Importantly, far fewer were longer than five days. You would be hard pressed to find other urban districts with that kind of progress.

Research has shown that out-of-school suspensions hurt academic progress; are a major factor in students' dropping out; and because they don't teach new behaviors, fail to improve school climates. These findings don't mean that schools should ignore bad behavior. And dangerous behavior by students shouldn't be tolerated. But the data show that most incidents do not fall into that "dangerous" category and that alternatives such as in-school suspension and mediation are much more effective.

Keeping more young people in school means more time for learning. When more learning happens, more students graduate. Black males are no exception to this simple fact.

“Focus, focus, focus,” were the final words Michele Cahill drilled into my head in a mentoring session during my first few months after landing at the Open Society Foundations to launch the Campaign for Black Male Achievement. Meeting with Cahill, a vice president for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was just one of several early listening and learning tour stops during the very beginning of my tenure as manager of the campaign, yet her “focus, focus, focus” mantra has emerged as the most salient message that has echoed through my mind over the past two years.

The Campaign for Black Male Achievement was launched in 2008 to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys, countering the mounting disparities and barriers they face in the areas of educational equity, work opportunities, and family supports. Cahill’s advice was foreshadowed the day after the campaign went public, when the deluge of phone calls and emails made it clear to me that the demand for resources to support black males in America far exceeded the supply of our grantmaking budget.

Our strategic planning process further personified Cahill’s message, as the campaign team had to meet the challenge of figuring out how to get the most impact out of limited financial resources over what was at the time a three-year initiative. So we decided we should focus the geography of our grantmaking and emerged with three core investment regions: Mid-Atlantic (Baltimore, MD, and Philadelphia, PA), Midwest (Chicago, IL, and Milwaukee, WI), and the Gulf Region (New Orleans, LA, and Jackson, MS).

The "focus factor" continued to prevail during the strategic planning process, when we were led to narrow down our investment priorities to the following core areas: education, work, family, and strengthening the field of black male achievement. Yes, there are a host of other worthy areas our campaign could have invested in, like health, but being disciplined with our strategic focus sure comes in handy when Rashid Shabazz, program officer for the campaign, and I face the daily deluge of requests to support great projects outside of our grantmaking focus. The focus factor gives us a sound rationale for declining to invest in all the worthwhile opportunities that come across our desks. Otherwise we’d be tempted to sprinkle seemingly random grants all across the country, creating a campaign that was many miles wide for sure, but only inches deep!

Reggie Moore, founder of the Urban Underground in Milwaukee and one of our grantee partners, highlights the power of focus in his personal leadership journey. “I have learned the importance of filtering as a method of focus,” said Moore. “We must watch what we allow to consume our time, energy, attention, and spirit. We must filter out the things that distract from our purpose or weaken our spirits; and focus on the things that make us strong, productive, and effective.”

Rashid Shabazz also highlights the importance of focus in order to be an effective leader: “The most important characteristic beyond the relationships one shares is the ability to focus. In order to meet goals and not be deterred by growing demands, agendas, and outside distractions, a leader’s ability to focus on completing goals and objectives—to listen to the quiet voice within—is the most essential trait for organizational leadership.”

In their book Power of 2: How to Make the Most of Your Partnerships at Work and in Life, authors Rodd Wagner and Gale Muller hit the focus factor bulls-eye when they assert, “the pressure to be all things to all people is pervasive. But doing just a few things exceptionally well is a better path to success than spreading yourself thinly across dozens of disciplines, becoming, as they say in Spanish aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada (apprentice of everything, master of nothing).”

Shawn Dove's "High 5 Focus Points."

In my quest to effectively lead and manage the campaign, I’ve established what I call my High 5 Focus Points: five critical areas where I believe if I focus most of my time and energy the campaign strategy will succeed. These points, which are perpetually posted on the whiteboard in my office, are:

1. Building the Brand of Black Male Achievement: Focusing on keeping the crisis of black males central to the national philanthropic, political, and public policy conversation;
2. Cultivating Philanthropic Partnerships (outside and inside of the Open Society Foundations): Focusing on opportunities to leverage additional resources for the field of black male achievement;
3. Strengthening the Field: Focusing on developing organizational leadership, capacity and sustainability;
4. Portfolio Management and Measurement: Focusing on relationships with grantee partners and promoting the impact of their work;
5. Sustaining the Campaign: Focusing on keeping this important work alive both inside the Open Society Foundations and in the field of philanthropy.

Sure, we have a set of goals and strategies detailed in the Campaign for Black Male Achievement's plan of which I am forever mindful, but somewhere along the line I figured out that if I focus intently on my High 5 Focus Points, the campaign will be well-positioned to achieve its mission to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys.

Discrimination has produced staggering negative outcomes for black men and boys in the areas of education, work, and incarceration, to name a few. Fortunately, there is a treasure chest of hope found in communities throughout New Orleans and in the advocates and leaders who possess a “mountain-be-moved spirit” that enables them to envision progress five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the floods.

We asked some of these leaders to define their vision for black men and boys in New Orleans.

