The Booster: Deanna Singh, Executive Director, the Burke Foundation

Related Event:
Building Opportunity for
Boys and Men of Color
The Nonprofit Center's 2014 conference is part of the first-ever Boys and Men of Color Week in Milwaukee.

Thursday, October 30
Click here for workshop topics and to register

All nonprofit staff and others are invited to attend and:
~ Learn more about the structural barriers, racial disparities and stereotypes that limit opportunity for boys and men of color
~ Hear from and engage with more than 35 expert presenters and panelists working in the community 
~ Get tools, program ideas, and ways to leverage new funding and other resources

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By Molly Willms, NPC Guest Blogger

Even while facing myriad obstacles, Milwaukee’s boys and men of color have no shortage of potential.

It is the job of Deanna Singh, Executive Director of the Burke Foundation, to help identify organizations that best tap that potential.

The Burke Foundation is a charitable organization that provides support to community groups, many of which are dedicated to working with boys and men of color.

“Dick Burke, our founder, believed that the best way to help the city find its way to greatness was by investing in young people,” Singh said. “He truly believed that our city’s children have all of the potential they need, and that if given the right opportunities, they could be successful.”

“Our role is to come alongside the organizations that are doing the hard work every day to eliminate current challenges and help them find ways to realize their missions and leverage their impact,” Singh said. “We have the data. We have passionate and smart people dedicated to boys and men of color. We have best practices - things that we KNOW work. We have amazing boys and young men of color in our community.

“What we don’t have is a cohesive mechanism to leverage our strengths, shared goals, and consistent/meaningful ways for the young men to be engaged in the conversation,” Singh said.

And that work has to have a broad, complete focus in order to be effective.

“There is no single issue,” Singh said. “To change the tide we are going to have to make investments in a number of different areas.”

The Burke Foundation is working with the United Way of Greater Milwaukee and others on a Leadership Symposium during Boys and Men of Color Week.

The goals of the symposium are that leaders will:

• Understand why focusing on the success of boys and men of a color in Milwaukee is critical to our city's future;
  

• Enhance their national and local understanding of initiatives aimed to improve outcomes for boys and men of color;
  

• Gain an opportunity to hear directly from boys and men of color about their experiences in Milwaukee and their perspective on changing the paradigm;
  

• Share specific goals that the community can aspire to;
  

• Determine a shared direction that will lead towards collective solutions to the opportunity gap faced by boys and men of color.
  

Community Advocates Public Policy Institute will survey participants in the week's events, including the symposium. Results will be shared with the community along with plans for the next steps in working with boys and men of color.

It is they, after all, who will provide the true impetus for change.

“Our young men are bright, capable, and ambitious,” Singh said. “When they have the right tools at their disposal and real opportunities to use those tools, they do amazing things.

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