The First YO Breakfast

UNDERSTANDING & OVERCOMING POVERTY

JANUARY 16, 2014
7:30-9:00 a.m.
Multnomah Athletic Club, Ballroom
Portland, OR

In March 2014, Serendipity is excited to be offering to our students the first Youth Opportunity Summit in Oregon. This Summit, based on Dr. Beegle’s Youth Opportunity Community Model, will offer a full day of education into the nature and causes of poverty, as well as models for overcoming the barriers poverty creates. In advance of the Summit, we are hosting an informational breakfast to both explore the impacts of poverty on learning and present this model for empowering vulnerable young people. With one in four Oregon children currently experiencing poverty, we must understand the barriers created to learning and find meaningful responses as a community.

Goals of the YO Breakfast include the following:

  • Introducing the Youth Opportunity Community Model as a means to intervene with youth in poverty. This is an effective, research driven strategy for impacting those at-risk of lifelong poverty. The model being presented provides communities with a strong foundation to address the emotional, psychological, physical, and practical needs for moving out and staying out of poverty.
  • Introducing Serendipity as a unique program serving highly impacted children and adolescents in this community
  • Inviting support and participation for the YO Summit and for Serendipity’s on-going mission

Serendipity’s First YO Breakfast Speaker:

Donna Beegle, D. Ed.

Dr. Donna Beegle, a nationally recognized expert on poverty, will share her personal experiences of living in poverty and the results of her 23 years of research into effective strategies for improving educational outcomes for children impacted by poverty. Born into a migrant labor family and married at 15, Dr. Beegle is the only member of her family who has not been incarcerated. By age 24, she earned her GED and then, within 10 years, received her doctorate in Educational Leadership. She is an authentic voice from poverty, who speaks, writes, and trains across the nation to break the iron cage of poverty for others through services provided by her company, Communications Across Barriers (CAB).