In 2008, the 21st Century Foundation, with support from Open Society Foundations Campaign for Black Male Achievement (CBMA), expanded its Black Men and Boys Initiative to New Orleans.  There, they support coalition-building and leadership development activities of groups seeking to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys.  Trap Bonner, executive director of Moving Forward Gulf Coast, the 21^st Century Foundation’s lead organization in the region:

When our organizing and advocacy efforts are successful, our New Orleans Black Men and Boys Coalition will have contributed to creating an atmosphere and environment where our men and boys can thrive.  On the state and federal policy level, black men and boys will be the creators, not merely the recipients, of public policies and programs that address the whole needs of our community.  We will have de-railed the school-to-prison pipeline in New Orleans and will have won victories for higher quality, culturally competent public education for our boys.

Patrice Sams-Abiodun, a board member of Women In Fatherhood Incorporated—a  CBMA grantee—and the executive director of the New Orleans Fatherhood Consortium, believes in strengthening support for responsible fatherhood policies and programs:

By addressing and supporting black men as fathers we can improve the well-being of children, families and communities.  The New Orleans Fatherhood Consortium, a collaborative of government and nonprofit social service organizations, fatherhood providers, researchers, funders and fathers envisions a New Orleans where the role of fathers is reclaimed in families and healthy lifestyles are created, so that neighborhoods are strong.

James Logan is program director for YouthLine America, Inc., which has led an organizing and community mapping initiative in collaboration with the Greater New Orleans Afterschool Partnership, resulting in the creation of a youth-produced website, neworleans.ilivehere.info. He sees opportunities through the crisis of Katrina:

Remembering the events of five years ago, a win for black men and boys in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast would be for them to have the tools and ability to create better opportunities and structures than those that existed pre-Katrina.  The tragedy has given black men and boys in the Gulf Coast the opportunity to reinvent the structures and opportunities available to them from the ground up!

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In the five years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the levees broke, residents have developed innovative approaches to tackling some of the city’s—and the nation’s—most persistent problems: criminal justice reform, unresponsive government, and racial and economic inequality.  In recognition of these efforts, during the month of August the Open Society Blog shines a light on people and organizations in New Orleans bringing change from within one of the country’s most important cities. Read more posts in this series.

While attending the recent Schott Foundation for Public Education’s Opportunity To Learn Summit one of the speakers asserted that responding to the education crisis of Black boys in America is the civil rights challenge of today’s generation. And while a complex web of inequities and disparities exist that force Black boys and men to the bottom of almost every success indicator in America, it’s not hard to agree that the deplorable educational outcomes are at the heart of the systemic problem preventing Black boys from realizing their full potential in American society.

The current education crisis is like a slow-drip Katrina; the likes of a category 5 hurricane that steadily erodes not only the schooling conditions of Black boys, but too many low-income students of every gender and all races attending under-resourced schools across the country. Yet, the Katrina metaphor does not come with constant CNN clips of Black male students standing on school rooftops across America holding up signs that read “please save me,” reminiscent of the TV news images of Hurricane Katrina victims.

Consequently, education advocates are more and more becoming masters of their own media, broadcasting the opportunities and achievement gaps within the public education system for Black boys - sounding an alarm and shining the light on the educational slow drip Katrina that, in its totality, presents a perfect storm for fueling the school-to-prison pipeline.

The Open Society Institute’s Campaign for Black Male Achievement was conceived to help improve the life outcomes of Black men and boys, with the premise that if America transforms the structural opportunities and outcomes of its most marginalized individuals it will improve the life outcomes of all its citizens. Two of the core goals of the Campaign are to integrate strategic communications across its three foundational grantmaking areas of Education, Family and Work to promote positive frames and messages about Black men and boys and to ensure that Black boys have the opportunity to excel academically, to prepare for college, and to learn skills essential to earning a living wage.

The Campaign is committed to cultivating philanthropic partners and making strategic investments in organizations to achieve these goals, so it made sense for us to support the recent Newark, New Jersey and New York City premieres and panel discussions of the film Beyond the Bricks. A 30-minute documentary produced by Koen & Washington Media, Bricks explores solutions to the poor academic performance and low graduation rates of school-aged Black males in the United States. The film follows two students from Newark, New Jersey, as they struggle against the school system to improve their educational circumstances, and includes interviews with educators, researchers, administrators, elected officials and activists who offer their ideas for solutions to the crisis facing Black boys.

Bricks illuminate a web of issues such as zero tolerance push out policies; school violence; absent fathers and the lack of innovative classroom engagement strategies that fuel America’s school-to-prison pipeline. In addition to portraying the problems, Bricks also uplifts the solutions and the policy advocacy levers that help the two strikingly bright young men featured in the film to get back on track with pursuing their education goals.

But the real power and beauty of new films like Beyond the Bricks and Bring Your "A" Game, the 21st Century Foundation’s cinematic clarion call to adolescent Black males to focus more on educational achievement as the pathway to adult success, is their potential to be catalysts for community mobilization, advocacy action campaigns and policy change conversations. For example, during a recent trip to Chicago, Phillip Thomas, senior program officer for the Chicago Community Trust, excitedly shared with me how "A" Game was being used as an organizing and advocacy tool in several Chicago neighborhoods.

Judging from the capacity crowd attendance for the Bricks viewings, the documentary is another welcomed media tool that can fuel education reform. It is critical that philanthropy continues to support arts and culture, media and technology that stimulate social change. Films like Beyond the Bricks are created with a vision beyond the viewing. The lasting impact and catalyst for change Bricks brings to its audience emerges after the closing credits when the action steps are made to stop America’s slow-drip Katrina.