If you found August as challenging as we did with the police killing of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown and weeks of protests in Ferguson, Missouri that highlighted the racial discrimination and inequities in policing and the militarization of police forces in Ferguson and around the country, we want to assure you the Children’s Defense Fund will not stop until the Cradle to Prison Pipeline^TM is dismantled and every child has an equal opportunity to reach his or her potential. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We’re grateful for some bright moments in the month and we wanted to share our top 5 before we come back for an action-packed September. We’re grateful for:

1. A Successful CDF Freedom Schools^® Summer!

We’ve had an amazing summer with CDF Freedom Schools partners across the country. We’ve served more children this summer than ever before — a total of 12,745 in 107 cities and 29 states and are deeply grateful to our more than 200 partners for working so hard to create a fun, positive learning environment for so many children. We’re deeply grateful to the college students who dedicated their summer to CDF Freedom Schools students, taught and mentored them, and helped them fall in love with reading. And we continue to be thankful for all of you who support our work and make it possible.

We have a RECOGNITION: We’d like to recognize the good work of PBS NewsHour and correspondent Gwen Ifill. Thank you for sharing the good news of CDF Freedom Schools with PBS viewers across the country!

If you missed it, the NewsHour ran a wonderful story about CDF Freedom Schools including Gwen Ifill’s interview with Marian Wright Edelman. They called the story: 50 Years On, Freedom Schools Still Teaching Most Vulnerable. The story also highlights one of our new Freedom Schools partners, the Omega Freedom School at Malcolm X Elementary School in Washington, D.C. PBS shared the story with us, so you can watch it here.

We are also grateful for the thousands of special people who volunteered their time with our Freedom Schools children this summer!  Below from left to right are Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, David Johns; Actress and CDF Board Member, Jurnee Smollett-Bell; and Express Scripts CEO George Paz reading aloud to students.

David Johns		Jurnee Smollett-Bell		George Paz

Visit the CDF Freedom Schools site today and learn how to get involved. Applications for 2015 are available now online!

2. CDF-Ohio's Important New Report on Rural Poverty

Did you know that many poor rural children go hungry even when surrounded by fertile farmland? This month CDF-Ohio released Health Disparities Are Leaving Ohio's Rural Children Behind, an issue brief that examines the health disparities impacting Ohio's rural children and makes recommendations so Ohio policymakers can better address their needs. We’re grateful to CDF-Ohio for putting the spotlight on the often hidden challenges of rural child poverty. Many of the challenges facing children in Ohio are also true for many rural children living in poverty in other states. The health disparities impacting these children need urgent attention and require different solutions than those for urban poor children.  Share this important brief to bring more attention to rural children’s needs.

Look for new information from us in mid-September about children living in poverty in America. The U.S. Census Bureau will be releasing new national and state poverty data and we will let you know how children are doing as soon as we analyze the numbers.  At the end of September we hope to be releasing a new report that provides a roadmap for dramatically reducing child poverty now.  Please sign up here, if you would like to be on the list to receive our new report. 

3. The Children's Health Insurance Program

We celebrated the 17^th birthday of The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) this month, and raised up why CHIP works.  Since its bipartisan beginnings in 1997, CHIP has helped to cut the rate of uninsured children in half, to the lowest level on record, while improving health outcomes and access to care. While CHIP is authorized through 2019, funding will virtually disappear in 2015. Funding for CHIP must be extended at least four more years so working families with children don't lose access to health care or have to pay more for less coverage. Call your Governors today! Ask them to urge your Congressional delegation to extend CHIP funding for four more years now.  Check out our factsheets so you can advocate for CHIP more effectively in your state.

4. Progress in Expanding Early Childhood

We’re grateful that U.S. Secretaries Burwell (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and Duncan (U.S. Department of Education) are working together to expand opportunities for critically needed high-quality pre-K for low-income children. This month the U.S. Department of Education issued two sets of federal grants to states to provide high-quality pre-K services to many more 4-year-old low-income and poor children. These “Preschool Development Grants” and “Preschool Expansion Grants” will provide approximately 240 million dollars to states over four years for the development or expansion of pre-K programs for children in families living at or below 200 percent of the poverty line.   

This new funding represents an important step as we move toward larger investments in early childhood and a comprehensive birth through 5 continuum of high-quality services. Make sure your state takes advantage of this opportunity before the October 14 deadline.

For further information, click here.

5. CDF Beat the Odds^® News

For those in the DC area, Save the Date for what promises to be an extraordinary Beat the Odds evening on November 18 at the historic Howard Theatre. This year we are thrilled to be honoring the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone and CDF Board Chair, Geoffrey Canada as a Champion for Children along with five outstanding young women – high school seniors who have overcome tremendous adversity to succeed academically and give back to their communities.  We hope you’ll join us for our annual Beat the Odds awards dinner and ceremony and help us support and celebrate these young women on their path to college.  Each one will receive a $10,000 scholarship, laptop computer, college counseling and be invited to join CDF leadership training programs.

One of our Texas Beat the Odds scholars, Kateri Perez shared wonderful news with us this month. Kateri was accepted to the Master’s in Counseling Program at the University of Houston. “I know it would not have been possible without the support of the Children's Defense Fund during my undergraduate career,” says Kateri.  Kateri used her scholarship to get her undergraduate degree from the University of Houston and is now one step closer to achieving her life-long dream of becoming a psychologist. With your continued support of the Beat the Odds program we will be able to help make the dreams of so many others, like Kateri, come true.