Our Leave No Child Behind® Mission
The Children’s Defense Fund Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
CDF provides a strong, effective and independent voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby or speak for themselves. We pay particular attention to the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities. CDF educates the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventive investments before they get sick, drop out of school, get into trouble or suffer family breakdown. CDF began in 1973 and is a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundation and corporate grants and individual donations. We have never taken government funds.
Equity Project's Hidden Injustice report
The juvenile justice system is at a crossroads. After more than 20 years of increasingly punitive responses to youthful offending, reform efforts are underway in many jurisdictions to develop more fair and effective juvenile courts. Notably absent frmo these efforts, however, has been a focus on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) court-involved youth. The lack of professional guidance for juvenile justice professionals working with these youth is cause for concern.
In the fall of 2009 the Equity Project, a multi-year collaborative initiative to ensure that LGBTQ youth in the juvenile delinquency court system are treated with dignity, respect and fairness released a report titled Hidden Injustice. This report represents the first effort to examine the experiences of LGBT youth in juvenile courts across the country. This 178-page report is based on information collected from 414 surveys and 65 interviews of juvenile justice professionals, including judges, defense attorneys, prosectors, probation officers, detention staff, and other juvenile justice advocates; focus groups and interviews of 55 youth with relevant firsthand experience; and an extensive review of relevant social science and legal research findings.
Save the Date for BEAT THE ODDS 2010
a 20th Anniversary Celebration
Saluting Marian Wright Edelman, Geoffrey Canada and past Beat the Odds recipients
Honoring the Stephanopoulos Family for their Years of Support
The CDF Beat the Odds program was initiated by the Children’s Defense Fund in 1990 to celebrate the positive potential of young people. Too often we hear about teenagers getting into trouble, dropping out of school, becoming involved with drugs, crime or gangs, or becoming parents too soon. Rarely recognized are the many young people who do well despite facing overwhelming obstacles such as poverty, violence, homelessness, family breakup, or substance abuse that can stand in the way of even the smallest achievements.
CDF-NY will select and honor five students who have demonstrated academic excellence and have the strength and determination to "beat the odds." They will be honored for their personal achievements in their struggles to improve their own lives as well as the lives of others at our very special 20th anniversary awards ceremony on December 6, 2010.
December 6, 2010
Guastavino's
Reception: 6:00 p.m.
Dinner & Program 7:00 p.m.
For more information, please contact Robyn Furman at (212) 697-2323 or
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.
If you are unable to attend the event, but would still like to support the Beat the Odds program, please consider a tax-deductible donation to CDF-New York.
February 2009
CDF-NY Summit Develops Plan to Dismantle the Pipeline to Prison
More than 400 people attended CDF-NY’s February 2009 summit, "Connecting the Neighborhood-based Dots: Promoting Solutions to Dismantle the Pipeline to Prison." The summit focused on public awareness regarding the systemic issues that are driving children from New York’s poorest communities into juvenile detention centers, the need to invest in successful community-based alternatives to detention, and promising solutions and neighborhood-based approaches to dismantling the pipeline.
CDF-NY partnered with the Justice Mapping Center to produce a series of community maps for the summit that dramatically depicted the geographic concentrations of poverty, racial segregation, failing schools, high school suspensions, foster care placement and juvenile detention. Speakers (including youth participants) presented recommendations and solutions to dismantle the pipeline such as creating safe and respectful school cultures and re-directing resources from youth jails to community-based alternatives for young people.
Prior to the event, staff from CDF-NY and the Center for Women's Development at Medgar Evers College conducted eight interactive workshops with different groups of youth (totaling over 100 youth) to generate and prioritize policy recommendations. The day culminated with a youth panel presenting policy recommendations for dismantling the pipeline. CDF-NY plans to use solutions and recommendations from the summit to implement an action plan to dismantle the pipeline in New
Learn more about CDF's Cradle to Prison Pipeline Campaign
Summit Powerpoint Presentations
Click here for "Youth Panel Policy Recommendations"
Click here for "Framing the Pipeline to Prison"
If you have a story to share about how New York’s cradle to prison pipeline has affected you or a member of your family, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it These stories will help us inform agenda as we move to dismantle New York’s pipeline.