Last week I had the honor of being a part of a small bloggers’ roundtable with P&G U.S. Marketing Manager, Jim Leish, President of Communities in Schools, Dan Cardinali, and Grammy award winning artist and philanthropist, John Legend. (yes, that John Legend)
John Legend is raising awareness using his voice (and what a voice it is!), and his passion for kids and education to help Communities in Schools raise funding and get help from local communities to help kids. P&G is donating millions of dollars in funding. CIS, John, and P&G are working to help raise awareness about the dismal drop out rates among high school students. Every 9 seconds a high school student drops out of school. That means in the time it took you to read the first few sentences of this post at least one student already dropped out of school.
Communities in Schools (CIS)
Communities in Schools is an amazing organization. They don’t just offer mentoring or help to kids, they literally wrap services around the school community including services like food banks, name more, and the most important piece of the puzzle-getting parents involved and active in their children’s education. In many cases these are schools that have been failing kids at rates that make your jaw drop, but with involvement from Communities in Schools these schools have a proven track record of turning around, getting kids to graduate, and helping them make the transition to college.
From CIS:
Communities In Schools (CIS) is one of the nation’s leading dropout prevention organizations, and one that is proven to both increase graduation rates and decrease dropout rates. Through a school-based coordinator, CIS connects at-risk students and their families to critical community resources, tailored to local needs.Of the monitored students that participated in the program during the 2008-2009 school year, 97 percent remained in school and 91 percent were promoted to the next grade. CIS served more than 3,400 schools and nearly 1.3 million students and their families during the 2008-2009 school year. To learn more about CIS, visit www.communitiesinschools.org.
John Legend
Meeting John Legend wasn’t just a photo opp, we got to ask him questions about his own life and his education. He graduated from a school where many other students didn’t graduate or go on to college. He was the exception. He shared that the difference for him was having parents that were active early on, caring counselors, teachers, and most importantly was encouraged and found his passion in extracurricular activities. With such great support he was able to graduate at age 16, attended an Ivy league school, and has since become an award winning recording artist. My impression of him was someone that is extremely intelligent, well-spoken, and passionate about helping others. He is particularly passionate about helping students succeed based on his own experiences.
John Legend sings ‘Shine’ with local middle school students
P&G
P&G U.S. Marketing Manager, Jim Leish, shared that while P&G literally touches billions of people each day with their products, so enabling customers to save on their products and educating them about the cause is the cornerstone of this project. What impressed me most-there is no cap on the donation! The more you save, the more P&G donates. They make it easy for consumers to give back even if they can’t afford to donate time or money.
GIVE Education is part of the P&G GIVE program, a social sustainability platform designed to inspire and enable people to use their everyday purchases to touch lives and improve life. By enabling consumers to address critical social issues affecting our communities, GIVE helps P&G fulfill its purpose of touching and improving lives, now and for generations to come.
How You Can Help:
On Sunday, July 31, a GIVE Education brandSAVER will be distributed in newspapers across the country, with discounts for P&G products. For each brandSAVER coupon redeemed, P&G will donate 2 ¢ to CIS to help deliver human, financial and community resources to students and their families. The P&G uncapped donation will be based on the number of coupons redeemed beginning July 31.Newspapers carrying the GIVE Education brandSAVER can be found at www.pgeverydaysolutions.com.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this important topic, leave me a comment and let me know what you think (or just express your undying devotion to John Legend). Will you be using the P&G brandSAVER?
Kelly
Disclosure: My transportation to the event was provided by P&G.
It’s definitely wonderful that they are working together-John’s voice and fame will help bring in more funding and raise awareness about this great cause!
Me too! I regularly purchase some of their products anyway, so I’m glad to know they are part of something so great!
Awesome! It’s a small way to help, but it really will make a difference!
It’s really refreshing to see someone putting their money where their mouth is, and believe me we threw some tough questions at Dan and he had answers to them all! CIS even helps kids bridge the gap from high school to college with mentors. So inspiring!
Even before I became a teacher, I believed in a good education. My children attended private school from nursery school through high school. It was the absolute best thing I could ever give them. They are now successful adults.
bluesauger says
Awesome! Great to have someone seeing a problem and providing an organization to fix it.
I love hearing about a corporation helping school students to succeed without any cap on the donations! I’ll definitely make a point of grabbing a P&G saver on Sunday to see what I can do.
Anonymous says
What a great initiative. Programs like this definitely affect my purchasing decisions. And I love to hear that big corporations like P&G are helping those in need.
Girlymama says
this sounds amazing!!! kudos to p&g and john for this project and for doing so much to help kids in need!!