Today is my last day at State of Opportunity. I'm moving to California where I'll be taking part in the John S.Knight Journalism Fellowship.
It's a great opportunity, and over the next year I'll be working to develop new ideas and approaches to serving undervalued news consumers.
What I mean by that is low-income news audiences who, right now, are not often being well served by mainstream media organizations. State of Opportunity will continue to do that kind of work too, with the Infowire project and with other stories my colleagues here do so well.
Working for State of Opportunity has been an amazing experience. I'm going to miss it. If there is one thing I think I've learned from this work it is that Michigan can't hope to bridge the opportunity gap for kids in low-income families without fixing some of the systemic things that keep the deck stacked against these kids. I'm talking of course about education, and segregation, and racism. But creating opportunity also takes people reaching out personally to offer their own resources and support to kids and families. Sometimes those resources are financial and sometimes they are less tangible things like skills or networks.
I've met hundreds of people working in big and small ways to create opportunities for all Michigan kids over the past three years. It's been inspiring and energizing and I'm really grateful to the State of Opportunity universe for sharing your stories, your insights, your research and your work with me.