Pat Wayne is the program director at CreateCA, California’s statewide arts coalition, and a grantee of the Hewlett Foundation. Her organization launched a new project to help increase participation and ensure student success in arts education by providing a set of tools that shows exactly where and what arts classes are offered across the state. …
Fifty years ago, the United States was at the height of a long era of dam construction. Since the first days of the United States, Americans have been building dams and putting rivers to work for mills, to generate electricity and to store water for cities, farms and towns. Dams were considered a symbol of American…
The first time I became aware of the concept of environmental justice, I was in Jamaica as a Peace Corps volunteer. A neighboring oil plant contaminated the water supply of the community I was staying at. People woke up to their tap water being brownish in color and having odd metallic taste. They felt nausea …
San Jose Taiko (SJT), a grantee of the Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts Program since 2004, is a professional performance company that has mesmerized audiences with the powerful and propulsive sounds of the taiko. Inspired by traditional Japanese drumming, SJT advances the art form of taiko by connecting people through cultural understanding, artistic expression and rhythmic …
I’m about to meet a runaway success story. Yvonne is a 21-year-old college senior at UC Berkeley. She’s the first member of her family to ever graduate from high school and attend college, let alone one of the best public universities in the world. I want to find out how she got to where she…
Teens are often cautioned about what they post online because their digital profile will follow them well beyond their youth. Students at Del Lago Academy, a public high school in Escondido, Calif., are counting on it. Their teachers are embracing an innovative approach to assessment using digital badges. Similar to scout merit badges, these online…
Update: On December 28, President Obama has designated Bears Ears as a national monument. This historic action to protect an unique and culturally important land is part of our nation’s legacy to honor Native Americans and our shared history. In southeast Utah, five sovereign Native American nations have come together as the Bears Ears Inter-tribal…
Dysfunctional. Hyper-partisan. Unproductive. Those are among the words now most commonly used to describe Congress. What was once considered a revered branch of the federal government has become a place of enormous bitterness and friction. Public approval of Congress now hovers just above 10 percent, a huge drop from nearly 50 percent less than 20…
Photography is a powerful medium for telling stories — but not all stories are equally visible. That’s why the Hewlett Foundation, Getty Images Reportage and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WEIGO) partnered to create a collection of high-quality photographs to show the ways that women around the world work, often in informal and…
We live in a fast-changing world. Every two years, the amount of digital information more than doubles. What is novel today may become quickly outdated. Experts predict that nearly two-thirds of elementary school students will one day hold a job that hasn’t been created yet. But our schools look the same as they did in…