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I launched Child Advocacy 360 News Foundation in 2007 because in my previous work on child and youth issues, it became clear that there was a huge gap between the good work being done to improve children’s lives in communities across America and the communication required to demonstrate the results being achieved.

Organizations large and small, public and private have failed to use what I’ll call “The Good News Lever”—sharing stories of community-level intervention that produces amazing results in rescuing children and teenagers at risk and measurably improving their lives.

We have seriously underachieved in using the infinite power of the Internet broadcast booth to reach and engage caring adults who want to help but don’t know how.

Child Advocacy 360 and Connect for Kids plan to take our Who’s Doing What That Works storytelling initiative to a new level in our forthcoming Website redesign. (Watch for the new site in early winter.) The redesign will streamline our presentation of content, making it easier for professionals and interested citizens to find the resources they need, and will increase our capacity for feedback, sharing, and dialogue.

As we provide inspiring success stories and tools by and for the child and youth field, we will also be testing what our readers need and want to know, and how effective our platform can be at helping them turn these lessons, insights and ideas into real-world action in their own communities.

Our plans include creating and organizing content that has particular appeal to community members (as opposed to professionals in the child and youth field, who comprise the other main segment of our audience), while also providing access to broader policy news, research and trends through our newsletters.

In my own ambitions as an advocate for unfortunate children, I have certainly reached a point where I want to challenge some old assumptions about not-for-profit communication. Achieving awareness is not enough. We need interest, engagement, and on-the-ground action at the community level. That’s where I have experienced the kind of impact that changes lives, and where my theory of “Communication as Catalyst” must be tested.

Your Turn: Two Opportunities to Connect with CFK

To this end, I hope to enlist your help and insights. First, I will be developing a special monthly email bulletin focusing on improving the effectiveness of communications to further the child and youth field—and to build the good news platform for community action.

The first issue will highlight a “secret weapon” strategy I call The Scorecard Imperative. I invite you to subscribe to this monthly e-bulletin by clicking the link below.

Second, to build up our Who’s Doing What that Works content, we ask you to share your stories of successes and lessons learned. You can send information from your organization or others in your community by emailing us at weekly@connectforkids.org and we will organize and publish them in a special civic engagement section of the CFK site.

For your guidance, here are a few Who’s Doing What That Works and Real People, Real Results stories that we have published on CFK or the Child Advocacy 360 site:

• A Medical Home for Kids in Foster Care
• Young Writers Finding a Powerful Voice
• Two States—only two—foot the bill for foster kids after 18
• California group matches faces with families
• New York's Youth Advocacy Center puts teen on path to her dreams
• The Need for Angels in Foster Care: You and Me

We look forward to your collaboration.

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Hershel Sarbin is the founder and publisher of our partner the Child Advocacy360 News Network and Editor at Large of Connect for Kids.