The Family Success Institute “Learning Community”
In 1970 futurists Alan and Heidi Toffler wrote a remarkable book called Future Shock. In it they foresaw the eventual demise of top down centralized command and control leadership and asked what a positive vision for future leadership might look like. They imagined decentralized, grass roots activities that might reflect enlightened empowered local progress or destructive acts of negativity due to the rapid and relentless nature of the changes they saw ahead. Now, almost fifty years later we can appreciate their wisdom.
The purpose of the Family Success Institute is to understand and pursue high level policies, strategies and funding that support our vision that all families have the resources, opportunities and supports they want and need to successfully raise their children from birth to young adulthood. We are also committed to assuring that people who live and work in neighborhoods and communities have a predominant role in how their futures will unfold. We are blessed in New Jersey to have a cadre of local leaders who have, in their own ways, forged ahead with amazing positive community initiatives despite the dearth of vision, support and partnership from higher level policy makers.
To our great fortune, a number of remarkable local leaders have joined with us to form a “learning community’ – to share information, experiences and inspiration, to formulate positive strategies to grow and sustain their individual and collective work and to demonstrate how powerful place-based community mobilization can achieve better outcomes for children and youth.
Our Charter Learning Community members come from large, medium and small places; places from north, south, central, east and west New Jersey; from urban, suburban and ex-urban communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of our state; they have roots in education, child welfare, community development, employment and training, food security and financial empowerment, community impact, family support, the public and non-profit sectors- for all ages of children and youth and their families. We hope that over time this informal community of interest will flourish and grow.
Our Charter Learning Community members include: