From the CEO
We all create ripples in the world as we live our lives. My mother made a ripple when she put my brother, Shareef, and me into a better school when we were young. That opportunity allowed us to seize a moment to create and build the Future Foundation – our ripple in the community we came from. Now, the idea of the Future Foundation is poised to transform into one of the single-most disruptive forces against poverty in America.
We built the Future foundation on the idea of creating ripples that build upon themselves to form a wave. Create enough waves in the right direction and you see a tide that carries us all on to bigger and brighter shores. That concept has allowed us to grown from a staff of 2 and a limited budget in 2004 to a staff of more than 40 with a $2.5M annual budget today.
That success enabled us to win a $4.5M federal grant this year that we’ll be putting to work over the next five years to conduct research and devise a plan to scale the success of second family model we created here to other communities, schools and school districts around the state and eventually across the country and beyond.
This is one of those unique, once in a lifetime opportunities not just for the Future Foundation, but a chance to really take the things we’ve proven work and change the world. To truly begin to disrupt the cycle of poverty in America.
– Qaadirah Abdur-Rahim, CEO
