{"id":11754,"date":"2023-08-30T21:31:39","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T21:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/leadership\/author-david-ambroz-is-on-a-mission-to-end-childhood-poverty\/"},"modified":"2023-08-30T21:31:41","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T21:31:41","slug":"author-david-ambroz-is-on-a-mission-to-end-childhood-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=11754","title":{"rendered":"Author David Ambroz Is On A Mission To End Childhood Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An estimated 4.2 Million children experience homelessness in the United States. Of those children, 50% were in foster care at some point in their lives. David Ambroz has a plan to shrink those numbers. Having spent his childhood homeless, bouncing from the care of a mentally ill mother to various foster homes where he suffered abuse and other forms of violence, he had a front row seat to a very broken system. Now, as a national child poverty expert and advocate, Ambroz is advocating for reform around an often-ignored issue.<\/p>\n

Last year, Ambroz became a best selling author when he published his memoir, A Place Called Home, which Hillary Clinton described as, \u201cA rousing call to make this a more humane and compassionate nation.\u201d He was also recognized by President Obama as an American Champion of Change.<\/p>\n

These impressive accolades are no surprise to those familiar with Ambroz\u2019s work. Once people read his book or listen to him speak, they tend to experience a burst of motivation to join him in his effort to completely overhaul what he believes is a very fixable system. Despite all he\u2019s been through, Ambroz still believes in the capacity for human kindness. Front and center in his mission to reform child poverty is the drive to, \u201crekindle the belief we\u2019ve lost – our belief in each other. It\u2019s possible. It\u2019s an amazing thing. And we need it back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz\u2019s plans to reform the child welfare system starts by getting the American public to understand the economic opportunity available in an untapped workforce. By creating job pathways for children who graduate from the foster system and creating more work-friendly policies for parents who choose to foster, the U.S could open up an entirely new workforce while decreasing homelessness.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEvery year, 700,000 kids pass through foster care,\u201d Ambroz says. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of people available to join the workforce. Plus, you\u2019re looking at a population with incredible resilience. What if instead of emancipating foster kids at 18 and leaving them to live on the streets, you gave them a job? What if instead of pitying foster kids you started hiring them?\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes economic sense, he points out, since taxpayer dollars go towards caring for these children in some form.<\/p>\n

\u201c50% of homeless children in the United States were in foster care,\u201d he says. \u201cGuess who’s paying those taxes? When you don’t take care of the community, you’re going to end up paying for it one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look at this as a charitable thing,\u201d Ambroz says. \u201cBut it\u2019s the moral and economically sensible thing to do. It\u2019s a bottom line issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generally, children who graduate from foster care at the age of 18 are forced to rely on public resources, which can perpetuate the cycle of poverty for generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could make each of those 700,000 kids truly successful if you improved the system,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have social workers, foster parents, biological parents, courts. We need thousands of foster parents, not millions. That\u2019s not unattainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz has been working in public policy for years. While still in school, he created the National Foster Youth Advisory Council, which enlists input from young people who have been through foster care to inform child welfare policy. He also co-founded a program called FosterMore, which \u201cprovides opportunities for the public to engage and improve outcomes for youth in foster care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz also sees a massive opportunity to incentivize more families to become foster families.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrganizations can be more foster friendly,\u201d he says. \u201cWe will not solve this with charity or public policy alone. We need the private sector.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s currently no federal parental leave for foster parents. But for companies, Ambroz points out that expanding parental benefits to include fostering would attract even more employees in a competitive marketplace.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople always ask, \u2018don\u2019t people just foster kids for the money?\u2019 There are a lot of reasons, and many are economic,\u201d Ambroz explains. \u201cFoster care is a vehicle to address childhood poverty. And the largest segment of our society is the middle class. There are so many ways to entice the middle class to foster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if after ten years of good foster service their biological kids could go to college for free? What if we gave them a pension, healthcare benefits, loan forgiveness?,\u201d he suggests. \u201cThose who do choose to foster are fighting a war on poverty, so why don\u2019t we reward them as the heroes they are?\u201d<\/p>\n

