Overview

Washington state has some of the highest rates of unemployment and hunger in the nation. On any given night, thousands of families in Washington will be homeless. Each year, more than half the children starting kindergarten in the state aren't ready to learn. Our Pacific Northwest program seeks to improve the lives of vulnerable children and families in Washington state and Greater Portland, Oregon. Our goal is to ensure that all children in our region have a safe place to sleep at night and the opportunity to succeed in school and life.

In 2005, we focused on three areas of giving: community grants to a variety of nonprofit organizations in our region that work with low-income children and families; "supportive housing," a solution to homelessness that combines affordable housing and social services; and early learning efforts to ensure that all children in Washington are ready to start kindergarten. We launched our early learning strategy in 2005. In 2006, our early learning and high school efforts were combined in an expanded Education portfolio. This change will help the teams work together and share lessons from their work on different aspects of education reform.

Since it's absolutely critical to work together with business, government, and non-profit organizations in the community, 2005 was about strengthening these partnerships in all our initiatives.

For example, the Washington State Legislature created a statewide public-private partnership for supportive housing, the Washington Families Fund, in 2004. The fund launched in 2005, bringing together 13 different private funders and over 100 different individual donors whose commitment to fighting homelessness will help dozens of housing and service providers across the state sustain this innovative housing approach for years to come. In addition, in devising our early learning strategy, we collaborated with numerous business, government, and non-profit leaders to gather ideas and work toward increasing school readiness for all children in Washington state. We spent much of the year working to fashion a statewide public-private partnership to help lead the early learning movement in the state. These and other partnerships ensure that we're pooling resources and expertise with others in the region to have the greatest impact on the lives of vulnerable children and families.