In this October 2008 blog entry, Hershel Sarbin reacts to a recent CFK article on Hope Meadows, an intergenerational community launched in 1993, and how “smartly its founders have adapted to changing conditions over the years.” Therein lies a model for all of us, he says.

In this column, Hershel Sarbin, publisher of Child Advocacy 360, lays out the basics of the Scorecard Initiative and asks for your help in identifying efforts across the country that are making a difference for kids and youth. ISO: Real People, Real Results.

It is clear that there is a huge gap between the good work being done to improve children’s lives in communities across America and the communication required to demonstrate the results being achieved—and we’re going to do something about this, as Hershel Sarbin notes in this column.

“Because I have a strong belief in the power of community action and citizen engagement in all areas of child well-being, I constantly comb major Websites and print publications for relevant Real People, Real Results stories to share with CFK readers,” writes Hershel Sarbin. A recent find in Casey Family Services Voices publication prompted his thoughts on how nonprofits can do a better job reaching a broad audience.

A few months ago, in this column, Hershel Sarbin challenged child advocacy organizations to do a better job of showing Return on Investment from research and surveys on critical issues in child well being. Here's what he's found so far.

To be poor "is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child's brain," Paul Krugman wrote in a 2008 New York Times op-ed. Here, Hershel Sarbin wrestles with the often-daunting task of communicating about child poverty—and why a renewed, solutions-based focus on child poverty may be around the corner.

Hershel Sarbin writes: "It is my habit each month to search the sites devoted to child advocacy and child well-being in order to discover and report on Who’s Doing What That Works to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged children. Whatever the organizational focus, I am always looking for 'The Scorecard'—concrete, specific data on outcomes." In this column, Hershel offers an excellent example of The Scorecard, from the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, and why tracking performance can bring real results for organizations.

I was somewhat surprised when I recently came across the following paragraph on the Voices for America’s Children Website: “As a society we pay a steep price for allowing one in five of our nation’s children to live in poverty. Economists estimate the annual national cost of persistent childhood poverty due to lost adult productivity and wages, increased crime, and higher health expenditures is massive: approximately $500 billion or four percent of the nation’s gross domestic product”...

In keeping with our promise to track the responses the New York Times had to its “A History of Neglect” series on foster care in New York, we selected a core question from the fourth and final week of responses.

Because, on so many occasions during my Child Advocacy work in recent years—most recently as the founder and editor of the non profit Child Advocacy 360 News Network—I have witnessed such good research on children’s rights and child well-being, and such poor communication of the results, and such miserable follow up in leveraging the findings for the benefit of children that I have pledged to do my own “ What ever happened to….” research on this major area of underachievement, and report it in these blog-like writings. My challenge to Child advocacy researchers : Show us your battle plan post-press release and press notices. Show us the return on investment for children. It’s time for true accountability.