These endless \u201cwhat ifs\u201d are what motivated Ambroz to publish his memoir last year. He realized he wasn\u2019t using all the tools he had to really inspire change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so frustrated with policy,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the way we change hearts and minds is through storytelling. I wasn\u2019t using my own personal story to open people\u2019s hearts and minds and showing them the opportunity we have. Not addressing child poverty is a choice. We don’t have to have it. So it was all rooted in this drive to get the public to care about this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 8.4 million kids in poverty,\u201d he says. \u201cYet we haven’t talked about poverty at a presidential debate since 1999.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who have read the book may be asking the same question I asked Ambroz as soon as I finished reading it. How was he able to re-examine the most difficult parts of his life and put them into these words? How could he possibly still be optimistic after all that\u2019s happened to him?<\/p>\n

To which Ambroz replied, \u201cI originally took the physical violence and public apathy, and I organized them on a shelf. That is what allowed me to be successful on paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

His \u201con paper\u201d success refers to the various roles Ambroz has held at major corporations, both as the executive director of corporate social responsibility at Disney and in his current role as Amazon\u2019s head of external affairs and community engagement. This success is proof of what he preaches – that it is possible for children who graduate from the foster care system to have fulfilling, impactful careers that enable them to contribute meaningfully to the economy.<\/p>\n

Ambroz, who is now a foster parent himself, says it was his own foster son that asked about his childhood, prompting the exploration into his past in more depth. Ambroz says that by writing the memoir, he was finally able to take his pain \u201coff that shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually, I got to a certain age where I felt emotionally healed and safe enough to tell my story,\u201d he says. \u201cWe are taught to suppress emotion, especially as men. We\u2019re told to stop crying, to not be sad, to get through it. I used storytelling as a healing process and fully embraced every moment of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz acknowledges that his own decision to become a foster parent should not dictate that everyone who graduates from the system should follow suit. \u201cI always tell kids they don\u2019t have to come back to the system,\u201d he says. \u201cThey don\u2019t owe it to everyone else to become a social worker. They don\u2019t have to become foster parents. It makes no more sense for a foster kid to become a foster parent than it does for anyone else to become a foster parent.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz also advocates on behalf of the queer community in foster care. He personally came out as queer during his early days of working in DC in the early 2000\u2019s, which was not an easy time to do so. He says he came out as a way to advance policy change. At the time, Ambroz was working with The Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in 2002 to create a joint initiative to support LGBTQ youth and adults.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were trying to change \u2018best practices\u2019 for queer kids in foster care,\u201d he says. \u201cThose \u2018best practices\u2019 at the time were all about \u2018treating\u2019 queerness, not affirming it. I\u2019m proud to have been a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambroz has always seen the potential of children who have experienced homelessness, foster care, abuse and more. That\u2019s why he has made it his life\u2019s work to advocate for and focus on what he sees as the endless opportunities for children emerging from that system.<\/p>\n

\u201cFoster kids don\u2019t know about engineering, social corporate responsibility, marketing,\u201d he points out. \u201cLet\u2019s direct them there. Let\u2019s get them out of the system however we can so they can reach their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to reinvent the American spirit,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need to reinvest in the government and hold it accountable. Government isn\u2019t some separate entity. It\u2019s us. It\u2019s businesses, it\u2019s individuals. Most people fetishize the Supreme Court but can\u2019t name a single local judge. Who is the head of your school board? Who is your local assembly person? What if everyone put aside an hour a month for civic engagement? What if we all stopped and said, \u2018What can I do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t we look at this as an awakening?\u201d he asks. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we stop making fun of the system and start doing something about it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An estimated 4.2 Million children experience homelessness in the United States. Of those children, 50% were in foster care at some point in their lives. David Ambroz has a plan to shrink those numbers. Having spent his childhood homeless, bouncing from the care of a mentally ill mother to various foster homes where he suffered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leadership"},"yoast_head":"\nAuthor David Ambroz Is On A Mission To End Childhood Poverty | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An estimated 4.2 Million children experience homelessness in the United States. 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