On July 23, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined business, hospital, and community leaders in Oakland to announce the launch of “Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing,” a multi-media community campaign that will help local parents, grandparents, and caregivers improve their babies’ ability to build vocabulary and set them up for brighter futures.

Having the right to take a day off from work when you are ill shouldn’t have to be a dream – it should be a reality for all workers. But millions of Californians are forced to come to work sick or send their child to school ill because they don’t have access to a single paid sick day.

August is a slow month for many. Much of the staff here at Next Generation is on vacation, and like them, I too am headed out for a few days to relax and regroup after all of our recent work on Too Small to Fail, the Risky Business Project, and our California programs, because the whole point of resting now is to ensure we have the strength to see these issues through to the end.

Next Generation often uses personal stories about real people to highlight and explain the impact of big policies on our lives.

Most hourly and part-time workers report unstable hours. Often times, these workers have little input into their work schedules and may receive their schedules less than a week in advance. Precarious schedules threaten workers’ economic security and create challenges that disproportionately hurt working parents.

A little over one year ago, Jim Steyer, Ann O’Leary, and I were in Chicago signing a memorandum of understanding with the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation that joined us together as partners on our Too Small to Fail initiative. At the time we had grand plans; We knew the first issue we wanted to take on, the “word gap,” and we had lots of ideas ...

Local business and community leaders, including the Bay Area Council, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and Kaiser Permanente, today announced a campaign to better prepare Oakland’s children for success in school and beyond. ‘Talking is Teaching: Talk Read Sing’, aims to close the “word gap“—a difference in the number of words children in high- and low-income families hear.

We know that investments in the early years of childhood can change whole lives. Home visiting programs, for example, are well known to improve prenatal health, strengthen family functioning, reduce child abuse, and more.

This week, UC Davis released a final report on the economic impacts of this year’s drought on California’s agricultural industry. Groundwater pumping, the report says, will significantly soften the drought’s blow to farm operations, easing anticipated losses statewide to $2.2 billion from the $3.6 billion the industry projected earlier this year.

Today, Next Generation is releasing “Helping Hands: A Review of Home Visiting Programs in California” to highlight the importance of voluntary home visiting programs throughout our big, diverse state. In the coming months, Next Generation will continue to pursue a research agenda focused on home visiting, in collaboration with Children Now.