President’s Message

One year ago, I wrote about an urgency taking hold in our nation and in the world, an urgency caused in part by the deep global recession which defined the last year but more fundamentally rooted in the longstanding challenges of governing systems that discourage full participation and oversight by citizens; in education systems that remain vastly unequal and inadequate to people's needs; in economic conditions that block opportunity; and in the ongoing denial of human rights.

A year later, I can report that the Ford Foundation has responded to the "urgency of now" by focusing its work on a set of core issues that we—and the visionary people and organizations we support—believe offer pathways to lasting social change...