Education Partnership Joins StriveTogether Network

WARREN, Ohio — Eastern Ohio Education Partnership has joined the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network, the organization announced today.

StriveTogether brings together more than 60 community partnerships from 31 states and Washington, D.C., that are working to connect cross-sector leaders around a common vision, improving educational outcomes for students, according to a news release announcing the affiliation. The movement connects more than 9,150 organizations to impact more than 5.9 million students.

Eastern Ohio Education Partnership is a network of cross-sector community leaders from the education, business, faith-based, social service, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors. It is focused on improving the education for students in Ashtabula, Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties through the postsecondary level.

StriveTogether, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks, works with communities nationwide to help them create a civic infrastructure that unites stakeholders around shared goals, measures and results in education, supporting the success of every child, cradle to career.

“Across the country, Network members are improving student-level outcomes through StriveTogether’s collective impact method,” Jeff Edmondson, StriveTogether’s managing director, said. “Each of these communities, and the Network as a whole, are committed to putting the child at the center of their work. We are excited to welcome Eastern Ohio Education Partnership to the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network.”

To join StriveTogether, EOEP met a set of quality benchmarks that indicate it has engaged a cross-sector group around a common education vision. The partnership also demonstrated its ability to support the creation of a sustainable infrastructure to drive change, and committed to being accountable for improving an identified set of academic outcomes.

“We are excited to be a part of this strategic network,” Stephanie Shaw, Eastern Ohio Education Partnership’s executive director, said. “We have found strength in numbers. Our team brings together individual programs, then, based on what the data tells us we decide on a goal, next we work collectively to achieve that goal.  By working as a collaborative we have proven that outcomes are easier to achieve.”

As part of the network, Eastern Ohio Education Partnership has access to resources and tools designed to help communities implement StriveTogether’s nationally recognized cradle-to-career collective impact approach, known as the Theory of Action. EOEP now also has a connection with communities across the country to share knowledge and learn from successes, failures and insights as each community works to align resources around improving education outcomes.

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