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Why diversitydatakids.org? diversitydatakids.org is a state-of-the-art research project designed to meet the urgent need for a national, integrated information source that helps us understand: Who our children are, by documenting and tracking the rapidly changing demographics of children and families in the U.S.; What our children need, by establishing a system for monitoring not only child outcomes, but also key factors (including opportunities, conditions, and resources) that drive child outcomes; How to improve opportunities for all children, especially those that may need the most help, by focusing explicitly and rigorously on issues of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic equity in child health and wellbeing.

The problem of poverty More than 46 million Americans live below the official poverty line-which is now approximately $22,314 for a family of four-and 16.4 million children are poor in this country. Inequality of wealth has reached record highs-it is greater than at any time since 1929. Growing portions of the nation's wealth are concentrated in the possession of a small fraction of households, while more than one third of the U.S. population is trying to get by on incomes less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line-or about $44,000 for a family of four. Well before the current economic crisis, 6 million low-income households were paying more than half their income on rent and utilities, or lived in severely substandard housing. And the most recent data for 2010 revealed that 48.8 million people, including 16.2 million children, lived in a household struggling against hunger.

Many of us remember a time when walking and bicycling to school was a part of everyday life. In 1969, about half of all students walked or bicycled to school.1 Today, however, the story is very different. Fewer than 15 percent of all school trips are made by walking or bicycling, one-quarter are made on a school bus, and over half of all children arrive at school in private automobiles.2

PEC primarily serves homeless families consisting of single mothers and their young children. Many of these families are headed by young mothers with little or no work experience and some history of personal or familial trauma. The work of PEC is to support these families through a complement of social services that are intended to chip away at their barriers to success. Families at PEC are supported through emergency and transitional housing, employment and job training, computer skills development, GED and workplace literacy, as well as case management and counseling services. Through its efforts, PEC enables the families it serves to achieve long-term economic and personal self-sufficiency.

It is often assumed that the public have to rely on professionals to deliver public services because in the economic jargon there is an information asymmetry: the doctor or teacher knows more than the patient or pupil. Yet the families of these children have fine grained knowledge about what they really need: when they need two carers to support them and when only one will do; what risks to take on a trip out to the zoo and so on. The In Control initiative draws out this latent, tacit knowledge of users that is largely kept dormant and suppressed by the traditional delivery approach to services in which professionals are largely in control, assumed to have all the knowledge and so consumers are largely passive because they are assumed to lack the capability of taking charge of their own care, health, learning or tax.

Housing California is the only voice in the state Capitol for children, seniors, families, people experiencing homelessness, and everyone who needs a safe, stable affordable place to call home. Mission Since 1988, Housing California has been working to prevent homelessness and increase the variety and supply of safe, stable, accessible, and permanently affordable places to live. Housing California staff accomplishes its goals through education, advocacy, and outreach.

Welcome to our Social Impact Bond pages.

Social Finance is keen to support others to develop Social Impact Bonds. These Social Impact Bond pages are a place where commissioners, service providers and investors can collaborate, discuss and analyse Social Impact Bond structures and applications. The pages provide an open discussion platform, webinars to take you through our current thinking, technical guides and research that may be useful for developing Social Impact Bonds.

Social Finance is currently looking into new Social Impact Bonds in the fields of criminal justice, chaotic families, looked-after children, health and drug rehabilitation with support from the Big Lottery Fund. We have had considerable interest in the Social Impact Bonds from across the US, Canada, Middle East and Australia, and are keen to see other partners developing these.

The Strong Healthy Communities Initiative (SHCI) in Newark, NJ, is a cross-sector institutional partnership that aims to close the education "opportunity gap" in Newark by improving child health and well‐being as a lever to greater student achievement. It is the vision of SHCI and our partners to ensure that all Newark children, regardless of income, are healthy and ready to learn.

The following Federal Standard of Excellence Agency Snapshots provide a glimpse into nine agencies' evidence-based policy agenda. The Snapshots highlight key accomplishments and areas for future progress. Many of these practices and efforts described below are exemplary models that all federal agencies and departments can follow as they seek to improve results for communities, families, and children across the country.