Dion Dawson, founder and executive director of Dion's Chicago Dream, is one of the country's foremost experts on how to design workforce development strategies that simultaneously alleviate poverty and food insecurity in under-resourced communities. He shared his insights with the Chicago Crusader, the longest-running African-American newspaper in the city. Check out his guest column here.

On MLK Day, UNC Librarian Rodney Freeman writes that the current rise in book bans and threats against librarians is in direct conflict with our society’s commitment to honoring the life and legacy of MLK and other Civil Rights leaders. 

To kick off the New Year, Dion’s Chicago Dream Founder Dion Dawson publishedan op-ed in Newsweek about why Food is Medicine should be a national priority. Food is Medicine programs are a proven way to provide food security, improve health outcomes, and reduce healthcare costs for our country’s most vulnerable populations. Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-IL) is a key leader on this issue. In November, she introduced the FOOD as Health Act, which would direct $20 million in grants to Food is Medicine programs. In addition to endorsing this legislation, Dion recently joined the advisory council of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

What do we do now to effectively address the climate crisis? In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Solutions Project’s Mark Ruffalo, aka The Hulk, and Gloria Walton, an award-winning climate leader, urge their fellow philanthropists to recognize the need to invest in community-led climate solutions. This is no longer just a theory. It’s the proven reality reflected in new data and powerful examples of equitable, grassroots-powered climate action across the country. 

For National Librarian Day (April 16), Rodney Freeman, librarian and producer of the documentary Are You a Librarian?, penned a Newsweek  essay celebrating librarians as heroes. He highlights librarians’ long history of promoting a healthy democracy and standing up for access to information, from Black librarians fighting  to end the segregation of libraries during the Jim Crow era, to present-day librarians pushing back against censorship and book bans. 

In a Newsweek opinion piece, Kathy Egland of EEECHO — who chairs the national NAACP board’s Environmental & Climate Justice Committee – calls on President Biden to patch a hole in his ambitious environmental justice agenda: industrial-scale logging and highly polluting wood pellet mills cropping up in low-income, majority-Black communities across the South.