All Our Children

Trinity Wall Street has a long history of social engagement both in the local community and around the world, including a civic and moral commitment to children.  They envision a day where partnerships between churches and local public schools are as common as church food pantries.  And, in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, they found a partner with a similar dream - the recognition by members of individual congregations that the children in the neighborhood are "all our children."

But how to make this a reality - what structure would capture the relative strengths of the partnership and maintain momentum through the inevitable shifts in tactics?  Trinity engaged Criterion Ventures to work on the strategy and structure of the All Our Children launch.  Criterion led their team through discussions moving from the grand goals to their theory of change to the core program components.  Having identified these, together we created high level plans with milestones and a engagement/governance strategy that created distributed leadership with a strong small core team. All Our Children has formally launched, and Trinity is currently engaged with a set of pilot congregations, a set of advocacy partners and in the planning for an education summit in the Fall of 2008.