Obama’s ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ initiative spins off from White House

President Barack Obama greets guests from
Youth Guidance’s BAM (Becoming a Man)
program at the White House in 2013. (Official
White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Barack Obama’s multimillion-dollar
initiative to boost young minority men and boys
is spinning off from the White House and
becoming an independent
foundation, in preparation for his departure
from the Oval Office in 2017. Obama will speak
at an event at Lehman College in the Bronx on
Monday afternoon announcing the new
nonprofit, called My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
Eliminating achievement gaps and increasing
opportunities for young men of color is
expected to be one of Obama’s key
postpresidential causes. My Brother’s Keeper
Alliance (MBK Alliance) will be modeled in part
after the Clinton Global Initiative, started by
former President Bill Clinton in 2005. The
foundation will channel corporate and
individual donations to existing programs for
minority youth , with an emphasis on local
programs that can be replicated in other cities.
Joe Echevarria — the former CEO of the
accounting firm Deloitte and a leader of the My
Brother’s Keeper Task Force’s private-sector
initiative — has taken a leadership role in
forming the new organization. Many of the 11
groups that are part of My Brother’s Keeper will
remain involved.
It’s unclear exactly what the president’s role
will be in the group, though associates expect
him to remain involved with MBK Alliance after
he leaves office. The plight of young minority
men and boys is an issue that Obama is
expected to be involved with for the rest of his
life, alongside first lady Michelle Obama.
“I expect a substantive and lasting impact from
the new organization,” said Robert K. Ross,
president of the California Endowment, a
nonprofit involved in My Brother’s Keeper.
“The president will rally corporate, nonprofit,
civic and faith leaders to the cause of these
young men, and this will have an energizing
effect on young men of color themselves.”
Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper last year
and has raised commitments and donations of
$400 million from private companies and
foundations. The money goes to programs to
help lift minority boys’ reading scores by the
third grade — a key predictor of future success
— as well as providing job training, mentoring,
and other support to boost employment and
graduation rates. The NBA, AT&T and
nonprofits such as the California Endowment
have provided the startup money. Hundreds of
towns and cities have also signed up for the My
Brother’s Keeper Community Challenge , which
asks community leaders to collaborate to ensure
that young men of color have the tools they
need to succeed.
The issue is deeply personal to the president,
who has said that he sees himself in the young
minority men he’s met through the program.
“I believe the continuing struggles of so many
boys and young men — the fact that too many
of them are falling by the wayside, dropping
out, unemployed, involved in negative behavior
going to jail, being profiled — this is a moral
issue for our country,” the president said last
year in the East Room of the White House when
he launched the initiative. “It’s also an economi
issue for our country.”
In addition to its local focus, the group will hav
a broader mission to change the narrative
around the nation’s black youth by getting mor
positive images of young minorities into the
media. And the foundation will likely have a
policy arm, working with state and federal
governments to adopt laws and policies that
help young men of color.
Obama first directed his close advisers to
develop My Brother’s Keeper after the death of
17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2013.
Martin, who was black, was killed when a
neighborhood watchman got out of his car to
question the teen for acting “suspicious.” Obam
was moved by the death and spoke about it as
an example of how assumptions about young
minority men lead them to be treated differentl
by police and society.
The issue has only become more prominent
since then. Rioting in Baltimore this week
following the death of Freddie Gray in police
custody has revived an ongoing debate in the
country about the way young black and other
minority men are treated by the police, and the
nation’s criminal justice system as a whole. A
recent New York Times analysis found that 1.5
million black men in America are “missing ” —
they are in jail or died young, mostly from
homicides. (Black men are six times more likely
to be murdered than their white peers.)
In his speech announcing the program last year
Obama said that America had become “numb”
to these bleak statistics. “It’s like a cultural
backdrop for us — in movies and television,” he
said. “We just assume, of course, it’s going to be
like that. But these statistics should break our
hearts. And they should compel us to act.”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who left
office just this week, along with Education
Secretary Arne Duncan and Secretary of Labor
Thomas Perez, helped the president craft the
program. Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson
chairs the task force.
Last year, some of Obama’s close advisers said
that his commitment to the effort would last his
entire life.
“I think it’s something that’s deeply personal to
the president and first lady,” Valerie Jarrett, a
senior adviser to the president and the Obamas’
closest friend from Chicago, told Yahoo News
last year when the initiative launched. “I’m sure
their commitment to this initiative will be a
lifelong commitment. This is not something they
simply want to do while he’s in office — it will
continue.”

From - Yahoo News